You Should Go: Get Amped For A-Camp, NYC Edition

A-Camp is actually only three weeks away, and it’s impossible to even pretend that we can contain our excitement. Honestly, if camp were a girl we were flirting with and we were trying play it cool we’d totally be failing at this point, because there is nothing cool about our demeanor when it comes to the thought of being on Mt. Feelings in three short weeks. But we’ve gotta wait just a tiny bit longer because life is cruel and time machines are imaginary, sigh.

HOWEVER!

If you live in New York and are an A-Camper of the past, present, or future, you are in serious luck, because some crazy amazing cool first time A-Campers have volunteered to host a pre-camp meetup in New York City this very weekend! That’s right: If you were bummed that Robin’s pre-camp picnic took place on the West Coast, cry no more, because this meetup is an East Coast situation and it is gonna be rad.

I bet you have a ton of questions now: What are we gonna do? Who’s hosting? When is this happening? Can I go even if I’m not going to A-Camp? Well gather round, jellybeans, and let me tell you what’s up.

Hosts: Angela and Hailey, two rad humans attending October A-Camp
When: Saturday, September 21, 3pm
Where: Lesbian Herstory Archives, 484 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
What: A tour of the archives!
Who: All of you weirdos! Seriously! GO!

As we emphasized with Picnic Day in LA, this meetup is happening because of A-Camp, but it is not exclusive to those attending A-Camp in October. This event is for everyone: first time A-Campers who might be a bit shy or anxious and want to ease their nerves, veteran A-Campers who want to hang out with their buds, wannabe A-Campers who can’t make it in October and need to be cheered up about that tragic fact, and and and I’ve-Never-Heard-Of-A-Campers who are wondering what the heck this “camp” thing is all about.

Honestly, every single queer girl living in NYC should check out the Lesbian Herstory Archives because it is actually the most incredible place in the universe, so you have no reason not to go. The Archives are meant to be free and accessible to everyone, but they are a non-profit, donation based organization, so if you can bring a couple of dollars to donate, that would be lovely.

But wait, THERE’S MORE. After the tour, Angela and Hailey and the whole Auto Crew will head over to Red Horse Cafe to debrief, socialize, drink yummy coffee goodness, and discuss All Things A-Camp. If you can’t make it to the Archives tour you should totally still join in for this part of the afternoon. Red Horse Cafe is at 497 6th Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11215. The Archives tour will probably last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, so if you’re just going to meet the group at the cafe plan to show up at around 4pm.

Thank you so much, Angela and Hailey, for organizing this event!

We’ve still got a few spots open for the October session of A-Camp (Oct. 9-13) so if you’d like to learn more about camp, be sure to check out our website. You can register to go here.

Campership Alert: Hannah Hart Wants To Send You On An All-Expenses Paid Trip To A-Camp!

Hello Hartosexuals! A-Camp is less than a month away, and you know who really can’t wait to see you on the mountain? That’s right, it’s our dear friend Hannah Hart, lovable comedian and YouTube sensation most famous for her endearing mildly intoxicated antics on My Drunk Kitchen. I heard a rumor that some of you guys kind of love Hannah, and that makes total sense. What the heck is not to love?! The good news is, she loves you too. In fact, she loves you so much, she is giving away a CAMPERSHIP to one lucky Straddler. And just for extra good measure… she’s throwing in airfare too. (Or gas-fare or train-fare or bus-fare, depending on where you live!) Once you’re done screaming with giddy excitement, read on to learn more!

Like us, Hannah strongly believes in giving back to your community, so she wants to bring someone to A-Camp who can take all the meaningful things we learn on the mountain back to their own community once camp is over. Because that’s the point, right? Spreading queer love and acceptance throughout the land until we bring about the revolution. I’m into it, and I know you are too. In Hannah’s own words, here’s what’s up:

“One of the things I admire most about A-Camp is the ability to bring the benefits of the experience back home. How do you think going to camp will impact your life and the lives of those around you upon your return?”

Well Straddlers, what say you? In order to apply for this very special Hannah Hart Campership, please write a short paragraph answering Hannah’s question (super short – 2-5 sentences, max!) and send it to robinroemerphotography [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line Hannah Hart Campership. You have until Friday, September 20th to apply. Hannah will handpick a winner over the weekend and will get in touch the week of Monday, September 23rd to discuss booking your travel, and we’ll be in touch to discuss registering for camp. Please only apply for this opportunity if you aren’t already signed up for camp, but can absolutely come to camp should you be chosen.

Now get thinking and writing and applying! Hannah is super excited to read your submissions, and we’re thrilled that she has generously donated this campership. The more community-minded queers on the mountain, the better. See you in t-30 days, A-Campers!

VIDEO: Meet The “Me & My Bois” Team and Hear About Their Big Plans For A-Camp

A-Camp is only three and a half weeks away and while that’s already exciting enough on its own, we keep finding reasons to get more and more excited as the days leading up to camp pass by. Our most recent exciting development is this amazing promo video from Me & My Bois.

Just to recap, Me & My Bois is a collective of masculine of centered people creating media outlets for LGBTQ/Queer people, and two members of the collective, ​Lex Kennedy and Megan Benton, a.k.a. Emotions The P.O.E.T., are joining us at camp! They will be leading and participating in some workshops/panels (including slam poetry) as well as conducting interviews with interested campers for their Me & My Bois Documentary, and that’s where you come in, darling A-Campers.

If you’re coming to camp, identify as a B.O.I. (Born Obviously Incredible), and want to share your story, Lex and Megan want to talk to you! And trust me, you’re gonna want to talk to them, too. Don’t believe me? I dare you to watch this video and walk away without wanting to spill your guts to these humans, or at the very least hang out in the same room as them. It cannot be done.

“We just really really really want to see you all come share your stories with us, we take digital media and we like to share it with the world we like to tell our stories and when I say our I mean all of us, all of us who are Born Obviously Incredible so please come check us out, sit down with us, tell your story.”

A-Campers, Lex and Megan wanna hear from you before camp too, so don’t be shy! And keep getting excited…we’ll see you all on the mountain in t-25 days!

meandmybois tumblr

meandmybois facebook

follow lex on twitter: @iamlexkennedy

follow megan on twitter: @emotionsthepoet

We’ve Got 12 Loyal A-Campers and They’ve Got 12 Reasons To Attend A-Camp

We keep telling you you’re going to have an amazing time if you come to A-Camp, and it’s true, but hey, don’t take our words for it! We asked 12 awesome queer humans who have attended all three A-Camps and are signed up for October to tell us why they keep coming back, and what it means to them. Read their words, swoon over their faces, then register to come join us on the mountain – hurry, because we only have a few spots left and we want you there!

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Jen

“I keep coming back because A-Camp is a place I can escape to twice a year; this magical utopia on top of a mountain where I feel validated, beautiful, accepted, and unconditionally loved. There is nothing else in the world like that.”

Saskia

“You should come to camp because it is like coming home. There is something really wonderful and validating about being in a super accepting queer bubble for a couple of days… it’s a pretty magical experience.”

Lindsey

“Come to camp if you have ever imagined a magical word in which intelligent, respectful queer folks of all kinds come together to talk about tough issues, support one another and party their faces off.”

Angeline

“There is nowhere else in the world like A-Camp. Magical really is the only way to describe it. It’s a place where you can just be you, and there are no judgments about that from anyone. Every queer person should have the opportunity to experience A-Camp, even just once, in their lifetime.”

Alice

“Going to A-Camp is like breathing when you didn’t realize you were holding your breath the whole time. At its most basic it is a sweet relief from being the other in most of your other non-camp contexts. Not to imply that there is some sort of homogeneity of people or experiences at A-Camp, but your queerness doesn’t have to be the focus of anything unless you want it to be. You can be your weirdo self and find other weirdos like you. It’s that sense of camaraderie that brings me back. Combine this with all the activities, crafts, games, and panels it’s a wonderful blend of the social, the intellectual, and lighthearted frivolity!”

Katie M.

“There’s a place for everyone at A-Camp – whether you’re living somewhere secluded or already part of a vast queer community. You’ll experience incredibly thought-provoking panels, never-ending dance parties and lasting friendships.”

Brianna

“You should come to camp because you want to, and you should want to come to camp because there’s no better place. Come especially if it sounds like it would be out of your comfort zone.”

Emily

“It’s been monumental, the self growth I’ve accomplished at and in between each camp. It’s a great measurement of time when I think back. Unplugging and leaving all your daily normals and routines behind for a few days really allows you to dip into your deeper self; it’s powerful shit. I also think there’s wild potential for camp as this hub of activists, professionals of all trades, and generally brilliant minds. It’s a super network of power-Queers and we can make just about anything happen. I can’t tell anyone what camp will be for them because it’ll be your experience not mine. Come and get your camp.”

Kristen

“There is no other place like A-Camp — it’s an incredible community and the safest, most positive, most supportive space I’ve been in.”

Mary

“I keep coming back to camp because I wish I didn’t ever have to leave. Camp keeps getting better and I don’t want to miss any of it. And I think I get better too, and grow a little at each camp.”

Tory

“The whole experience is like a giant hug. It’s safe, loving, friendly, and needed. Every time I go I come back feeling more like myself. It is a tangible representation of the truth in the aphorism that you are not alone.”

Katie E.

“My life since attending my first A-Camp has gotten so much better and I know that a large part of it is thanks to the friendships I made at A-Camp as well as the pathway to self-discovery that the different panels that A-Camp helped to create in my life.”

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Wanna meet these amazing humans and so many more? Of course you do.

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Top 10 Reasons You Belong At A-Camp This October

Our October A-Camp is coming around the corner and getting exponentially more exciting by the minute — exciting enough, really, to warrant this brand-new post about some of the amazing shit we’ve got planned.  We have some spots opening up and wanna be sure you have the chance to fill them! Are you ready?

