Current mood:	accomplished
Current music:	Sana Bates, "Freak of Nature"

My Camp Trans post (even I was thinking "it's bout time!")
     Though it’s been a couple weeks since I went to Camp Trans (www.camptrans.org) (it was from 8/8-8/14), Alison Bechdel’s still got the cast of her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For (www.dykestowatchoutfor.com) at Camp Trans…and besides, it’s my blog so if I wanna talk about camp, why not? :=) And it’s taken me a while to figure even where to begin, and yes a lot happened at camp so there’s a lot to read if you want.

     Rain and I got there early Monday, met a few of the people (by Tuesday we had about 30-40 people and by Saturday counting visitors and such we had about 150ish), and walked the line. That means walking up and down the line of cars waiting to get in to Michigan Womyns’ Music Festival (Camp Trans was founded because of an anti-trans woman policy regarding attending the festival which runs kinda like “don’t ask don’t tell”). I’d say in general most of the people I talked to either didn’t have a position on the issue of including trans women (many never even knew of the situation) ot support trans inclusion.

     Monday night was pretty much making sure our tents were set up. I never did check the tents Rain got at a yard sale….the less said about those the better. Luckily Pam and Rain ended up sharing a tent (Pam named theirs Camp Yoda) so I took Rain’s tent, which became Camp Paradox.

     Monday night around the canpfire I finally got to talk to Lauren (who Rain met last year) who is just so cool, a great person and a kickass activist (see her essay "Justice for Gwen: Are trans allies MIA?" at www.butchdykeboy.com/bdb/oneshota.htm)

     Tuesday I helped make some of the vegan food we had at camp. I got to meet Emily/Trainwreck (www.trainwreckspokenword.com), a realy cool and amazing person who helped keep large parts of the camp running all week. She’s the coolest Slytherin I know!

     I also got to skinny-dip with some of the other campers in a weird little creek (weird because there was a truck door at the bottom but there were some hot people at camp so who cared?)

     I met Geyl Forcewind, who does puppet shows with her hands, though I didn’t really get to talk to her much til Saturday.

     Geyl set up “Team Friendly” (as the greeters were known) to help make sure campers got to know each other and didn’t feel so alone; I helped with that thru the week.

     Our friend Gail cane over from the festival (she does so much to raise awareness on trans issues over there!) and we gave her tons of literature and stuff to bring over there (and lent her my old camp trans tanktop).

     Tuesday night we had, of all things, a pajama party in the woods. I so did not expect to get my nails done in the woods! Ruth is a really cool, fun and sweet person…she painted my nails this my favourite colour (metallic magenta) …and the polish job almost survived a week in the woods!

     Was it Wednesday I met Sean. He is so cute…and a perfect gentleman…but that’s getting a bit ahead of things…

     Wednesday Rain gave her spirituality workshop, which went really well and had about the sane attendance as my sermon in July (am still proofreading it). As Rain used some of the stories from our friend Raven’s book Hermaphrodeities (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1401027199/qid=1125473162/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-8426497-4288928?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) some people ended up wanting to get a copy (once I told them where Rain got the pagan stories for the workshop).

     I picked up a bunch of shirts. I got the official Camp Trans hirt with the broken heart logo from Stacey Montgomery’s comic strip Welcome to Sunny Camp Trans” (www.butchdykeboy.com/zines/wtsct/ppframe.htm). I bought a shirt saying “mommy is that a girl or a boy” and another with the restroom symbols merged from this one Riley. I went to a workshop given by an activist group called Transmission (need their address) and they gave me a shirt with the transgender and anarchy symbols merged, and a shirt with a scene from the comic strip Shallow Grave (michiganimc.org/newswire/display/3438/index.php) based on the Gewn Aruajo case (figures I’d get one with that on it).

     Thursday was the trans womens’ caucus. As I’m not quite a woman any more than I’m a man, I didn’t go….except for accidentally tripping over a power cable while trying to find the open mike area and falling into their tent. Rain confirmed that it went much of the night and did very well.

