MLAA Interview: Trans Activist Sophie Scopazzi Wants to Redeem the California Maritime Academy.
New York, NY
By: MLAA
Sophie Scopazzi is the United States’ only known openly trans-feminine maritime academy student. After joining California Maritime Academy’s (CMA) newly formed “Gender Equity Committee” as a sophomore, Scopazzi became active in campus gender issues. Her work on the Committee eventually turned into a highly controversial push to change the Academy’s grooming standards and to create one standard for all students, regardless of gender.
In the lead-up to a high profile campus vote on the proposed changes to the grooming standards, Scopazzi launched a website (CSUM Student Voice) and a related Instagram account. Scopazzi’s website was designed to anonymously document Cal Maritime students’ experiences with discrimination and harassment on campus. Soon after launching the website, Scopazzi was flooded with accounts of campus discrimination, abuse, and harassment. She was also flooded with hate, some of it launched publicly by campus leaders who weren’t afraid to attach their names.
For four months from November 2021 to February 2022, CMA was consumed by what became a very bitter public war over a variety of issues affecting CMA students. Sophie’s fight was written about in gCaptain (twice), the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and the Vallejo Times Herald. On January 24, 2022 CMA announced that the grooming standards changes Scopazzi had been seeking had been adopted. We caught up with Scopazzi on April 1, 2022 to talk about her journey and about what’s next for her.
MLAA: How did you end up at Cal Maritime (CMA)?
Sophie: My family has operated a private charter yacht in the San Francisco Bay area since 2001. I grew up working on the boat, doing a little bit of everything–from cooking to serving as 1st Mate. I always loved working on the water. But even though I grew up 45 minutes away from Cal Maritime, I didn’t know the school even existed. After high school I took a gap year, which eventually turned into 3 gap years. While I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, someone told me about Cal Maritime. In late 2017 or early 2018 I drove up and visited the campus. I went on a one-on-one tour with a student and immediately fell in love with the place. Something told me that this was the place for me, and I started classes in the Fall of 2018.
MLAA: Sorry if this isn’t the right way to phrase this, but what was your gender identity at that time?
Sophie: That’s fine. I would say that I was still in denial about myself throughout high school and even when I first started at Cal Maritime. In high school I realized I was bisexual, but I also knew that I liked women more. I would go shopping with female friends in San Fran and buy women’s clothes, and I cross-dressed in private and at home. But I tried to hide that part of myself from myself and nearly everyone else. I was worried about how people would perceive me and worried that people wouldn’t want to hire me if I embraced that part of myself.
MLAA: How did the transition happen?
Sophie: People around me recognized what was going on before I did. Prior to my freshman year at CMA I met a trans woman playing video games online, and strangely enough, she ended up living near the Cal Maritime campus. Once I moved to CMA and was closer ewe met up, hung out and ended up fooling around. Through her I got to know that trans women exist in a very real way. That was the first time I realized that being a trans woman was actually a reality I could do. I then sailed on my freshman cruise on the training ship in the Summer of 2019. That was the last time I made a concerted effort to be masculine, and to ignore, bury, and hide my femininity. I grew out a big mustache during the cruise, but when I came back to school in the Fall of 2019 I simply could not continue living two personalities – two lives. Starting sophomore year at Cal Maritime I began dressing the way I wanted to dress more, but frankly, it was scary.
Early sophomore year, I began dating a girl who went to Saint Mary’s, a nearby college. She strongly supported me for who I am. I test-piloted “Sophie” with her first, then her and her friends. They embraced it, made me feel welcome, and most importantly, made me feel absolutely normal. She definitely knew before I did. But it was a real struggle. Around this time, it began to feel like I was living two separate lives.
When in my dorm, on the weekends, and off campus I could dress how I wanted and feel like Sophie. On the weekends I would hang out with her and her friends, and I would dress more feminine and they would call me Sophie. Then I would come back to school and I would have to use my DeadName and act masculine again. Driving back to the school from these times away I would have panic attacks. I would somehow make it back to my dorm and cry in the shower.