 

 

Top 10 Reasons You Belong At A-Camp

 

10. Because You Can Move Your Body In So Many New Ways…

Although the Autostraddle team isn’t exactly known for its athletic prowess (except Brittani), our Calendar Girls are a different story, which’s why we’re so excited to have so many of them on staff in October, three of whom will be inspiring you to move your body in new and unexpected ways. (That’s what she said.) You’ll have the opportunity to learn Ballet For Basic Bitches with Ballet Instructor and Ginger Hottie Miss February Chloe Shapiro, experience Yoga from the inside-out with Miss June Dani Orner, and pep your heart out with former cheerleader Miss October Kai’s But I’m a Cheerleader (For Real) Class.

 

9. …or Just Sit Down and Take It All In

We’ll be bringing back the panels you’ve known/loved from former camps, like the Sex Panel, the Gender Panel and the Woman of Color Panel, but with some new faces and new angles. We’re also working on the ever-evolving Bisexuality/Non-Monosexuality/Sexual Fluidity Panel as well as the Non-Monogamy Panel. This session the Kink Panel is going interactive (I believe the working title is “Ropes Course”), the Queerituality Panel is tackling organized religion, and we’re presently planning on hosting panel/discussions on mental health, body positivity, queering academia, being a lady in male-dominated industries and “coming out later in life.” Plus so much more that we can’t even tell you about yet!

 

8. Because You Need to Unplug

Apparently “Tech-Free” camps have officially become a Thing, and although we’re not gonna demand you turn over your cell-phones upon entering the campgrounds (because Instagram), campers find the break from laptops and cell phones one of camp’s most subtly invigorating aspects, especially while witnessing the remarkably smooth transition from online community to face-to-face family.

 

7. Because It’s a World-Class All-Ages Many-Splendored Gathering

Most of our campers come from the United States, but we’ve also got 14 Canadian campers, four from the United Kingdom, four from Australia, and one each from New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. Within the United States, we’ve obviously got a whole truck-load of Californians (including 14 Los Angelenos), but domestic geographic diversity abounds! You can look forward to sharing fruit punch with 26 Midwesterners, 25 humans from New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania, 19 from the Pacific Region, 20 Southerners, 10 New Englanders and 15 Southwesterners.

You’re moms, musicians, students, soldiers, gelato makers, florists, social workers, activists, lifeguards, optometrists, kayakers, roller derby girls, art teachers, grad students, software developers and engineers, interns, restaurant managers, actors, lawyers, nannies, runners, media monkeys, entrepreneurs, writers, architects, biologists, non-profit superstars, nursing assistants, baristas, animal trainers, screenwriters, cooks, researchers, park rangers, nurses, archaeological field technicians, designers, community organizers, teachers, journalists, graphic novelists, comedians and power lifters.

Once again, about half of you are over 25 and half are under, with a bulk of campers in the 23-29 range. We’ve also got more campers over 30 than ever before!

 

6. Because You’ll Be Hanging Out With Some Very Special People…

When you register for camp, we ask you to describe yourself in 500 characters or less, which helps me make cabin assignments and get a grasp on the sorts of humans we’ll be sharing a mountain with — and what a plentiful array of humans we have this session! So I made a word cloud out of your About Mes.

 

5. …Including Super-Extra-Special People Who Described Themselves Like This:

[sentences snatched mercilessly out of context]

I can make a whole box of wheat thins disappear!

I was a semi-pro go kart driver in my teenage years

If Hogwarts was real, I’d be sorted into Ravenclaw, and I would probably die pretty early in the Hunger Games and/or the zombie apocalypse.

I apparently dress like a French Sailor

I’m eating grapes right now

I like Skittles

I was the One-Match Fire champ at Girl Scout Camp

I like to write satirical articles and pretend to go on runs

I’m a recent college graduate, which is another way of saying I’m unemployed, have a serious Netflix addiction, and irregular sleeping habits

I’m made out of people-meat

I’m an incorrigible punster, so don’t incorrige me.

I’m basically Jane Lane without a Daria

I’m very good at attempting to participate in Sports

I wish I could major in bean recipes but my counselor advised against it

I love carly and robin’s marriage

I like days when my fro is super big

My girlfriend says my spirit animal is a sloth

I am a student of the universe who is currently expressing her Inner Awesome through floral design and coffee-making

Some people describe me as a puppy

I cried within the first ten minutes of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Charlie found the golden ticket and was too emotional to watch the rest. To make matters worse, it was the Johnny Depp version

Not a Bear Person

4. Because You Will Be Attending The First-Ever A-Camp Carnival!

Our first-ever A-Camp Carnival will take place all afternoon on Friday. Get your face painted, play carnival games, perform on the festival stage, gnaw on cotton candy and enjoy a variety of A-Camp-tailored funfair activities. In preparation for what will surely be a monumental and life-changing event, Camp Co-Director Robin Roemer has dedicated herself to learning the art of making balloon animals, often enlisting the assistance of her peers:

3. Because DeAnne Smith Gets Real Gay For Our Grrrls

If you’re American and have ever attended a gay cruise or pride event or raucous Palm Springs pool party, you’re likely familiar with many esteemed and hilarious lesbian comedians — but you’ve probably yet to see DeAnne Smith. Which is unfortunate, because DeAnne Smith is a hilarious big deal lesbian comic but she’s not on the Celesbian circuit because she is on a DeAnne Smith circuit, which is like a circuit party except with less man-on-man sex, more Canada, and more Australia. DeAnne Smith’s set at May A-Camp made everybody die of laughter and she inspired a multitude of campers to request her return to the A-Camp stage.

DeAnne’s been honing her comedic chops on television (she recently did a spot on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and has previously appeared on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Canada’s Comedy Network, HBO Canada and Australia’s Channel 10, among others), in comedy festivals all over the world and in solo shows.

But of course there’s nothing quite like performing for your own people, is there?

You can read DeAnne’s posts for Autostraddle here, and here she is performing a Nerdy Love Song at A-Camp in May:

2. Because Lex Kennedy & Megan Benton (a.k.a.,  Emotions The P.O.E.T. ) of “Me & My Bois” Are Coming!

We’re also really excited to be bringing in workshop presenters from Me & My Bois, a collective of masculine of centered people creating media outlets for LGBTQ/Queer people: ​Lex Kennedy and Megan Benton, a.k.a., Emotions The P.O.E.T., who will be leading and participating in some workshops/panels as well as conducting interviews with interested campers for their Me & My Bois Documentary!

Here’s more about these kickass additions to the roster:

Megan Benton aka Emotions The P.O.E.T. is a spoken word artist, activist, writer and healer from Los Angeles, CA. Megan is one of the founders of Theta Xi Theta Fraternity, Inc. and a member of the Brown Boi Project. Megan Benton has a Masters in Clinical Psychology with emphasis in LGBTQ studies. She specializes on working with LGBTQ / Queer People of Color and gender non-conforming people, providing a healing space for clients to develop healthy identities in regards to the intersection of race, culture, sex, gender, lifestyle and spirituality.

She has facilitated groups at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center as well as Life Works, LBGTQ youth center; and presented at events including Butch Voices, The LAGPA Conference, The Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Conference, the EDGY Conference, True Colors, Case Managers of America, and Models of Pride.

Lex Kennedy is an award winning filmmaker and visual media artist residing in Los Angeles by way of Lex’s east coast roots in Atlanta, DMV, and New York.  As a genderqueer, masculine of center BOI, Lex uses art as activism.  After screening consecutive years at the Fusion film festival, and Outfest film festival Lex is determined to bring more queer people of color stories to every screen possible.

From volunteering with the Los Angeles Gay&Lesbian center to Americorps Vista program, Lex believes that through community service and self care the work of an activist is never done.  Which explains Lex’s No days off philosophy.  Whether it’s creating visuals for poets, such as Emotions the P.O.E.T, or making commercials for 826LA a non-profit writing and after school tutoring program, Lex remains busy building a community where every human being is loved. Appreciated. And Welcome.

 

1. Hannah Hart Is Coming!

Y’all are pretty into this chick, yeah?

I don’t know, we just get a feeling that some of you hold Hannah Hart in your Heart-O and wouldn’t mind being stuck on a mountain with her?

Well, the good news is that she feels EXACTLY THE SAME WAY about you!

New Media Entrepreneur Hannah Hart will be returning to A-Camp for the third time, ready to make you swoon, laugh, smile and take photos for your jealous friends back home.

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Get Ready For And Dream About A-Camp With Robin At Picnic Day In LA

Hey starbeams, did you know that A-Camp is less than two months away?! It’s true! Your next opportunity to bask in the sun on top of Mount Feelings with 250 other queer humans is fast approaching, and we want you to be as ready as possible for the greatest gaycation of your life, so we are pulling out all the stops and hosting some 3-D events to help you prep!

 

The gorgeous and talented Robin Roemer (Camp Director and Calendar Girl Photographer, amongst many other impressive titles) will be hosting the very first A-Camp Prep event in Los Angeles, and it’s happening soon: Sunday, September 8th!

This event is for everyone: first time A-Campers who might be a bit shy or anxious and want to ease their nerves, veteran A-Campers who want to hang out with their buds, wannabe A-Campers who can’t make it in October and need to be cheered up about that tragic fact, and and and I’ve-Never-Heard-Of-A-Campers who are wondering what the heck this “camp” thing is all about. Every single one of you reading this in the LA area should go to this event, is what I’m saying. I would go but it’s kind of a pain to fly from the East Coast just for the afternoon, ya know? But don’t worry, Robin will take great care of you.

Okay so here’s what you’re gonna be doing!

