Across the United States, there’s a growing number of summer camps specifically for children who don’t identify with their biological sex.
These overnight camps connect hundreds of children who identify as transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming.
Attending such camps is likely to create lasting gender dysphoria in children who would otherwise probably leave that phase behind, psychologist Nicholas Kardaras told The Epoch Times.
Dr. Kardaras runs Omega Recovery, a mental health clinic in Austin, Texas.
Most children will grow out of gender dysphoria if not encouraged in it, he said. But when adults encourage a “social contagion,” it will spread rapidly, he said.
“If you put a very developmentally fragile young person in any social group that is very dominant, they’re going to inevitably mimic the behaviors and the identity of that social group that they get dropped in,” Dr. Kardaras told The Epoch Times.
‘Gender-Liberated’ Facilities
Unlike traditional summer camps that require separate bathrooms and sleeping areas for boys and girls, some transgender camps don’t segregate children by gender, The Epoch Times discovered.
In West Central Ohio’s Camp Lilac, restrooms and shower facilities “are split by age group, not gender,” the camp website reads. “Showers are in private stalls with locking doors.”
Vermont’s Camp Outright advertises on its website that “all the bathrooms at camp are gender-liberated.” And campers and counselors self-select which cabin they will stay in, based on their gender identity, according to the website.
The Naming Project camp in Deerwood, Minnesota, advertises that separation between men and women isn’t encouraged. The group describes itself as a Christian ministry, and its website, in response to a frequently asked question about its camp for adults, reads: “At other church camps, you might have heard the phrase, ‘Boys are blue. Girls are pink. Don’t make purple.’ Well, we won’t be saying that, because that phrase erases the reality of LGBTQ people, our lives, and our relationships.”
The American Camp Association (ACA) stands behind the emergence of camps especially for transgender-identifying children, according to Andy Pritikin, the director.
“I think that mixed gender is likely going to be the wave of the future,” he said. “I have so many kids that are transgender, so many staff that are transgender, at this point. To have mixed-gender groups makes life a heck of a lot easier for these folks.”
Transgenderism has dramatically changed summer camps, even those not specifically designed to cater only to campers and counselors who identify as transgender, Mr. Pritikin said.
While public schools must abide by government rules on transgender issues, directors of privately run camps decide on their own how to handle those situations, he said.
It can be complicated when counselors suddenly announce they’ve “changed genders,” he said.
“I’m hiring staff in, let’s say, March, and then we do our first training [for summer camp], and they’ve changed genders,” he said.
It happens with campers, too, requiring last-minute reorganization, he said.
“We’re enrolling campers as boys. Then, a week before camp starts, the parent calls and says, ‘They want to be in a girls’ group.'”
The fact that his day camp has male and female bathrooms is less than ideal, he said, because the camp should have gender-neutral facilities.
And same-sex changing rooms should be replaced with gender-neutral facilities, Mr. Pritikin said.
At the camp he operates, children go home at the end of the day. The logistical problems of overnight camps are bigger, he said.
Risky Sleeping Arrangements
At sleepaway camps, girls may find themselves in a cabin with a boy who identifies as female, Mr. Pritikin said.
“They would not be changing in front of each other,” he said. “They would have changing stalls.
“They’re not fornicating with each other in the same room,” he added. “They’re sleeping in the same room.”
But Mr. Kardaras is skeptical of sudden cases of gender dysphoria that cause last-minute logistical problems for camps.
In genuine cases of gender dysphoria, adults and children don’t suddenly identify as transgender, he said.
“Gender dysphoria doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It’s not authentic gender dysphoria. It would be what I’m calling ‘pseudo-gender dysphoria.'”
He said that this pseudo-gender dysphoria results from online exposure that persuades adults and children that they are transgender.
If camp directors allow children and adults to change accommodations based on these categories, it will cause problems, Mr. Kardaras said.
Mixing genders at camps creates the potential for underage sex, he warned.
Research shows that gender identity is often more changeable than sexual attraction, he said. The girl in the boy’s cabin might still feel attracted to boys, even if she now identifies as male.
“The young person actually may think that they are authentically gender dysphoric, but they’re not. And then when they wind up landing in the girls’ cabin, their sexual orientation unfolds,” he said.
Adolescent boys also might want to sleep in girls’ cabins in search of sex, he said.
Although camps have always had to tackle problems such as these, creating sleeping arrangements to accommodate transgender-identifying campers is “exacerbating the issue,” Mr. Kardaras said.
Some people have expressed opposition to the ACA’s “new thinking” about transgenderism, Mr. Pritikin said. But, he added, the media often inflate concerns over transgender “predators in the bathrooms.”
“The concern that I hear from my colleagues is from the parents,” Mr. Pritikin said.
Camp directors have mixed responses to a politically divided public, he said.
Some directors don’t let transgender-identifying campers enroll. Others don’t let in children who won’t sleep in the same room with transgender-identifying campers.
Some shuffle camp arrangements to ensure everyone feels comfortable, he said.
“Half the country voted for Donald Trump, right?” Mr. Pritikin asked. “So I mean, 30 to 40 percent of Americans would have a problem with [accommodating transgender-identifying children and counselors]. So you run the risk of losing some of those people.”
Both overnight and daytime summer camps must be careful to protect children from sexual abuse, he said.
“If any situation comes up where you [as an adult] could theoretically find yourself alone with a camper, you need to invoke the Rule of Three, which is you need to get another staff person or another camper to be with you,” Mr. Pritikin said.
Most sleepaway camps fire anyone who breaks this rule for any reason, he said.
Because predators go wherever children go, Mr. Pritikin said he encourages camp officials to stay on high alert.
“Everybody is suspect,” he said. “You’re choosing to work your summer with kids, and that’s great. That’s noble. That’s amazing.
“But at the same time, our whole staff has to keep the radar up on everybody.”
Dangerous Policies?
It’s shocking and dangerous that sex-based boundaries that have kept children safe have been removed at some camps, Kimberly Fletcher, president and founder of Moms for America, told The Epoch Times.
“When you open Pandora’s box, you don’t get to decide what comes out,” Ms. Fletcher said.
She said that she experienced sexual abuse as a young girl and that spaces that allow men and women to sleep in the same cabin or use the same bathrooms feel unsafe and threatening to her.
Mixed-gender camp arrangements create openings for sexual abuse, discomfort, and legal trouble, she said.
“I don’t want my daughters being put in a position where they feel uncomfortable as girls,” Ms. Fletcher said. “And as a mother of sons, that puts them in a position to have all kinds of legal action and problems that could come out after them.
“There are sex offender laws out there that go after young boys for doing things that [camps are] encouraging them to do.”
Camps that encourage children in transgenderism would likely fail to notice how often children make sweeping claims about their identities that have little to no basis in reality, Ms. Fletcher said.
Embracing these claims or letting them pass unchallenged invites madness, she said.
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