MLAA: Were you going by Sophie then?
Sophie: Not officially. I was only with my girlfriend and her friends, since they were not Cal Maritime students. I had not changed my name with the school or come out as trans.
MLAA: And what was your name at that time?
Sophie: You don’t ask a trans person that. There is a reason it’s called a DeadName.
MLAA: Oh, sorry about that.
Sophie: It’s alright. But that name is dead.
MLAA: 10-4. So it sounds like by Sophomore year you were no longer in denial about who you were, but you had not gone fully public about identifying a woman?
Sophie: Yeah, that’s right. I also knew that after Sophomore year I would be going on commercial cruise, sailing as a deck cadet on an actual commercialship. And that thought terrified me. It kept me up many nights. I couldn’t imagine and did not want to sail as a trans woman on a ship with a bunch of sailors who I didn’t know.
One of the first people at CMA I opened up to about being trans was Captain Burback, one of our great faculty members. I told her how terrified I was about going on commercial cruise. She was immeasurably supportive of me. Of me just being me and how I actually could be myself in my chosen profession.
MLAA: What was your commercial cruise like?
Sophie: I joined a tanker with another CMA cadet, one of my classmates, in July 2020. So right after COVID really got going. I ended up being on that ship for 128 days, and I never got the entire time. I felt like I was lying to everyone onboard. We got sent to Qingdao, China, and went to anchor. We sat at anchor for about 30 days,but when we finally went to heave the anchor, it was badly fouled. We ended up sitting at anchor for another 10 days.
MLAA: So you sat at anchor for 40 days during COVID?
Sophie: Yeah.
MLAA: That’s intense.
Sophie: Yeah. I had a lot of time to think. But in general, my shipmates were amazing, and it was a great learning experience. I went into ballast tanks, bunker tanks, and cargo tanks. One day we were sitting at anchor off Qingdao, and I was working with my fellow CMA deck cadet on deck. We were inspecting Wagner vents and it was sweltering. I opened up to him about being Sophie and about how I was really scared to sail, and really scared to just be doing what we were doing because I felt like I was living a lie and I was worried about what everyone would think if they found out who I really was. He was not someone I would normally jibe with, but he was supportive of me and very protective of my ability to just be me in the world.
The 2nd Mate was a guy born in Greece who moved to Berkely in the Bay Area when he was in his teens. And on the way back across the Pacific closing in on the end of my time on that ship I was standing watch on the bridge with him 16-20. We were way out in the middle of the ocean, stars out. I started to tell him about Sophie. And he gave me a warm response. He basically said, “Who gives a shit? You’re still a fine person.” And that meant a lot to me. When I finally got off the ship in California in November 2020, I was ready to be Sophie. I changed my name literally as soon as I walked down the gangway in California. As soon as my feet left the gangway, I pulled out my phone and changed my name on Instagram.
MLAA: Instagram official.
Sophie: Exactly.
MLAA: If you didn’t get back until November how did you complete your classes for that semester?
Sophie: Because of COVID, everything was online. The tanker had an internet connection, so I was doing 15 units of online classes during my commercial cruise. In January 2021 I returned to CMA and I returned as “Sophie.”
MLAA: What was that like?
Sophie: I spent a lot of time changing my preferred name, as they call it. It turned out there were 26 different places where my name needed to be updated. For example, I had to change my name on my email address, on PeopleSoft, on Brightspace. The head of the IT department was super helpful with me in doing all of that. But a lot of people were confused. People would ask if my sister had started at CMA, because they knew my last name but they didn’t know who Sophie was. I had to explain that over and over again.