Who: YOU! and Robin
What: A-Camp Picnic Day in LA!
When: Sunday, September 8th; optional easy hike at 11:45am, picnic at 12-3pm
Where: Griffith Park (picnic at Old Zoo, optional hike to Bee Rock)
Extra Info: Bring your own food and drinks, and bring a water bottle if you plan to hike!
Suggested Donation: $5, all funds will go toward sponsoring another campership!

The hike itself is super easy and super optional, so if that doesn’t sound like your thing don’t worry, just show up for the picnic! You’ll be sharing ideas about camp and bonding with new and old friends and hanging out in the gorgeous LA weather, and really what more could you ask for on a Sunday afternoon?

Here are the directions: Take the 5 Freeway to the Los Feliz Boulevard exit. Drive west on Los Feliz Boulevard to the first light and turn north on Crystal Springs Road. After 1.5 miles, turn left on Griffith Park Drive. Continue a quarter mile and turn left into a parking area just before the road bends to the right. Park in this lot and walk up the stairs to the old zoo area.

Here is the address if you plan to just plug it into your iPhone and let technology guide you because we live in the future: Griffith Park Drive, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA 90027.

Would you like to host your own Prep For A-Camp 3D Event? Email me at vanessa [at] autostraddle [dot] com and we’ll make it happen!

We’ve still got a few spots open for the October session of A-Camp (Oct. 9-13) so if you’d like to learn more about camp, be sure to check out our website. You can register to go here.

Campership Alert: Go To A-Camp October For Free Thanks To Kipper Clothiers!

Still dying to attend A-Camp this October but not quite sure how you’re going to afford it? Well say a very enthusiastic hello to Kipper Clothiers, because they’re amazing and they want to help you out.

Who are the faces behind Kipper Clothiers? Erin Berg, Kyle Moshrefi, and Alex Orozco, the three former stylists from Tomboy Tailors. Kipper Clothiers is a brand new custom suiting and shirting venture founded on the notion that queer humans deserve formal clothing that fits and looks great. Based out of San Francisco, CA, Kipper Clothiers is committed to on-time production of high-quality, well-fitting custom suits and shirts for the Bay Area LGBT community.

And you know what else they’re committed to? Sending one of you queermos to A-Camp, the most wonderful magical queertopia in all the land! Where you can learn and play and live and sleep and love with Autostraddle, Hannah Hart, DeAnne Smith and 300 of the best humans on the planet! The Kipper crew wishes that they could attend camp (who doesn’t?!) but since they can’t, they’re being super generous and sending someone in their spot. Alex sums up their feels like this:

“Kipper Clothiers is excited about A-Camp and wish we could all go! As we’re busy with appointments, a fun-filled trip isn’t in our near future, but we’d love to sponsor a Campership so someone else can enjoy the experience. We’re happy to support a positive queer environment.”

You guys, this is literally why I love the queer community more than anything else in this world. Look how good we all are to each other. Is your heart filled with love and hope and visions of hot queers in well-fitted suits drinking whiskey at dappy hour at A-Camp? MINE TOO.

So okay, let’s talk about how you can enter to win a campership sponsored by these fine, well-dressed, large-hearted humans at Kipper Clothiers. Pay attention because there are multiple steps (that’s what she said).

1. Like Kipper Clothiers on Facebook OR follow Kipper Clothiers on Twitter.

2. Tell Kipper Clothiers your favorite style tip! This can be the most useful thing you know, the craziest thing you do, or the best lifehack you’ve discovered in your years of being a super stylish queermo. You’ll want to either tweet this tip to @KipperClothiers OR write it on their Facebook page. Either way, make sure you tag your post #acamp.

3. Kipper Clothiers will choose a winner by picking their absolute favorite tip!

You can start submitting tips to Kipper Clothiers right away, and can continue doing so until Friday, August 30th. You can only submit one tip, so make it a good one! Kipper Clothiers will pick their favorite tip and we’ll announce the winner on September 1st!

You do not have to identify as masculine of center or as someone who wants to wear a well-fitted suit to apply for this campership, and it is open to all potential campers who are not already registered, not just first-time campers. Airport shuttles are included in the prize but you will obviously have to cover your own travel expenses to and from LAX if you’re from out of town.

If you applied for a K-10 Campership, you should know that Anna is still making her decision. In the mean time, you’re allowed to apply for this as well!

So get creative and get crafty so you can go A-camping!

Another Campership Opportunity: Kreuzbach10 Wants To Send You To A-Camp For Free!

Are you a Straddler with an urge to attend A-Camp this October but not very much money in those stylish pockets of yours? Well fret not, grasshopper, because today may be your very luckiest day! We’ve teamed up with Anna Kunz of Kreuzbach10 again, and together we are offering another bright and shiny campership!

Way back when in the now before the now, Alex introduced you to the glory of Kreuzbach10 and encouraged you to support their indiegogo campaign, raving that “Anna Kunz, the very driven creator of this endeavor, is basically doing what I would do if I had the resources, time, or even remotely the amount of motivation that she does: masculine clothes that are made to fit women’s bodies.”

The campaign made their mark ($7,500) and then some ($14,825) and you can now shop online for well-made shirts, hats, and bow ties from Kreuzbach10! Because queer community is the best, Anna Kunz wanted to show her appreciation for our collective support in a very tangible way – so she created the Kreuzbach10 campership! This campership is the same as others in that it is a free ride to A-Camp (travel costs not included) but the lucky winner will be the official Kreuzbach10 Camper and will be gifted a Kreuzbach10 shirt, bow tie and hat!

How can you apply? You’re gonna write a thing and send it to us. Here’s what Anna wants you to write about:

I strongly see Kreuzbach10 as being about empowerment and hope. The name ‘Kreuzbach10’ actually comes from the street name of my family home in Germany. When my father was young, he and his brother and parents were displaced and made refugees twice in political turmoil, losing everything but the clothes on their backs. There was a bit of a saga, but the short version is that they rocked up in this little village, had people treat them with kindness and generosity, worked their butts off, and built this whole new life from absolutely nothing at all. By the time I was a child visiting from Australia my grandmother was a fat old lady eating strudel. Their ability to come so far, from having so little is something that inspires me.

I guess it’s quite similar to what you in the USA would call the ‘American Dream’ but repackaged with my Australian-European slant on it. Many queers face obstacles, and some are even reduced to literally nothing in either the social/emotional/economic spheres, but my idealistic vision behind the label is that enabling them to feel good about their physical expression of themselves can create a flow on to other areas of their lives, its the shirt that gives you the courage to join a social group, ask someone out, sell yourself in a job interview… possibilities are endless.

So that’s what we’d like to hear from you — how feeling good about your physical expression of yourself gave you the courage to move forward in some area of your life. You need not express yourself as masculine-of-center in order to apply for this campership! Just speak from your heart.

If you grant us permission, we’ll publish the winning essay and two others on Autostraddle. If you’d rather not have your essay shared, that’s okay, we’ll ask you for permission first, and we’ll do that after Anna has made her decision so it won’t impact your chances.

So here’s what you do:

+ Email your short essay to anna [at] kreuzbach10 [dot] com by Tuesday, August 13th.

+ Anna will read your essays and we will inform the winner by September 1st, 2013.

+ Any candidates must be totally cool and maybe even enthusiastic about appearing on the Kreuzbach10 website with a photograph of you wearing your duds at camp with maybe a little paragraph about you.

Happy camping/writing! See you on the mountain oh-so-soon!

A-Camp October 2013: It’s Campership Time!

Sometimes you wanna go to A-Camp but you just can’t afford it, and sometimes you don’t really want to go to A-Camp but totally could afford it, and if we mash both of those types of people together, we create a symbiotic relationship known as “the campership.” Although we have lots of good ideas around here, this particular idea just-so-happens to be yours.

This October, we’ll be heading up to the mountain with a gaggle of delightful humans, accompanied by first-rate talent like world-class comic Deanne Smith, Design*Sponge Founder Grace Bonney, rock star and Real L Word alum Somer Bingham and so many lovely Team Autostraddle members. You guys, THE CARNIVAL.

There will be workshops and panels and activities and lots of feelings, and to find out more about the experience you can read recaps from April 2012 and September 2012 and May 2013, and read the announcement post for October 2013 Camp here.

This time we’re gonna be giving away full Camperships and partial camperships. You can:

1. Donate a full campership ($465) which will go to one camper. You’ll have the option to donate anonymously or have your identity revealed to the camper, who then might, you know, send you a thank you card or something! To do this, just enter $465 as your donation amount via this link, and Daniela will be in touch about your identification prefernces.

2. Donate to The Campership Fund! Half of the campership fund will go towards full camperships and airport shuttles for those who need it. The other half will go towards half-camperships ($230 each). (Subject to change depending on how many donations we get)

If you want to apply for a Campership, you can do so here. The only requirements are that you be a new camper who’s never been to A-Camp before and that you have a way to get there.

If you need a little inspiration to open your pocketbooks for some fine human beings, we’ve got here some essays from the winners of May 2013 Camperships. You can also obtain further heartstring-tugging from the campershippers of September 2012 and April 2012.

If all this just makes you wanna go to A-Camp regular-style, you should!

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Caitlyn, 19 – Boston, MA

I have been living as a survivor for three years — unable to get help when I asked for it, kicked out of my house by my parents a few weeks after graduating high school, unable to attend college as I’d hoped to do. I was learning to live on my own.

I wanted to get to A-Camp 3.0 so I could meet the community that accepted me during the worst years of my life right before setting out to leave where I came from and move somewhere new.

A-Camp is about community. It’s about hundreds of like-minded, inspiring, beautiful, open, queer people getting together to create this safe space I never imagined could exist. For me, the past few years have been spent mostly on surviving, and A-Camp was the first place to entirely embrace me in this unconditional kindness, safety, love and solidarity that I hadn’t known for years. That’s what makes A-Camp so profoundly important to me. That sense of safety and community that hasn’t been guaranteed for me was suddenly there, and for five full days I was able to operate openly and unapologetically as myself; without thinking twice, without question, without hesitation. And, once you have that, there’s really no limit to what you can make happen – that’s where the rest of A-Camp comes in!