     Thursday also was the only rainy day, but that didn’t stop the open mike night. I ended up moving a bench made of logs from the campfire to the stage area to make a smaller front stage…only to find that we couldn’t use the electrical system cause of the rain…so back to the campfire it went. I met a performer known as Lot6 (hir site seems to be missing, was at www.lot6.info), whose headlights became our light system. Beth (our MC) did a really warped comedy piece about crazy neighbours, and sang an acoustic version of the Flaiming Lips’ “Yoshimi and the Battle of the Pink Robots.” That was the one night th8ings ended early (like 1am) but we made it thru open mike night (was worth getting soaked for).
     Friday morning our big name guest came, Sandy Stone (sandystone.com/sandystone.orig.html), Sandy is amazing, and remembered me from when I met her while studying at Stony Brook. Sandy was the first transowman working for a lesbian record label back in the ‘70s (article at www.sissyshow.com/Timeline.htm). After being slammed in the book the Transsexual Empire (icky book) Sandy wrote the hilarious comeback “The Empire Strikes Back: a Post-Transsexual Manifesto” (found at http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~sandy/empire-strikes-back), which was among the first things I read when I was coming out. Sandy’s also a communications tech scientist, which is why at some point I wanna bring her to Penguicon.

     Lot6 asked a bunch of us if we wanted pics in hir slideshow, so Rain and I ended up in it—yay!

     Friday night was the first performance/dance night. First Lot6 did songs with slideshows accompanying. Our pics are part of the slideshow for “B.U.F.U.” which syands for Be yoU F--k yoU” which ze introduced as “ever meet someone so hot you don’t know whether you want to be them or f--k them?” The bad news was the spotlights were arranged in a way which made it a bit hard for me to see the slides (note for next year which Rain’s heard 1000 times!) good news is Lot6 will send me a file of it once I remember to write hir. Trainwreck did some amazingly funny and dead-on spoken-word stuff (my favourite was “Estrogen Nade Ne a Boy”). Sandy did a really cool monologue about her communication tech experince, sang “the kady is a trans” and did a piece about being able to “remap my clitoris to my left hand;” when people asked her “was that real” she said “as with any orgasm how can you tell?”

     Saturday Sandy ran some acting exercises. Then we went to the Transgender Michigan picnic (yay chicken for first time in a week!).

     There was the rally, where people spoke, including Sandy and Rain. I’m not sure what I think of the “declaration of victory” that was made, while yes the majority of festival attendees support trans inclusion, the policy has not been changed and the issue is still dividing/hurting people…as Rain pointed out when she spoke. Rain told two stories. The first was the story of a Unitarian minister we met at Together In Faith who was harrased for bringing her tomboy/butch daughter to the Festival (she was suspected of bringing a boy in). The second was the story of Riviera Rene (info at =”http://www.crisalide-azionetrans.it/Dor_victims_2004eng.html), a transwoman who was murdered in Grand Rapids in 2004. While painful, these stories need to be heard, especially so people know why we were there and why Camp Trans started even if it’s going to broaden its mission to being its own festival and activist training ground.

     Then there was the second night of performers. I don’t remember who played first, the “Athens boys’ choir” was kinda lame and juvnile but did one good poem on hate crime issues. Then Dana Bates (www.danamusic.ca) played. I had to get her disc as it has a speech by my late friend Sylvia Rivera (one of the transfolks who fought back at Stonewall) on the song’s titled “Freak of Nature” in addition to the best song I’ve ever heard addressing the issue of anti-trans voiolence. Geyl Forcewind did her puppet show of “we are the gay giraffes and this is how we met” which was adorable.

     Then we had a big spin the bottle game. I got to kiss some really cute people (and get over a momentary issue about facial hair). What I really liked about the game was it gave people who usually aren’t seem as “typically attractive” a chance to make out. As that was all that happened I stayed up til dawn around the campfire hanging out.

     At each dance party Sean did the whole “may I ask you to dance?” and he actually bowed to me each time, including after I got to kiss him. And on Sunday night (as I kept having flashlight problems at night) he insisted on being the one to escort me back to Camp Paradox, even though a girl from Festival was climbing all over him….Sean is just so sweet.

     Sunday was mainly tearing don the camp, at least the daytime was. We stayed one more night. I got to talk with Geyl for most of the night, which was so cool. We’ve got quite a bit in common and she’s just such a kind person and fun to talk to…and I got to have the conversation about spirituality with her Rain was hoping to have since a year ago :=)

     I can’t wait til next Camp Trans…and I just may make a separate post about the interesting spiritual stuff that happened there (as there was too much for this post as it is)