MLAA: That’s January 2021. You’ve since become known for your successful fight to change the grooming standards at Cal Maritime. We first heard about you at the beginning of November 2021 after you started the Cal Maritime Student Voice website and Instagram. That fight over the grooming standards seemed to almost immediately explode. We want to quote a story from the Vallejo Times Herald and then ask you about your reaction:
November 23, 2021: “A new resolved proclamation written earlier this month from the Associated Students of CSU Maritime informed campus leaders…of revised grooming standards to ensure the privacy of cadets and the removal of gender basis for hair length, earrings, as well as a skin tone basis for nail polish colors. Meanwhile, a cadet’s mass letter to Cal Maritime students and faculty called on the need to “recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not.” The author writes that he “finds it’s sad that people these days are questioning themselves about who and what they are. As an example, a male castrated dog does not suddenly become a female dog because his reproductive organs were removed. A dog cannot even decide if they want to become something else.” Scopazzi, who identifies as she/her and says she is one of the few transgender students on campus, is appalled at the response by leadership’s response to the letter. Scopazzi said that as a result, she feels “uncomfortable” spending time on campus.
MLAA: The CMA “castrated dog” mass email is now pretty infamous in the maritime industry. How did you first hear about that email and what was your reaction?
Sophie: I was in the Oceanography Lab on campus when my good friend forwarded the email to me. She was like, “Hey, have you seen this yet?” I had not seen it yet, and I stopped working, read it and became very emotional and then began crying. Then I spent the next few hours writing a rebuttal. As the only openly trans women on campus I know about, when a student is openly comparing trans women specifically to castrated dogs he’s talking about me. It feels like he was specifically talking about me. CMA is a small community. It was scary. And it wasn’t only that email. Group chats were leaked that afternoon that showed the Corps Commander of CMA in a group chat where students were talking about how they wanted to see trans people used as ‘cannon fodder’ in a war with China. I took all of that seriously and I took it personally. Trans ppl are killed just for being trans, let alone for being activists. When I walk to my car through a dark parking lot after night classes, I think about that hate. I rarely came to campus during November and then I spent all of Christmas break debating whether or not I was going to come back to school or not. I was afraid. But I also realize that I am the person to fight this fight at this moment in time, and that I am an activist. That’s who I am. And I can’t just stop because the school is discriminatory. I can’t just stop who I am because it sucks, is painful, and deeply hurts sometimes. Also, I didn’t want to let down the people who prepared me for this moment. So many teachers have helped me throughout my life and helped prepare me to be who I am today. And I don’t want to let those people down. I also don’t want to let the bastards win, as it’s said.
MLAA: You did go back after break, and you did win. In late January CMA announced that they were implementing the grooming standards that you had been fighting for. How did you feel after that announcement? Did you feel a sense of accomplishment?
Sophie: Absolutely, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Recently I overheard a male freshman at CMA talking about his hair. He is wearing his hair long, much longer than would have been allowed under the old grooming standards, and he was talking about how he liked having long hair. But I could tell he didn’t know the full backstory, or how much effort it took to change those rules, not just on my part, but on the part of many people. And he was just taking it for granted. And that felt really rewarding. It felt rewarding to see someone taking the new grooming standards for granted.
MLAA: Are you still afraid on campus?
Sophie: I am, but it’s kind of like exposure therapy. You can only be scared for so long, until after a while you just get numb to it. But I certainly don’t spend any more time on campus than I absolutely have to.
MLAA: Would you recommend CMA to high school students?
Sophie: I would only recommend CMA to people who know what's really going on at the school and know what they are getting into. I haven’t felt right recommending CMA to women or minorities, at least without explaining the entire situation. The teachers at CMA are absolutely phenomenal. They are the reasons students stay. The students are also the reason the faculty stay, although sadly many do leave. It’s the administration that sucks. Cal Maritime has such potential, but it’s let down by the decision makers. It could be the best maritime academy if only it leaned in harder. It is now the only State Maritime Academy that doesn’t discriminate. That is an asset. If someone wants to go to a state maritime academy that doesn’t discriminate they now have one choice, instead of none like before. Cal Maritime is the only state maritime academy in the United States that doesn’t actively discriminate. That is something to be proud of, yes, but is also only a bare minimum start.
MLAA: What are your plans for after you graduate? Do you plan to sail on your license?