There are panels about sex, race, relationships, queer history, and more sex. Then, there are the workshops where you could write things or make a thing or drink whiskey or learn how to do drag. Then, there’s the best part, where you don’t even have to go to any of it if you don’t want to! You could spend all day walking around the mountain, talking to attractive/queer/interesting people, and when night happens you could do any combination of drinking, partying, dancing, star gazing, running off into the woods to hook up with someone, and so much more.

As a person who has never really had a place they considered home, I like to find my home in other people, and A-Camp proved to be the perfect community to become just that.

I’m rambling, but that’s the point: A-Camp is this magical place full of opportunity, beautiful queer people, beautiful queer everything, and it’s all about what you make of it. For me it was this open safe space that allowed me to hit the ground running, meet more lovely, inspiring people with stories similar to mine than I ever have, attend panels that lit me up and gave me all the feelings and ideas, party, chase geckos and dance with all of the stunning queer people I just met.

What more can I say? As a person who has never really had a place they considered home, I like to find my home in other people, and A-Camp proved to be the perfect community to become just that. It’s an experience I won’t soon forget, and I feel privileged and humbled to have found home in it all. I’m endlessly grateful to everyone who makes this possible, for the campership that made it possible for me, and to all the ‘straddlers out there who continue to create the impossibly beautiful place that it is A-Camp – y’all are the best. I’m certainly planning to make my way back soon, until then: take care, stay sassy, and you do you!

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Ana, 22 – Nogales Sonora, México

Living in México in a small border city and with a very Catholic family has been a hard process to find myself and be who I am.

I’ve been reading Autostraddle for a while now, and I love it, since the first time I read it I haven’t stopped. For me, it was this amazing community I found on the internet, and it was helping me get through a lot. So when I read about A-Camp I thought it was such an amazing idea, but something I’d never be able to afford because dollars are expensive — the minimum wage in the US is between 6 or 8 dollars per hour, which in Mexico is equivalent to 5.18 dollars per day. I’m a student, so there was no way I was gonna be able to come up with the money for camp. But when I saw the campership opportunity I was so happy because at least there was some hope for me to go to camp. So I applied and when I got the email saying “You’ve Won a Campership!” I did my happy dance and yelled at the top of my lungs, I was so happy and excited. Going to camp was a dream come true.

I don’t have enough words in English or Spanish to thank the people who donated and who are gonna donate camperships for this camp.

A-Camp gave me a sense of community (outside of the internet, which is like 10000 times better), a safe space, and a place where I could be completely myself and not just parts of me, where I didn’t have to check if “I looked too gay.” It was this awesome place where I learned so many interesting things in the panels and workshops, and met amazing people. At the beginning I was afraid because I didn’t knew anyone in my cabin and because my first language is Spanish (and my English isn’t so good) so I didn’t know how that would work with other people, but everyone in my cabin was so welcoming and by the end of camp we had really bonded and now we are friends. (Foxfire don’t stop!!).

Everyday I woke up at 7 AM to go drink coffee and then go to the Morning Stretch or Yoga, and every night I went to bed at 2.am or 3.am after dancing and having tons of fun at KLUB DEER. I just wanted to do and learn as much things as I could, so I could bring it back home with me and not feel so alone and hopefully someday put into use all the things I learned and start a queer community where I live.

One of my favorite things at camp was the staff reading and Lilith Flair. If you think the autostraddle team is great, you have to meet them in person. They really go out of their way to make A-Camp happen and be the amazing thing it is, Muchas gracias por todo. Shout out to Gabby and Katrina, my cabin counselors for making my camp experience complete, and to Alex Vega because she took the time to talk to me and she was really cool.

Camp was such a great and filled-with-feelings experience, all my walls came down at camp, I felt like I belonged there. I don’t have enough words in English or Spanish to thank the people who donated and who are gonna donate camperships for this camp. Even if you don’t think that you are making a difference, believe me you are, that experience might change someone’s life.

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Nancy, 22 – Signal Mountain, TN

Getting my campership was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. It trumped college, that one time I went to London, and possibly sex (possibly). When I got the email telling me I was going to A-Camp in May I was in a work meeting for a job I’d get fired from shortly thereafter, and I had to go grocery shopping after that. None of that stopped me from jumping up and down excitedly in the middle of the meeting and then practically dancing through the grocery store, a grin a mile wide on my face. I think I scared the cashier.

See, I had convinced myself that I wasn’t going to get it. I knew that a lot of people had applied for it, and yeah, I’d had a really crappy year for a lot of reasons (including that my mother was diagnosed with Stage III A DCIS breast cancer) and A-Camp would be just this massive break and stress relief and there was a very real possibility that this one would be the only I’d be able to go to, but other people had it much worse off, I knew, so why would I be the one to get it? The only reason I wrote and sent that email asking for a campership was because a camper who wrote one of these things for the campership they got said pretty much the exact same thing I just said up there. They didn’t think they’d get it, and they did. I didn’t think I’d get it, and I did. So even if you don’t think you’ll get it for whatever reason, still try, because you just might and that just might is so, so worth it.

Actually going to A-Camp was terrifying and amazing and hard and also a lot easier than I’d thought. I went by myself, flying across the country from Tennessee to LA, going to this camp where I literally knew no one and where I’d meet people who’s writing I’d been reading and loving for years. “Nerve-wracking” doesn’t begin to describe it. I don’t think my nerves settled until I finally went to sleep at camp after being awake for around 23 hours (time zones are a bitch). Once I woke up though, I felt comfortable with the people around me almost immediately in a way that pretty much never happens.

Over the next few days in between workshops, rediscovering writing, Klub Deer, talking to lots of different people and exchanging stories about where we came from, Lilith Flair, the talent show, Deanne Smith, meeting people I’d previously only known through a computer screen, having feeling circles, taking moments just to breathe by myself (and also because altitude), and goofing off with my cabin (Runaways!), I found a community I’ve been sorely lacking in my hometown and it was as amazing and welcoming as I’d been led to believe. No matter what you needed, wanted, felt, thought, looked like, or said, all of it was met with non judgment and often cheers of encouragement.

It’s been a month since we left camp and our cabin still hasn’t stopped talking to each other, and hopefully never will. We’ve become a support system for each other, and no matter how shitty my day is there’s always going to be a conversation going about something, and that is worth whatever nervousness and worry and insecurity I had about sending that email to Autostraddle asking for that campership.

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Hannah, 24 – San Francisco, CA

It’s 4:30 pm on a Monday and I’ve just put down my deposit for A-Camp 4.0. I’ve also opened a bottle of red wine so I can write about feelings and A-Camp and life. Mostly feelings. The night I wrote my campership application essay I had been drinking wine, too, and that essay clearly worked out in my favor, so.

Here we go again.

I have a story. It has to do with my parents and my being gay and is somewhat sad, a little bit tragic and probably won’t end well. But that’s ok. I’ve embraced it.

You probably have a story, too. And if you want to share your story and/or listen to all the others’ stories, you should come to A-Camp. And if your story at the moment is along the lines of I HAVE NO MONEY, you should apply for the campership.

In my campership essay I wrote: “I want to let out all my feelings that I’ve kept inside for so long and just live, live, for the first time in my life.” And that’s exactly what I did at A-Camp.

Before quitting grad school, leaving home and coming to San Francisco, I had chosen a new name with my best friend so I’d have a layer of armor protecting me from whatever dire consequences there might be of my queerness. I could pretend like I was someone else and not the girl who would go quiet whenever someone was being homophobic, afraid that they’ll figure it out if I called them out or obsessively hide her laptop because it might open up a certain website that has news, entertainment, opinion and girl-on-girl culture.

My parents love me so, so much. To them, I have this illness and because they love me so much, they have to help me get better. Although being Koreans, a lot of it comes from trying to save their reputation. If anyone finds out about me, I’m pretty sure my mother will withdraw from society or [much worse]. No child should live with that kind of fear.

The real life is tiring and sometimes you don’t even realize how tired you really are because you just accept this world we live in and the best you can do as a queer Asian girl who sometimes feel like she has struck out is try to fit in. Then I went to camp and realized I didn’t have to try. I could just be. And that it was actually more like, now I can be myself, finally, after pretending to be someone else for the past 23 years. The best part was that I didn’t owe it to anyone to explain who I was or what I was or why I was. I just was. As I am. If coming to San Francisco was like breathing for the first time after living underwater, then going to A-Camp was like flying for the first time.

Before I went to A-Camp 3.0, I thought it would be my one and only camp mostly because I knew I still wouldn’t be able to afford the next one. And honestly, I can’t really afford it right now. But like I said, I’ve just put down my deposit and I’ll be getting a second job so I can make it happen. Because A-Camp felt like that first love, exhilarating and nerve-wracking in a good way, and you think you can survive on that, just that and nothing else. But at the same time it also felt like the childhood home where you felt warm, safe, protected. I had travelled and moved around so much I didn’t exactly know where my home was anymore. Until I was at camp and I was right there and I found my home, along with all the other Runaways, who now hold a special place in my heart. And I realize that sounds amazingly corny and tacky.

For now I have to deal with money and patriarchy and the real world but that’s ok because come October, you and I will be home again.

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Cait, 20 – Chicago, IL

2012 was tough. My world was cracking. I was cracking. And I didn’t know how to fix it. So, I applied for a campership…  and a weird phenomenon of hope ensued.

Last year, life kept shitting on my face. I was a full-time student squeezing in a full time job to support myself and a family that was financially weakened by Superstorm Sandy.

