Skydiving - Sexy, Sex Positive or Just Sexist?

A fun jump over Skydive Sebastian, a drop-zone I’ve made annual treks to for the past nine years. Photo credit: Greg Lu

I first started skydiving in 2011. At the time, I fell head-over-heels in love with the sport. Skydiving invokes all of the right feelings: excitement, child-like awe and, surprisingly, mindfulness. The community was also amazing. I wholeheartedly embraced the narrative of our sport, which goes something like this: before I started skydiving, my life was incomplete; I was lost, but now I’ve found my people; I worked a 9-5 but now I’m quitting my job and moving to the drop-zone - wait, what? 

Before I go any further, here’s a quick mental health disclaimer: this is a story about how a wonderful experience at year one stretched thin by year nine. So if you are new to skydiving and think it’s a good replacement for a chemical imbalance - it’s not. You’re in the honeymoon period. Soon you’ll find that skydiving won’t grow new neurotransmitters and it doesn’t replace the care of a trained mental health professional. So please take your meds and prioritize your health. This applies to any outdoor activity. Okay, disclaimer complete.

Let’s begin.

Enjoying a barefoot jump at my home drop-zone. Photo credit: Bacon

The skydiving community - then and now - has a way of attracting people who may have always felt a little different; who either didn’t fit in or who were waiting to see if life had more to offer than work, death and taxes. I probably fit in one or more of those categories.

When I completed my first skydive in 2011, I wasn’t exactly new to jumping out of airplanes. I had done so a handful of times during U.S. Army jump school. That’s a story for another day.

Five years later, I had recently returned from a deployment and I was embarking upon an epic summer-to-remember: Kentucky bourbon, country music concerts, trail running and the last minute decision to sign up for a tandem skydive for my 25th birthday. I also felt financially secure after three years of saving and counting down until the next payday. So I asked a friend to join me and I scheduled my first free-fall.

The experience was breathtaking, and also incredibly peaceful. I didn’t purchase photos and I didn’t own a smartphone at the time. I took my printed certificate and drove home and wasn’t planning to do anything more with the thrilling memory. 

Barefoot is best. Photo credit: Dave Ryder

Then a chance introduction led me down the rabbit hole of experienced skydivers or “fun jumpers.” For $3,000 - $4,000 you can complete an Accelerated Freefall course and a few additional requirements in order to become a licensed skydiver. So I did.

The summer of 2011 was incredible. It’s still fresh in my mind - well, it has a fresh coat of nostalgia, at any rate. I traveled around the southeast United States while I worked on my license. I landed in a tree and broke my hand. Someone handed me a beer, or two, and I stayed up all night talking about life with two other skydivers (who warned me not to fall asleep just in case I had a concussion). I drove home the next day, pulling over multiple times due to waves of vertigo. If you’re a medical professional you‘re probably cringing at this point, but, remember these events are nine years in the past.

I wore a cast for a month while I also learned how to pack a parachute. Then I went right back up and completed my skydiving license. I carried my tent and a sleeping bag in the trunk of my sensible four door hatchback, but I never used it. I slept on old couches in hangars and in off-grid cabins in the woods and curled up on packing mats. I relied on the hospitality of others and relished drop-zone traditions - beer for first-time achievements, pieing jumpers on their 100th and 1,000th jump, naked pea pit runs, sharing meals with complete strangers and the simple in-the-plane ritual of high-fives and shaka signs which precede each skydive. Yes this was well before the days of social distancing. 

Learning sit to head down transitions. Photo credit: Mark S.

I went to my first skydiving festival - a rough-and-tumble sprawl of southern skydiving traditions in an RV park in rural Georgia that included a hot air balloon, twin engine aircraft, a lot of drinking and sleeping under the stars. The entertainment was a fire dancer and a man who volunteered to be tasered in front of a pretty sauced crowd. I had been craving new experiences and that definitely counted.

I didn’t mind being packed into a PAC750 or Twin Otter or the occasional whiff of body odor and nervous farts - okay, that part was actually gross. Let me try again - I liked the closeness, the feeling of being connected to other strangers in a way that was only replicated - in my personal experience - during weeks-long military field exercises and on military deployments. I admired the loose and easy way skydivers quickly built friendships. 

Were there red flags? Any hint of my eventual disenchantment with the sport? If they were there, I was too green to notice. Certainly, everyone immediately assumed that I was a tandem student - but I was still a novice, and the stereotype didn’t bother me yet. Yes, I was hurt when the first drop-zone that I traveled to after being certified was immediately skeptical of my training - sight unseen - and required me to redo ground school with them - without asking me a single question to assess my knowledge. That definitely felt problematic but I tucked it away in the back of my mind and focused on what I loved about the sport.

I spent every free weekend at the drop-zone. I drove back roads through Georgia and Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina - feeling like the luckiest person alive while an alt-synth-pop soundtrack -  that would later come to immortalize a summer of personal growth - blared away on the speakers. I felt very much alive.

What sort of armor do you wear as a womxn in a male-dominated sport? Mine are my bare feet. Photo credit: Anthony Sierra

Okay, skydiving sounds like the best thing ever, right? It was - for a long while. Skydiving is governed by the United States Parachute Association which publishes a monthly magazine, Parachutist. It includes a column that I like to call the skydiving-changed-my-life column. In it, a rotating roster of new and experienced skydivers talk about how empty their lives were before they started skydiving, and how, since then, everything has been wonderful. I was that person. I couldn’t see anything but the good in our sport. 

Fast forward a few years. There was no sudden change. I just gradually started noticing things - the way male instructors publicly undermined the only woman instructor on staff. The way male skydivers made unwanted comments about women skydivers and misattributed bad landings to inability. I noticed that novice female jumpers were stereotyped as inept for making - wait for it…novice mistakes. They had a difficult time escaping the stereotype that women don’t know how to fly their parachute. Meanwhile, experienced male jumpers seemed to get away with bad landings which were laughed off by their peers.