Sophie: Sailing is scary because you never know who’s going to be on a ship. The company I sailed with as a cadet recently emailed me about working for them when I get my 3rd Mate’s license. They used my DeadName, so I feel like whoever sent that email doesn’t know anything about what I’ve been up to a CMA recently. But I’ll be graduating in January 2023 and I’ll reach out to them. I’d like to go to work for them, and I’d like to sail. It’s just scary. Sailing is amazing, especially because of the time off, but it also sucks because you’re away from everyone you love. I know I want to have kids, and it’s a difficult job for people with kids. Someone on my commercial cruise told me he felt like he was watching his kids grow up in “stop-motion” and I don’t want to watch my kids grow up that way. What I think I’d really like to do is sail for a while until I want a family and children, and then come back to CMA and apply for a tenure track professor position.
MLAA: You want to be a professor at Cal Maritime?
Sophie: Yes. That’s my dream job. Recently, since the last hellish semester, I’ve made a conscious pivot to seek out mentorship and teaching roles at CMA. I’m an Oceanography Directed Research tutor. I’m a unofficial Teaching Assistant for Small Craft classes, where we drive small boats. And I organize and teach in the Cadet Boat Program. I chose to engage and seize the opportunities I have to lean into teaching roles. I love being on the water, love teaching—especially teaching people how to drive boats. Captain Burback and Captain McNie are two of my many faculty role models. I can’t change the world, but I can help change where I am. From there, hopefully the world changes slowly. But I know I have to start where I am. As terrible as my experience at CMA has been at times, I still believe in the school, what it can do, and what it could become.
-The End
————————————————————
As part of the interview process, Sophie shared personal journal entries she wrote during her journey through CMA. She has allowed MLAA to reprint a few of those entries here:
[Sophie’s Journal entry from July 2, 2019]
“Sometimes I question why I even go to this school when I could be somewhere else, in a more supportive atmosphere dressing how I want every day and being more who I am inside every day. Not feeling like I have to put on the khaki persona. My girlfriend has been calling me Sophie which feels more right when I feel like Sophie. But at school here I don’t feel like me. I feel like I gotta be someone else.”
[Sophie’s Journal entry from January 28, 2020]
“I am scared enough to be myself on campus that commercial cruise and beyond feels even more so. I've been so sure doing all this until more recently the past semester to now when I've begun to be myself and work on myself more. My motivation to study has gone downhill because I've begun to realize how who I am doesn't jibe well with my chosen profession. Not just this job, but what feels like many many places. I'm curious how many trans people are in the industry, on board vessels. It feels a little weird to write that i feel scared, but I can't think of another word to describe what keeps me up at night.”
“It feels as if being trans is contradictory to what I want to do for work and enjoy doing, and like I have to choose one, not both. Like feeling safe and unhappy with myself or happy with myself and unsafe. I don't want to take my time in being who I am. I want to be me right now. It's scary and feels like I have to choose one or the other. I don't know what I can do to get through it though, if that makes sense, since it's not a me problem. If I'm unable to do something cuz I don't know or am lacking you can study it, learn, and figure it out. This isn't something I feel like I can control, feeling safe or not. Like feeling safe and unhappy with myself or happy with myself and unsafe. If I'm thinking in terms of deadlines that was like last week, year, childhood. Being myself can't come soon enough”
[Sophie’s Journal entry from February 16, 2020]
I've begun to talk to a psychiatrist about transitioning, so I am moving in that direction of becoming who I want to be. That being said, it's scary and uncomfortable being myself on campus, and I can't even be myself most of the time. I feel like I have to put on the Anthony khaki persona and play that part, but it's not who I am. I guess where I'm going with this is working in this industry feels at odds with who I want to be in the world as if I feel this way in campus, with supportive people around, how will I feel by myself in a ship this summer. It's scary for me to think about how I don't see myself feeling safe and comfortable and able to be who I am this summer. I want to be Sophie, I don't want to have to put up a fake persona just to exist and feel comfortable and safe. I just hate having to think about picking between feeling safe and being myself. I end up on the question of why am I even bothering which I also hate because I love doing this.