Camping While Trans?
Defending the need for separate queer spaces
My Twitter feed lit up like a Christmas tree last weekend after owners of Camp Boomerang RV Park and Campground (a soon-to-open gay men’s campground in central Michigan) posted membership criteria that would effectively exclude transmen.
Owner Bryan Quinn posted to the campground’s Facebook group that membership would be limited to “guys,” defined as those who “possess a penis, presents himself as a male, and has state-issued ID that says ‘male.’” In replies, Quinn clarified the camp wouldn’t conduct “penis checks” but that if they “let women that act like men in, and they go naked at the pool, THAT’S when it’s obvious that there’s not a penis.”
Evidently realizing the hole he’d dug, Quinn attempted to “backpedal” (but actually dug a deeper hole) by posting this to the campground’s Facebook group:
A few days ago, we replied to a question regarding membership at Camp Boomerang. It is obvious to us that the words and statement have hurt some of those in the LBGTQ [sic] community. That was never the intension [sic], and for that we offer our sincerest apologies.
We’d like to take a moment to talk about our vision for the park. Camp Boomerang is a private all-male clothing optional business. The mission is to provide a safe, comfortable, social camping experience for men. The membership guidelines welcome any person that identifies as a male, presents a government-issued id displaying “M”, and accepts our code of conduct and mission.
This type of business is not new, nor is it for everyone. Camp Boomerang’s members expect to be in the company men. That is what we designed, and that is what the members expect and pay for. By clearly stating the mission and membership requirements we hope that those who visit Camp Boomerang RV Park & Campground will respect our vision of becoming Michigan’s premier male-only clothing optional campground.
I’m not sure it’s possible to pack more inaccuracies or stereotypes about transgender people into so few words: the conflation of the concepts of sex (male) and gender (men); grounding gender identity (“guys”) in genital anatomy; confusing gender presentation and sex (“presents himself as a male”); and, suggesting that gender presentation, genital anatomy, or government documents are the source of some kind of truth about a person’s sex or gender. It’s like Gender 101 if it were taught by “gender critical” TERFs. Sigh.
Queer social media exploded with its usual incandescent rage. You know the drill: flame wars, doxxing, negative Yelp reviews, etc. The numerous characterizations of the camp’s membership policy as “transphobic” were fairly predictable. As was attribution of these beliefs to “White gay men.”
Trans activist Phaylen Fairchild’s take sex-shamed the owners for “promoting sexual activity” while unironically arguing Camp Boomerang’s “sex discrimination” would return to haunt it. Twitter’s Jay Steele renamed the campground “Camp Boomer” and described the owners as “red neck gays,” implying their attitudes are confined to a certain demographic (they’re not). But the award for Most Creative surely goes to Sébastien Goulet who posted a meme to Facebook anticipating inevitable claims by the campground of their “victimization” by “cancel culture.” In response, Camp Boomerang has gone to ground, deactivating its Facebook group and refusing to talk to the media.
My initial reaction to this news was disbelief. The PR fumble here is so breathtaking you almost have to admire it. How could anyone be so naive as to think such comments would fly in 2021? Do they not have the internet in Michigan?
Appalling as it is, I still think there’s something we can learn from this incident about the cultural work performed by gay men’s campgrounds and the real challenge posed by transgender demands for inclusion.
In her Medium post about the Camp Boomerang fiasco, Phaylen Fairchild suggested that the use of the word “safe” in the camp’s mission statement contributed to the pernicious lie that transgender people pose a physical threat in single-sex restrooms and locker rooms.
And that’s just ridiculous.
Despite cinematic stereotypes, I’ve never met a violent transgender person. Angry? Yes. Violent? No. Gay men likely wouldn’t need to fear physical violence or sexual assault by transmen at gay men’s campgrounds. But that doesn’t mean their inclusion wouldn’t be, on some level, ‘troubling’.
Separate spaces have been a part of queer culture as long as there’s been queer people, though their number and visibility increased in modern times. Separate bars, nightclubs, dance halls, resorts, bathhouses, cruises, etc. all allow us to escape the ignorance, surveillance, and stigma of a homophobic society and be among “our people.” People with a shared history and set of cultural reference points; who speak the same language; who ‘get’ us.
Less talked about is the way separate queer spaces facilitate romantic and sexual connections. With gay campgrounds that function needs to be understood in light of their typical location: rural spaces often lacking social and sexual opportunities for same-sex attracted men, especially if they’re closeted. That helps us understand why gay campgrounds are sex-segregated, private membership businesses.