I took a canopy course and observed that the examples of what-not-to-do were mostly examples of women; even though women comprise only 13% of U.S. skydivers - in other words, a very deliberate choice. I also noticed the way the instructor consistently referred to men as “men,” and to women as “females.” Okay, noted.

I noticed the mansplaining and the unsolicited commentary on women’s bodies, gear and canopy skills. I watched as brand new women skydivers were pressured to join jumps that exceeded their skill level by men who thought they were hot; I watched as they were pressured, by the same men, to downsize the size of their canopy - even if they weren’t ready.

I attended a skydiving event where an underaged girl was roofied and multiple events where drunk men sexually harassed women without repercussion. I watched as women who spoke up became outsiders and were pushed out of the sport. I heard firsthand of sexual assaults and domestic violence. The culture started to seem less sex positive than it did in 2011 and a little more f—king problematic. Sigh.

“There sometimes is the assumption that my partner gives me all my beta, puts up draws and ticks holds for me”

— Sabrina Chapman

Pre-barefoot days at my former home drop-zone in Raleigh, NC. Photo credit: Luke Ball

Those were the obvious changes. There were also less obvious red flags. After almost nine years in skydiving, being mistaken for a tandem skydiver every time I travel to a new drop-zone, became, well, frustrating. I had obviously grown over nearly a decade of skydiving, but the sport had not grown with me.

While visiting a new skydiving center, I once asked for a drop-zone overview, only to be told that “you don’t need to worry about wind direction or landing pattern, your tandem instructor will take care of that for you.” That was last year - in 2019. At that point I had around 700 jumps and 8.5 years in the sport. I think to say I was frustrated would be an understatement.

I can’t travel to another drop zone without either my ability or physical presence being questioned. If I try to join a formation skydive, I’m always placed in the base - the least technical position. Afterwards, white strangers invariably express surprise that I knew how to fly my body - who knew? - the barefoot black woman with hundreds of jumps and years of experience who uses the same language and displays the same technical knowledge as you, is an actual skydiver. Afterwards, there are high fives and friendly conversations and I’m finally allowed to dive, but by then but it’s always too late. Resentment builds.

Get out of my face, please. Photo credit: Nate D.

It would be one thing if everyone were required to prove themselves every time they jumped with a new group of people, but I’ve noticed that is not the case. White men with the same credentials as I and similar bonafides are generally assumed to be competent - I am not.

The opposite assumption is frequently made in my case. I am constantly grilled by skydivers with fewer jumps and less experience who don’t believe I’m an actual skydiver or who don’t believe I could possibly know how to fly my slot in a formation skydive or launch a head down flower exit. If you’re the well-intentioned white stranger who picks the lone black woman out of a crowd of other skydivers you don’t know, so that you can make sure she’s done a balloon jump before - STOP. Turn around. Go back.

The message is clear: I don’t look like a skydiver and never will. It doesn’t matter how many jumps I have or how small my parachute is. Skydivers don’t look like black women. Therefore, black women aren’t real skydivers.

I have made a point of skydiving barefoot and leaving my jumpsuit at home just to show that I can be ‘just as good’ without “booties” to eliminate drag or speed up my track and without weights to stay on level with skydivers much heavier than I. It originated as something much more lighthearted - barefoot skydiving is fun and there are people whom I really admire, like big-way organizer Roger Ponce, who also skydive barefoot - but it also moonlights as a casual “f—ck you, get out of my face.”

There is almost no place I can go in the skydiving community where people will see my gear, my shared language or my helmet bag in hand before they notice my skin color and immediately assume that I don’t belong.

“I’ve been climbing long enough to remember when people would ask me if I was lost.”

— Abby Dione

Sexy, sex positive, sexist. Do you know the difference? Photo credit: James M.

I know I’m not alone. Since founding Melanin Base Camp in 2016 and Diversify Outdoors in 2018, I’ve spoken to many people of color in many different adventure sport communities. Womxn of color seem to bear the brunt of negative stereotypes. We are stereotyped for our gender, race, ethnicity, body size, sexuality and gender identity - the list goes on. 

Sophia Danenberg, the first African American to climb Mount Everest, Abby Dione the first black woman to open an indoor climbing gym, and Sabrina Chapman, an advanced black Canadian climber have all spoken about the deeply alienating experience of being repeatedly required to prove themselves to people - generally white men - with much less experience. Let’s just say, in my case, 9.5 years of that will wear you down. 

So what do I do now?

I’m not sure. I’m proud of the almost ten years I’ve spent in the skydiving community. It’s also bizarre that I’ve spent so much time doing a sport I love in a community where I feel deeply alienated instead of seeking out activities in more diverse communities that are less blatantly sexist, racist and homophobic. Maybe that’s why I’ve poured so much time, love and effort into creating safe spaces like Melanin Base Camp, Team Blackstar and Diversify Outdoors - where womxn of color are celebrated, instead of merely tolerated; where we can initiate difficult conversations about hurtful things that happen to us in white male dominated spaces, without being told that the thing we observed or experienced “didn’t really happen.” It’s been refreshing to have my experiences - even the bad ones - validated by other people who look like me. That alone is worth speaking out and worth dealing with internet trolls. 

So, if your experience in your outdoor community hasn’t been 100% awesome; if you’ve dealt with gaslighting and are tired of being required to prove yourself to people with far less experience than you; if you are stereotyped for your race, gender, sexuality or marginalized gender identity, know that you are not alone. 

Sexy, sex positive or sexist: do you know the difference?