I watched from Chicago as my family in Jersey fell apart.

As my dad had his hip replaced and a little machine placed in his heart.

As my brother became a convicted felon.

And as my mom broke down while she asked her youngest daughter to support her family.

There is nothing worse than hearing your mother cry. I heard her cry again though, but with a little laughter, when I explained I was going to California to sit on a mountain with queer folk to talk about feelings. She was excited, I was nervous.

The knowledge that a stranger had paid for me to have a weekend in queer bliss slowly helped me climb out of my little pit of sadness.

The knowledge that a stranger had paid for me to have a weekend in queer bliss slowly helped me climb out of my little pit of sadness. For the next few months, that was how I got through things. When I was drained, I remembered that I would soon be surrounded by the people I had been internet-stalking for years. And I got giggly.

A Camp was everything I needed. It marked a turning point in my life. The knowledge that a stranger had paid for me to have a weekend in queer bliss slowly helped me climb out of my little pit of sadness. It made me realize I didn’t really have anything to be sad about. Because somewhere in the universe a perfectly queer stranger thought it would be nice to give up their savings for me. I was in awe.

At A-Camp, I found a support system. I met people who were also having a tough time. And we processed our tough times together. I finally had some time for self-care. And for that, I’m pretty damn thankful.

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Brooklyn, 21 – Houston, TX

I thought I knew what camp was. It’s just something I’ve always done. Every summer, my peers and I would face the Texas sun like a boxer in the ring. We’d slather our half-naked swim-suited up bodies in layers of sunscreen and explore the grounds of East Texas Baptist Encampment. After dark and after showering, several hundred sunburned kids would slip between rows of pews and listen to a pastor with a name like “John” or “Matt”, but never “Samantha” or “Becky”, tell us who we were supposed to be, why we were supposed to be like that, and how we were supposed to get there. In Jesus name, amen.

This was camp. It wasn’t a bad experience, until it was. It was something I looked forward to, until it wasn’t.

I thought I knew what camp was. It was a place I went every year to hide from my parents. It was a place where I pretended to fit in with all the other boys, when I really just wanted to be a girl. It was a place where I was made to feel bad for everything I wasn’t and everything God was. I knew immediately that A-Camp wasn’t like any other camp.

Fast forward like six, seven years. Came out, kicked out, down and out. I was tired and depressed. Everyone around me could feel it too. I had turned into Black Hole Brooklyn.

Then along came A-Camp. It had been the roughest year of my life and here was a chance to kick back and take a break. Not have to worry about things. No tears, no feelings, just fun.

Ha ha. The joke was on me. They call it Mt. Feelings for a reason.

Stepping off the bus, my first thought was how bad my butt hurt. Sitting for two days is as fun as it sounds. Immediately after though, I realized how familiar it all felt. The birds, the trees, the lesbians. Oh wait.

I thought I knew what camp was. It was a place I went every year to hide from my parents. It was a place where I pretended to fit in with all the other boys, when I really just wanted to be a girl. It was a place where I was made to feel bad for everything I wasn’t and everything God was. I knew immediately that A-Camp wasn’t like any other camp.

It was the first safe place I’d ever found. I never once felt singled out or different. I never felt like I had to hide. I certainly never felt ashamed to be queer. It was pretty awesome.

I connected in such a real and honest way with my cabin mates, finding family there. I felt accepted and, for once, authentic.

I was forced to confront the world I came from and everything that was wrong with it. The fact that strangers could come together and create a truly safe place was simultaneously awe-inspiring and disheartening. There’s no reason safe places shouldn’t exist in “the real world” but they don’t. A-Camp, for me, was a picture for everything the rest of the planet could be.

If I had to describe A-camp in one word, I’d choose queertastifabeautiful. It’s really the only word for it. “Utopia” is another, I guess.

So I went to A-camp, enjoyed A-Camp, and then A-camp was over. I enjoyed two more butt-achingly long days on a bus and returned home to southeast Texas. It took me a week or so to realize that just as my definition of “camp” had changed so had my definition of “home”. My heart is not in the place where I regularly get called a “fag” by people driving by, with almost comIcal regularity. My heart is still up on that mountain.

I miss it and I can’t wait to go back.

 

A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #4: YUP.

Welcome to the fourth of four fantastic recaps of our experience at A-Camp 3.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from May 23rd-27th, 2013. These recamps serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable vacation for queers for whom other lesbian-marketed vacations aren’t a perfect fit.  In April 2012, we did it for the first time— along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better — and it did, in September 2012!

Which brings us to May 2013, when our largest-ever group of campers arrived on the mountain, and were greeted by dedicated counselors and treated to four days of kickass programming. Swagger 101! Comedy Improv! Yoga! DIY Body Scrubs! Hop-Hop Dance! Kink Panel! Know Your Whiskey Tasting! Recess Games! Drag King Workshop! Femme Luncheon! Lilith Fair! Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard! Deanne Smith! Somer Bingham! The cast of Unicorn Plan-It! Calendar Girls! Team Autostraddle! Most importantly: EACH OTHER! And So. Much. More.

In the past, these recamps have been exhaustive recollections of every minute of A-Camp, but this time we’re tightening it up a bit. See, A-Camp is whatever you want it to be — and it’s something different for everybody. You all have your own stories in your hearts and brains and cameras and in the notebook paper pieces in your back pockets and this is our story of what goes on behind-the-scenes and also in the front of our brains to make this whole she-bang come together with relative grace. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready. (Also, we miss you!)

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Sunday, May 26th: Day Four

Early Morning: Sunrise Eagle Cafe // Morning Stretch With Feelings (Mary) // PAJAMA BREAKFAST

Block A: Holistic Health Workshop (Jess) // Blog Anything (Riese & Laneia) // Kink Panel (Daniela, Nic, Ali, Kay) // Make Another Thing (Hansen) // Spooning 2.0 (Stef & Katrina) // Yoga (Devyn)

Block B: DIY Lingerie For Grrrls & Bois (Lizz & Hansen) // Slam Poetry (Gabby) // Queer Representation in Media Panel (Haviland, Croce, Brittani, Somer, Julia, Carly, Deanne Smith) // Write Something (Rachel) // Coming Out Narratives (Sarah Evan) // Hip-Hop Dance (Devyn)

Vanessa, Contributing Editor & Blackhearts Counselor: Even though I attended A-Camp 1.0 last year as a camper, I didn’t manage to find any time to go on a hike and really explore the mountain. I remember feeling envious of everyone’s nature-filled photos post-camp last year, so this time around I swore to myself that I’d get some photographic evidence of myself being surrounded by trees (because obviously the number one reason to go on a hike is to take photos that will get a lot of likes on Instagram…jk…or am I?!) Anyway, I went on not one but two hikes this time! The mountain is so gorgeous! There are so many trees! Why doesn’t Brooklyn look like this?! The first hike was during pre-camp and Jill taught me all about life in the country, and the second hike was on Sunday and I went with my girlfriend, Julia, and a few other campers. I loved both hikes but the second hike was a lot longer and a lot more feelings-filled, and it was also really nice to get some time with my girlfriend (hi Rae!).

Carrie, Community Managerette & Tiger Beat Counselor: Helping Daniela get dressed for The Kink Panel was a highlight. Vanessa and Lizz might fight me on this, but the occasion seemed to call for fishnet stockings over a floral print skirt.

Daniela, Intern & Starjammers Counselor: This was the first time we had a separate, focused panel on kink at camp and I learned so much just by sitting next to Ali, Kay and Nic. Ali moderated that thing like a boss, and we all got to prove kink looks like whatever you want it to look, as long as you keep it safe, sane and consensual. Pretty awesome stuff to sit, think and chat about on a Sunday morning in a mountain full of queermos.

Stef, Contributor & Bombshells Counselor:  We weren’t exactly sure how the powers that be let us have a Spooning Workshop to begin with, nevermind a second one, and we didn’t want to rehash September camp’s curriculum if we could help it. We walked in a bit nervous, unsure of everything except our innate ability to cuddle like champions. Once we got in there though, some higher power took over, and we began answering questions, holding demonstrations, and problem-solving like the accredited snuggling gurus we always knew we could be. We can’t tell you everything that happened – as always, you need to actually attend the workshop to learn its secrets – but I can tell you that everybody walked out of there with all the tools they needed to spoon each other with affection, dignity and respect.

Lizz, Contributing Editor & Starjammer Counselor: I can’t believe how many campers showed up for DIY Underwear For Grrrls & Bois. We made the cutest “dyke” underwear and, much like nerdcraft, it was nice to have some downtime and just chat with people. Plus, I got to see how talented all the campers are! They made some seriously sexy stuff.

Gabby, Writer & Foxfire Counselor: Big shout outs to Ashley Catherine for co-hosting the Slam Poetry Workshop. I just want to thank everyone for giving of themselves and diving deep into their most vulnerable places and sharing their words with us. We led a workshop based on Reneé Watson’s “I Am Not” line poem that’s centered on the idea of how we are perceived versus who/how we really are. Together we created line poems and performed them. A group of campers even got together and performed their piece at the talent show. It was amazing.

Jill, Wild Things Counselor: I went to Gabby’s poetry thing thinking I would just listen to some rad poetry. But wait! It was a workshop?!?! That meant I had to get involved and participate and shit. But that worked out fine because I wrote a poem and felt some feelings. I was impressed with the poetic talents of all the campers who read the poems that they composed on the fly during the workshop. Some of those lines cut right to the bone.

Laneia, Executive Editor & Runaways Counselor: It was almost an unspoken thing that we’d do a live Blog Anything, and we both knew what it would look like: a pile of queers writing in notebooks with Fiona Apple playing softly in the background. Bliss, right? We put together some super brilliant prompts that I can’t recall now — I think one was to write about an experience on public transportation — that were totally optional. I’m not sure anyone used them.