They’re a response to a homophobic, sexually repressive society that allows few safe spaces for bisexual, gay, and other same-sex attracted men to meet.
Transgender demands for inclusion in single-sex queer spaces have often been met with push-back. The Camp Boomerang debacle is hardly novel. Probably the most famous example is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which controversially excluded transwomen for years. Gay bathhouses have struggled to define membership criteria in ways that included transmen but not females. Recent debates about trans people in sex-segregated restrooms and school athletics have taken similar shape.
In all these instances, demands for transgender inclusion threatened to expose the inconsistencies and internal contradictions of the sex/gender system used to justify these spaces. Sub-cultural separatist spaces (like gay campgrounds) don’t exist outside the dominant culture’s sex/gender system. Nor are they free from its problems.
We all grew up in a society that socialized us to believe there are only two sexes; that a person’s biological sex and gender identity always align; and, that you can tell a person’s biological sex and gender identity based on their gender presentation. Without these concepts, terms like “same sex” and “opposite sex” cease to be meaningful, and with them the entire scaffolding of modern homosexual identities, practices, and cultures.
Thus, assertions like “Trans men are men!” or “Men can have vaginas, too!” don’t just challenge conventional thinking about the relationship between biological sex and gender. They also indirectly challenge foundational and hard-won understandings gay men have about their identities, desires, and communities, including the unspoken and unexamined criteria for entrance to gay men’s campgrounds.
‘Pulling back the curtain’ to expose internal problems with the sex/gender system used to justify separate, single-sex spaces is the real threat posed by calls for transgender inclusion, not the possibility of physical or sexual violence. And the size of the resistance points to the historical and continuing importance of those spaces. With gay men’s campgrounds that importance is a function of the intolerant society in which bisexual and gay men find themselves. As refuges from a hostile world, they won’t be abandoned lightly.
That doesn’t mean gay men’s campgrounds can’t or shouldn’t be re-imagined to include same-sex attracted or gay-identifying transmen. Some self-examination of the conditions that produced Camp Boomerang’s blatant transphobia seems in order. Like so many other single-sex queer spaces, maybe gay campgrounds need to be ‘troubled.’
But reducing the defense of gay campgrounds to “discrimination” or “transphobia” demonstrates a failure to grasp their history, purpose, and continuing need. And, points to a certain blind spot in transgender activism: not all resistance to transgender demands for inclusion is motivated solely by animus towards transgender people.
Given the backlash, it’s hard to see how Camp Boomerang recovers from this controversy. The camp was set to open in April but news reports indicate several charter members have withdrawn their support and the camp has been removed from the Gay Camp Association website. It also doesn’t appear on the Gay Camping USA website. The gay camping community is very small and extremely online. Memories are short. But the internet is forever.
Even though it might feel justified to condemn Camp Boomerang’s owners, we need to be very careful what we ask for, lest we get it. Separate spaces have been fundamental to the development of LGBTQIA+ consciousness, mutual support, and political activism. And they’ve all excluded someone or some group in order to serve their purposes. Calls to end “sex discrimination” at Camp Boomerang might seem reasonable but they make sex-segregated trans spaces — like separate support and social media groups for transmen and transwomen— vulnerable to the same charge.
The solution isn’t to abolish separate queer spaces like gay campgrounds but to defend their existence— when they’re defendable— with more knowledge, compassion, and grace. And in terms that don’t perpetuate harmful stereotypes about those they necessarily exclude. That will require some intra- and inter-community education about the historical, social, and cultural purposes of gay campgrounds and why they’re still needed in an intolerant world. Those purposes may not justify the blanket exclusion of transmen.
Sadly, that opportunity is probably lost with Camp Boomerang. Our knee-jerk recourse to anger and the instinct to purge has probably put the camp’s owners beyond educational outreach. And we’ll have lost yet another of the (rapidly dwindling number of) spaces where gay men can escape an inhospitable society.
[Note: Camp Boomerang opened in spring 2021. Trans-exclusionary language has been removed from the campground’s rules but its description still conflates biological sex and gender terms, suggesting there’s still some education needed: “Michigan’s Premier Guys-Only RV Park & Campground” and “Camp Boomerang RV Park & Campground is an adult, all-male, private membership campground for men 21 and over.”]
Michael J. Murphy, PhD, is Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield. He is the author of many book chapters, and encyclopedia and journal articles. Most recently, he edited Living Out Loud: An Introduction to LGBTQ History, Society, and Culture (New York: Routledge, 2019). He tweets @emjaymurphee.
