The Spaces In Between

“I hate Lord Alfred Douglas. He was a jerk!” My camper jabs the air dramatically, punctuating each word. I smile at their passion, and the fact that they correctly identify 1895 as the year that Oscar Wilde was put on trial.

I am running the LGBTQ History Workshop at Brave Trails, an LGBTQ Leadership camp in Maryland, and we are playing a version of Time Line (a card game) that I have created with key LGBTQ dates, ranging from Sappho’s birth around 620 BC to the Virginia court’s ruling on Gavin Grimm’s discrimination case just this year, 2019.

Each camper, or team of campers (some of them are working in pairs), is given two cards with an event on the front (and the date on the back). We place one card down on the time-line to start, “Homosexuality is removed as a mental disorder from the DSM” (1973). Campers then must place their cards down in relationship to this card on the time-line, either before or after 1973. As more cards are added, it gets more difficult to figure out where the cards fit. If a camper correctly places a card it stays on the time-line, and it becomes the next persons turn. If it is wrong, it stays on the time-line, and they are handed another card. The goal is to get rid of all your cards. I love this game because it can be competitive but often turns into a cooperative game as folks try to help each other. The fun becomes not about winning, but about learning.

I often play this game (either this LGBTQ version or a Feminist version that I have also created) with my college students, but this is the first time I have ever played it with middle-schoolers and high-schoolers who haven’t taken my class prior to playing.

There are 16 kids in the room, ranging in age from 12-17. Not all of them are as precocious as the Oscar Wilde defender, who later tells me that they wrote an essay using the work of French philosopher Foucault when they were 13. But overall I am impressed with the campers’ attention to the game, the way that they help each other, and how well they use deductive reasoning to figure out where different dates fit. To figure out where to put the passage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by President Clinton, they look to see when President Clinton became president ( luckily this card had already been placed on the Time-Line.) When presented with a card about same-sex marriage equality and the Supreme Court, they are excited to find a date that happened during their life-time, although they are shocked it took so long for this to happen, considering the first court cases around same-sex marriage started in the 1970s. They are solemn as they listen to me talk about the AIDS epidemic which started before any of us were born, and one of them comments on the fact that they never learn about AIDS in school except health class.

They have mostly self-selected into this workshop, as Brave Trail campers get to choose their workshops at dinner the night before, although some are here because all the other ones had filled up by the time it was their turn to pick. Overall, this workshop reflects what I have learned about Brave Trails’ campers during my week volunteering with them. These kids are smart, compassionate, community-minded, and passionate about LGBTQ rights.

Before volunteering this summer I wondered what it would be like to work with older campers; as many long-time blog readers know, I have mostly worked with younger kids at Camp Aranu’tiq (ages 8-15), and Impulse City (a MD art camp) (ages 3-12). But the Brave Trails kids are fantastic! And even the ones who had not picked “LGBTQ History” as their number 1 workshop, or even their number 3 choice, are participating and engaged with the game.

The enthusiasm of the campers is part of what I love about Brave Trails. I also love how intentional the staff and directors are about creating a magical, fabulous, intentional space for campers to be themselves. Before campers arrived we decorated the whole camp with rainbows and pride flags, and space decorations (as the theme for Week 4 was Galaxies). And the programming reflects the mission of camp: to create a place for campers to learn about their history, identities, and what they can do to change the world.

Campers are given the opportunity to participate in different types of leadership and educational workshops, my LGBTQ history one for example, as well as workshops on activist self-care, public speaking, applying to college, sex education, navigating anxiety, building a GSA, and more! They also have “build-on” projects where campers work on projects throughout the week including zines, poetry, dance, theatre improv, and leadership games, along with a variety of more “camp” related activities like art, gardening, music, glass-fusion, dance, sports, and the challenge course. Campers learn a ton, and have fun, and the counselors have the opportunity to share their knowledge and the things that they are passionate about. The inter-generational mentorship is truly wonderful, and one of my favorite things about Brave Trails.

Before we end the workshop, I ask my campers what dates they would add to the time-line, and they suggest key cultural moments of LGBTQ representation–tv shows, movies, books, and moments when sports stars or celebrities came out. These were all great suggestions, and I hope to add them soon.

As we head to the next activity, I chat more with the Oscar Wilde fan about their love of Wilde’s writing, and disdain for Lord Alfred Douglas. It gives me hope that these young people care so much about their history and I can’t wait to return next year and learn more alongside them.