This might sound weird, like I don’t trust y’all or something, but I was kind of shocked that it worked. No one wanted to talk or get a second opinion on a clunky sentence — they all just wrote with their little heads down, and seemed to enjoy it.

I think with each camp, Riese and I will slowly keep adding things that allow us to just sit in a room with campers and quietly listen to emotionally intense ’90s/’00s women on her computer.

Vanessa: My favorite thing in the world is meeting you guys. I’m not exaggerating. It’s why I write Stradder On The Street. It’s why I joke that I want to interview every single queer women in the world but it’s not really a joke because I actually do. It’s why I was the most excited to run Straddler On The Mountain and have people submit to the column in person. Admittedly, things could have gone a bit smoother. I’m not sure that every camper knew that I was just trying to garner submissions, and I think some people avoided the activity because they thought I might put them on the spot and try to interview them right away. What happened in actuality was that I made a bunch of shy yet enthusiastic announcements in the dining hall letting campers know that I’d be outside Wolf during certain times and asked/begged for submissions, and then I sat outside Wolf and waited for y’all to come to me. While I did not reach my goal of 100+ submissions, I did get 53, which means we’re all set through summer 2014! And that’s not counting the cuties who have emailed me since coming home saying, “I meant to submit on the mountain but I forgot/got lost/was making out with a hot girl at the pool party and just couldn’t leave, but anyway can I do it now!” But the numbers actually don’t matter. All I want when I do Straddler interviews is to connect with our readers, and I got to do that SO MUCH during my Straddler On The Mountain sessions at camp. So thank you to everyone who submitted. And, uh, if you still want to submit…no pressure, obviously…but if you want to…email me at vanessa [at] auto straddle [dot] com! Thanks!

Cara, Contributing Editor & Bombshells Counselor: The Bombshells Birthday/General Celebration Dance was amazing. My cabin earned their name like woah. Plus they made each other tiny birthday cakes and smuggled them into camp. My love knows no bounds.

Rachel, Senior Editor & Slayers Counselor: It’s incredibly difficult to describe, but Somer’s campaign for Best New Intern of 2013 was one of my favorite parts of camp and also my life in general. I hope someone videotaped her campaign speech at Sunday’s dinner, because I want to treasure it in my heart forever.

Robin, Photographer & A-Camp Co-Director : Intern Somer is one of my favorite moments of camp. Mostly the moment I saw the hair creations she was making. What a treasure.

Riese, CEO/Editor-in-Chief & Runaways Counselor: I had no idea what was going on with the Intern Somer campaign until she got up at lunch and delivered a dead-serious campaign speech that would’ve probably given Kerry a leg up in ’04 regarding her achievements thus far as a self-appointed intern at A-Camp.

Marni, Contributor & A-Camp Co-Director: Our new talent this camp was beyond. Deanne Smith was finally able to join us after my efforts for the previous two camps were squashed by her exhaustive, globe-trotting comedy schedule, and she killed. Just KILLED. Her set was the hardest I’ve laughed in forever. And Somer Bingham, whom I’d only met once before camp, brought such an amazing, enthusiastic energy to everything she did. When she wasn’t on a panel or jamming at Lilith, she was making weirdo sculptures out of Katrina’s barbershop hair refuse, and campaigning to be Autostraddle’s new intern (complete with a vote and concession speech). They weren’t just “talent,” they were real team members, and it was an honour to have them.

Mary, Calendar Girl & Little Rascals Counselor: Sharing a bathroom with DeAnne Smith was really special. She used my hairspray, you guys!

Lizz: It was such a pleasure to hang out with our new intern, Somer. Intern Somer started helping out right from the start, but I think she really came into her own when she started making all the schedules. I just don’t know how I will survive without her to write out my day.

Introducing Camp Autostraddle 4.0

Once upon a time we had a dream. It involved a couple hundred of you, 35 of us, a group retreat site in the San Bernardino Mountains and a weekend packed with workshops, panels, classes, meet-ups, activities and performances designed to inspire, educate, entertain and/or make you laugh — basically, it was the spirit of this website manifested in three entire dimensions mixed with a dash of old-fashioned Summer Camp goodness. We wanted to create a special (and affordable!) space where you could be yourself, enhance your relationships within the international queer community, support Autostraddle, be a kid again and make new friends forever.

It was a dream called A-Camp, and it was a dream that came true the last weekend of April, 2012 and again in September 2012 and again in May 2013.

Obviously, we’re doing it again — and this time, we have a website! That’s where you can find the FAQ, our camp blog, the talent/staff we’ve got on board so far and register the fuck out of your unit.

Details

When:

Wednesday October 9th – Sunday October 13th

Where:

Alpine Meadows Retreat Center in Angelus Oaks, California. It’s two hours from Los Angeles, 2.5 hours from San Diego, four hours from Las Vegas, five hours from Phoenix and eight hours from San Francisco. We’ll be running shuttles from LAX to the campsite from 11 AM to 2PM on October 9th and shuttles back to LAX at 11AM on October 13th.

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Who:

You weirdos! In May, our campers ranged in age from 18 to 50 and came from all over the world, including lots of Canadians and quite a few Australians and Europeans. Half our campers were over 25 and half were under. At least 60% of campers are brand new!

Also: us. We’ll be rolling out the staff roster and additional talent gradually over at A-Camp.org and making announcements here as events warrant.

Lodging:

You’ll be having the bestest biggest surprise slumber party of your life in fully insulated, carpeted & heated cabins with private bathroom/showers/baths and generously-sized bunk beds. You’ll be sharing these cabins with somewhere between 12 and 18 others, led by two counsellors from Team Autostraddle. Cabin groups are designed with your happiness in mind.

How

Tuition is $465 and is all-inclusive.

Just $75 down reserves your spot!

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Your tuition includes:

• Four nights lodging (linens included)
• Three meals a day with snacks – we now work with the chef to design a menu and options catered specifically for our group, with vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options as well as meals for people with food allergies.
• Full access to a variety of activities, workshops, panels, sports, discussion groups, classes and arts & crafts. You’ll also have the option to get fun one-on-one stuff like an Alternative Lifestyle Haircut, One-on-One Career Mentoring or an Individual Style Consultation, all included!
• Crazy-fun evening entertainment from comedian DeAnne Smith and from our musical talent including the prolific rock star Somer Bingham and esteemed vocalist Haviland Stillwell. 
• Tote bag packed with awesome swag including your A-Camp T-Shirt.

 

What the hell goes on at A-Camp?

For more information about what goes on at A-Camp, you can check out our recaps from April and September and May’s camp  and testimonies from campers about the joy of the experience. (Keep in mind that this time around, things will be even more awesome.) But A-Camp is whatever you make of it: every camper writes their own story. Come with your heart wide open and do whatever you want.

A-Camp Daytime

Days at A-Camp are spent participating in a variety of programming options offered by the Autostraddle Team and Guest Facilitators — last camp’s activities included Mind The Generation Gap, Hip-Hop Dance, Safer Sex Q&A, Nerdcraft, Swagger 101, Kickass Heroines in Popular Sci-Fi/Fantasy, DIY Body Scrubs, Real Talk: Your Relationship Doesn’t Have To Suck, Erotica Writing, Car Repair, Music Trivia, T-Shirt Cutting/Stenciling and the Bisexual/Sexual Fluidity Panel. You’re welcome to attend as many or as few activities as you like and make your own path in the world. This camp we’re really excited to host the first-ever A-Camp Carnivalfestival.

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A-Camp After Dark

We open A-Camp with an all-camp campfire, but the rest of our evening entertainment changes every time.  In past camps, we’ve enjoyed wet/riotous games of Faggity Feud With Julie & Brandy, hosted Staff Readings, laughed our asses off for DeAnne Smith and put on musical performances like Lilith Flair. What will happen in October? The best way to find out is to come to camp. Or check our A-Camp blog for updates.

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We’ve Got Talent:

We’ll be rolling out our staff and talent gradually, you can check out the website for that. But here’s who we’ve got on board right now:

DeAnne Smith: DeAnne blogs for Autostraddle, but mostly she’s known for her hilarious stand-up and prolific career as a comic. DeAnne has appeared on teevee sets all over the universe including appearances on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, Last Comic Standing, Good News Week, Canada’s The Comedy Network and HBO Canada. She’s won and been nominated for heaps of awards all over the world, such as the Sydney Comedy Festival’s Time Out Best Newcomer and the Barry Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. DeAnne Smith NAILS IT.

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Grace Bonney:

Grace Bonney is the founder & CEO of Design*Sponge, which The New York Times declared “Martha Stewart Living for Millenials.” Founded nine years ago, Design*Sponge is now a cornerstone of the design and craft community, recently publishing Bonney’s Design*Sponge At Home. Grace has worked for publications such as Domino, In Style, New York Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Everyday With Rachel Ray and House & Garden as well as being a featured guest on Good Morning America and The Martha Stewart Show. She runs meetups for women running design-based businesses, founded the anual Design*Sponge scholarship to support up-and-coming art and design students, and came out two weeks ago!

Somer Bingham

Somer Bingham almost won Intern of the Year in a self-started possibly-rigged election at A-Camp May 2013 despite not being an actual intern. Also, she’s a rock star you may recognize from the esteemed television situation The Real L Word, where she appeared along with her then-band Hunter Valentine. Somer hosted Somer Fridays on Showtime and is currently one-half of ‘Electro-grunge unicorn-riding badasses from a landy of whiskey waterfalls,’ Clinical Trials.

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How Is This Camp Not Like All Other Camps?

If you’ve been to camp before, rest assured that in October 2013 we’ll have plenty of new innovative stuff going on, including the first ever A-Camp Carnival/Festival Situation which will undoubtedly blow your mind. We’re especially excited about the addition of Grace Bonney to our A-Camp Team because she’s gonna take our programming to a whole new level. We’re amped to see what everybody comes up with and the guest facilitators we can rope in! The sky’s the limit. Just kidding! The limit does not exist.

Okay, I’m in. What Now?

If you wanna get on the saddle and trot on over to A-Camp with us this fall, here’s what you’ve gotta do:

1. For the low low price of a $75 non-refundable deposit, you can snag your spot for the fall festivities. Please read the instructions at the top of each registration interface page if anything seems remotely complicated. Your full tuition is due August 15th, but just contact us if you need an extension.

2. If registration fills up, you can put yourself on the waitlist. Be sure to put an e-mail address you check regularly and often, so you don’t miss our note if you’re up! We’ll also be doing a raffle on July 15th to let in ten people off the waitlist.

3. If you’re driving in on Wednesday, please plan to arrive between 2 PM and 5:30 PM. On Sunday, please plan to leave by noon.

4. If you’re looking for flights and will need transportation from the airport, be sure you can be at Terminal 6 by 2 PM on October 9th. If you’re getting in later than 2PM, you’ll have to make your own travel arrangements.

If you’ll need transportation to the airport on Sunday, October 13th, there will be shuttles leaving at 11am. It takes 2.5-3+ hours to get to the airport, so we won’t show up at LAX ’til 1:30 at the absolute earliest, so we advise against booking flights that leave before 4:00PM. If the 11AM shuttle won’t get you to the airport in time to make your flight, you’ll have to make your own travel arrangements. Options exists such as “getting a ride with another camper,” “bribing the kitchen staff” (no really this might be your best option) and “renting a car for a very low in-airport price.” Also, many campers stick around LA for the night or a few days or a few weeks, too, which is lots of fun!

5. If you need to cancel, you can just log back in to the registration interface and cancel!

Camperships

Your generosity has sent over 20 deserving humans to A-Camp over the past year, and you’ll have the chance to make dreams come true again for October. We’ll put up a post soliciting donations and applicants for Camperships the first week of July and the page will be put up on our A-Camp website. This year we’ll be partitioning some of the donated money into partial camperships as well.

Also

If you have questions, check out our FAQ!

What are you waiting for?

Register Now! 

A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #3: Fun Before 2pm, Fun After 2pm

Welcome to the third of four fantastic recaps of our experience at A-Camp 3.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from May 23rd-27th, 2013. These recamps serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable vacation for queers for whom other lesbian-marketed vacations aren’t a perfect fit.  In April 2012, we did it for the first time— along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better — and it did, in September 2012!

Which brings us to May 2013, when our largest-ever group of campers arrived on the mountain, and were greeted by dedicated counselors and treated to four days of kickass programming. Swagger 101! Comedy Improv! Yoga! DIY Body Scrubs! Hop-Hop Dance! Kink Panel! Know Your Whiskey Tasting! Recess Games! Drag King Workshop! Femme Luncheon! Lilith Fair! Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard! Deanne Smith! Somer Bingham! The cast of Unicorn Plan-It! Calendar Girls! Team Autostraddle! Most importantly: EACH OTHER! And So. Much. More.

In the past, these recamps have been exhaustive recollections of every minute of A-Camp, but this time we’re tightening it up a bit. See, A-Camp is whatever you want it to be — and it’s something different for everybody. You all have your own stories in your hearts and brains and cameras and in the notebook paper pieces in your back pockets and this is our story of what goes on behind-the-scenes and also in the front of our brains to make this whole she-bang come together with relative grace. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready. (Also, we miss you!)

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Saturday, May 25th: Day Three

Early Morning: Sunrise Eagle Cafe // Early Bird Yoga (Devyn)

Block A: Zine-Making (Riese, Laneia & Rachel) // Pure Poetry Challenge (Carmen & Whitney) // Kickass Heroines in Popular Sci-Fi/Fantasy (Julia, Vanessa, Geneva, Mey) // Music Trivia (Crystal, Stef & Somer) // Handy Jobs (Marni) // Mentoring Sessions (Cee, Meredydd, Jess R, Robin, Carly)

Block B: Basketball & Recess Games (Brittani & Carrie) // Heart of (Google) Glass (Taylor) // Real Talk: Your Relationship Doesn’t Have to Suck (Sarah Evan, Gabby, Riese, Laneia, Somer, Daniela) // Sexual Health Q&A With (Almost) Dr. Lizz (Liz) // Into the WordPress (Cee & Geneva) // Devyn’s Dance Grooves (Devyn)

Crystal, Music Editor & Toros Counselor: By Saturday morning I was experiencing some serious sleep deprivation and so I stopped by one of my favorite places, The Breakfast Club, to trade some Tim Tams for two cups of the most delicious dark french press.

Carmen Rios, Contributing Editor & Inferno Counselor: I created the Pure Poetry Challenge for Camp because I knew people wanted to write poetry and I knew I needed to make it fun in order to make it worthwhile for them because, seriously, life is hard enough and sometimes you need a goddamn writing prompt, okay? Each round, I selected a type of poem randomly and then gave them a random keyword (kittens, headlamp, the patriarchy) as well as an excerpted line from a famous poem we featured during Pure Poetry Week. (You may remember these poems from the Pure Poems post that went up while we were writing things on the mountain.) The poems, produced in four to five minutes each round, were absolutely perfect – and every single one was about sex. Like, every single one. Either a lot of campers were having sex in the woods or a lot of campers were wishing they had. It was like a freudian slip nobody was trying to keep from slipping. Highest moments include our rap round, in which I spit game but forgot the keyword we were supposed to incorporate and an anonymous participant wrote about “midnight creaming.”

Riese, Editor-in-Chief and Runaways Counselor: We billed zine-making as more of a drop-in crafts session for this camp because we decided last time we weren’t qualified to lead it as a legit “workshop,” nor did we have enough time to carry out the ‘zine-making post-camp projects we often cooked up. My two co-hosts were a little late which left me a little flustered and perhaps seeming slightly unhinged, but soon enough we reached my favorite part of the experience which is the part where I can sit on the floor and cut & paste things with allt he best humans.

Riese: Thank goddess for Megan, who not only provided me with coffee, snacks and Supply Whistler assistance, but eventually located my sisters and brought them to me.

Vanessa, Contributing Editor & Blackhearts Counselor: I love to talk and I love kickass fictional heroines, so I was really excited about the Kickass Heroines in Contemporary Sci-Fi/Fantasy panel. During the planning stages we couldn’t decide if like, five humans would show up, or if 100 humans would show up, so we had a little bit of trouble conceptualizing what the panel would look like. We knew that we really wanted to foster a discussion rather than just talk at people about how much Geneva and I adore Buffy, but we were a little bit nervous about how that would work in practice.

Vanessa: But then on the day of the panel 50 humans showed up, and we somehow had an amazing and thought-provoking discussion about the Whedonverse, Hunger Games, Divergence, and more. It felt like everyone had a chance to speak – and I hope the campers felt that to be true, too – and I was really blown away by the level of respect and intelligence present in our conversation. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because Straddlers are awesome like that, but I so rarely find other people who want to have serious conversations about fictional characters and plots and worlds, and it was just really validating to be around a group that wanted to geek out as hard as I do all the time. Also special shout out to the camper who said “war changes you” as a way to think about the epilogue of the Hunger Games, you really changed my perspective on the end of the book and that was really cool!

Crystal: Stef, Somer and I hosted Music Trivia, proving once and for all that we are not the same person.

Stef, Contributor & Bombshells Counselor: This was the Music Trivia where we finally figured out how to get shit done. We tried out some new categories this time, including a series of hip hop questions donated and presented by one very raspy-voiced Miz Gabby Rivera.

Gabby, Writer & Foxfire Counselor: Before camp, Stef and I were gchatting about how much shit we still had left to do and she mentioned that she was hard up for music trivia questions. I offered to come up with some hip hop ones and she accepted. Her and Crystal liked my Qs so they kept them.

Stef: If I may say so myself, our new scoring system was a great success and Somer was a very welcome addition to the team, providing an extra bit of flavor to the good cop/bad cop dynamic Crystal and I had established in prior sessions.

Cyrstal: Stef and Somer tag-teamed the question-asking while I threw around Tim Tams for correct answers. Everyone was somehow able to guess the name of Ali Lohan’s holiday album. Red team was victorious.

Gabby: On my way to one event, I landed in the middle of the music trivia just in time for the hip hop segment and yo, Stef and Crystal let me give out the clues. It was so awesome. I know someone ragged on my questions for being mostly about 1990s hip hop but other than that one hater, everyone was into it! People knew Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s aliases, what borough Nicki Minaj is from and the rap group that jump started Lil’ Kim’s career. Badass queermos rocked the hell out of that hip hop shit and made me want to come up with even better questions next time. Play on, playas.

Stef: I’d venture to say that Music Trivia has started to reach its potential, and I can’t wait to torture campers with even tougher questions in October.

Carrie, Community Managerette & Tiger Beat Counselor: Despite having not worked out since 2010, I was feeling fairly okay with the altitude situation at this camp. Then I played basketball. Guys, did you know that Brittani played for Yale and she and many other A-campers have real basketball experience? The last time I played competitive basketball POGS were a thing.

Brittani, Contributing Editor & Hellcats Counselor: Playing basketball is always one of my favorite parts of camp. Yes, it’s hard to breathe in the altitude and yes, we end up going on several unplanned hikes when the ball plummets into a ravine and needs to be retrieved but it’s always a lot of fun. Everyone does a great job of making it a positive experience for campers of all skills levels. This time around we played shirts versus skins which should inspire more people to come cheer us on next Camp.

Carrie: Thanks for reminding me how out of shape I am, everyone. And to the campers who made half mile treks down the mountain to retrieve loose balls and the camper who commandeered a trash can for a mysterious (Canadian?) recess game, I salute you.

Brittani: I also dunked on Nate in case anyone was wondering. It was very quick. Everyone might have missed it. Including Nate.

Taylor, Contributor & Vipers Counselor:  In spite of some pretty stiff competing programming, lots of you all attended my Google Glass “workshop” i.e. me talking at your faces with a thing on my face. You were so smart and had so many good questions! You will all be spared from my lasers in the Great Cyborg Reckoning.

Lizz, Contributing Editor & Starjammers Counselor:  My Safer Sex Workshop was so fun. I think people had a good time a learned a little bit. I particularly loved the cards with different sex acts written on the (illustrated by the wonderful Kristen).

Kristen, Contributing Editor & Scissor Sisters Counselor: I had more fun prepping Liz’s Safer Sex Panel than I did prepping my own. I don’t think that’s how camp is supposed to work, but I’ll just make a point of sexualizing Plant 101 with Cara next time. Early Thursday morning Liz, Mey, Ali, Hansen, Cara, Rachel, Meredydd, Intern Grace, Julia and I sat around a tree stump brainstorming possible girl on girl sexy acts. Eating poop? Vore? Vulva-slapping? Cake sitting? Campers needed to know, and more importantly, know how safe these acts were. But of course, Hypersexual Flashcard Crafts became all the more thrilling when I had a chance to bask in the sun on Friday and ask randoms to help me illustrate strapon sex (giving and receiving) and nipple clamping among other things. Somehow I managed to round up Cara, Nic, Stephy, Mey, Julia and Kira of Scarlet Tentacle Fame, so let’s just say that those flashcards were raunchy and accurate as fuck.

Lizz: It was particularly great because it ended up being a discussion at times instead of a panel/presentation. Who knew “cake sitting” would be such a conversation starter?!? Just kidding. I knew it would be! But I loved it anyways.

Riese: The Your Relationship Doesn’t Have to Suck Situation was invented by Robin, Marni and I during our Pre-Camp planning meetings, and came out of a lot of things — like all the relationship advice questions you guys send us! Often same-sex relationships can become both really private and really self-destructive really quickly and people aren’t always eager to reach out for help. I had experience with all manners of sucky-relationships (with men and women) and also healthy ones, as did many of the panelists. We answered some questions from campers and it felt like a really important thing was happening.

Laneia, Executive Editor & Runaways Counselor: I’m so glad we were able to hold the healthy relationships discussion with Sarah Evan and the rest of the amazing panelists. Deer lodge was packed with so many bodies and so much support, and I really believe we each came away with something helpful that we’ll keep for when we need it most. This workshop was another example of the realness and honesty people bring to A-Camp — so we’re willing to be really exposed and vulnerable, while at the same time we’re able to help hold someone else up in their vulnerability. I sound like I’m on MDMA but I’m being totally serious here. This workshop was fucking hard for me, but I was so proud to be part of it.

Riese: Last camp Sarah Evan moderated our Body Image/Eating Disorders Discussion/Panel and after we got through this one, with all its disclosures and looking-at-the-carpet-to-avoid-crying, she was like Jesus Riese, you’ve had some fucked up shit happen in your life! And I was like, “it will all be in the book!”

Mey, Contributor & Slayers Counselor: The Femme Meet-Ups were maybe my favorite thing about camp. First of all, I got to make a super cool Lisa Frank sticker and glitter-covered poster. Plus, I found out that Femme Meet Ups are something that I had never realized that I needed so badly in my life.

Mey: In case you weren’t lucky enough to be sitting near us at lunch, we were a group of femmes who met up at lunch to hang out, dress up, and bond. We had so many types of Femmes, everyone from Lazy Femmes, to High Femmes, to Blue Jean Femmes, to New Femmes and more. Everyone looked amazing and was even more amazing once I got to know them. We talked about the merits of wearing dresses (you only have to put on one piece of clothing!) and the frustrations of constantly having to come out to people. We had between 15-20 people each time at lunch, and the second day, we were all crowded around one table, letting out our femme feelings and talking about femme angst and why we love being femmes. I had been fixing my lipstick at meals all week before this, and finally other people at my table were doing the same thing, reassuring me that I wasn’t alone. There are some places where I’m allowed to be a woman, allowed to be queer and allowed to be femme (and lots of places I’m not), but at camp, and especially at these meet ups, I wasn’t just allowed to be those things, I was actively and enthusiastically encouraged to be them.

Robin, Photographer & Camp Co-Director: I always feel like I have very little time at camp to just sit and talk with campers so the One-on-One Mentoring Sessions was my favorite activity. I loved being able to see the photographs some of our visually-talented campers had taken (especially ones from A-Camp!) and just have a chance to share my experiences and hear their own.

Riese: This idea was brilliant and I’d never wished so hard that I was a camper so that I could sign up for one and have one of these women tell me what the fuck to do with myself. Because there’s no point in me having a feeling if I can’t share it with you, I’m gonna give you their bios because it was reading these bios in the Activity Descriptions packet that made me wish I had a one-on-one mentoring session. Perhaps you will feel the same way.

Meredydd- Getting a Job, Buying a House – Professionally, I have a lot of experience going on job interviews and acting as a hiring manager.  I have helped people successfully prep for interviews in the public and private sectors, reviewed countless resumes and advised employees and friends on how to navigate challenging workplace situations. Personally, I have come back from near disaster (layoffs, job loss and other personal challenges) to own my own home and become reasonably financially secure. Let me help you get a job, keep a job, understand home buying and budgeting. I don’t have all the answers but I can help!

Robin – Photography, Owning a Small Business – As a professional photographer and business owner, I can offer advice on being a freelance creative. Pricing yourself (placing value on your work), working with clients, and fine tuning your own creative process are areas where I have some experience. Specifically if you are interested in working in photography! Or if you just want me to review a portfolio or help answer your photo questions, I’m happy to help!!

Carly – Television, Working in Media –  I’m an expert in muppets, drag queens, all aspects of TV/video production, bowties, being an adult human, being married to an exceptional adult human, pretending to be a DJ, being less hilarious than B but still moderately funny and managing one’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sign up at your own risk.

Cee – All the Things, Money Management –  I’ve lived through a couple dot com booms and busts, formed a company, lived abroad for five years, published a cookbook, traveled to over 50 countries, learned another language and bought a house. I’m an independent lifelong learner with a broad range of interests. I can help with repairing/building your credit line, home buying/mortgages, investing and handling money, starting a business, navigating the tech industry, traveling/backpacking/living abroad, self motivation tips, setting personal goals and how to meet people who can help you achieve those goals.

Jess R – Nutrition Counseling, Owning a Small Business – After working web design/social media strategy for 8+ years post-college, I decided to follow my fitness/foodie passion and became certified as a Holistic Nutrition + Fitness Coach helping people create a completely personalized roadmap to health that suits their unique body, lifestyle and goals. I now offer private coaching through the business I founded, Cake to Kale (caketokale.com), where I specialize in deconstructing food cravings, disordered eating and personal training. I have worked alongside countless business and life coaches, soaking up their knowledge to share with you on starting a business from your heart-centered core. My mission is to inspire, educate and empower people to become rockstars in their bodies and minds.

RIGHT??? Did you know that Cee published a cookbook? I did not. Anyhow, according to Meredydd’s Camper Survey evaluation, y’all got a lot out of your one-on-ones, so we’ll definitely do it again in October. (And we’ll have Grace Bonney, too!)

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Next: The afternoon delights…

A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #2: Nothing Compares 2 U At Camp

Welcome to the second of four fantastic recaps of our experience at A-Camp 3.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from May 23rd-27th, 2013. These recamps serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable vacation for queers for whom other lesbian-marketed vacations aren’t a perfect fit.  In April 2012, we did it for the first time— along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better — and it did, in September 2012!

Which brings us to May 2013, when our largest-ever group of campers arrived on the mountain, and were greeted by dedicated counselors and treated to four days of kickass programming. Swagger 101! Comedy Improv! Yoga! DIY Body Scrubs! Hop-Hop Dance! Kink Panel! Know Your Whiskey Tasting! Recess Games! Drag King Workshop! Femme Luncheon! Lilith Fair! Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard! DeAnne Smith! Somer Bingham! The cast of Unicorn Plan-It! Calendar Girls! Team Autostraddle! Most importantly: EACH OTHER! And So. Much. More.

In the past, these recamps have been exhaustive recollections of every minute of A-Camp, but this time we’re tightening it up a bit. See, A-Camp is whatever you want it to be — and it’s something different for everybody. You all have your own stories in your hearts and brains and cameras and in the notebook paper pieces in your back pockets and this is our story of what goes on behind-the-scenes and also in the front of our brains to make this whole she-bang come together with relative grace. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready. (Also, we miss you!)

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A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #2: Day Two

 

Friday, May 24th: Day Two of A-Camp

Our first full day of A-Camp was jam-packed with Big Panels and concluded with an Evening of Feelings-Related Entertainment.

Friday Morning

Block A: The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Mary & Jill) // Gay Movie Trivia (Brittani, Kate & Carly) // What Makes Queer Family Queer? Panel (Laneia, Carrie, Riese, Whitney, Somer & Robin) // T-Shirt Cutting/Stenciling (Carmen & Medd) // The Care and Keeping of Plants (Kristen & Cara)

Block B: DIY Projects: Car Repair (Jill) // Introvert Meetup (Crystal & Whitney) // Non-Monogamy Discussion (Daniela, Jen F, Stef, Kay M) // Comedy Improv Workshop (Brittani) // Bloody Hell: A Menstruation Feelings Atrium (Laneia, Rachel, Lizz, Ali)

Cee, Technical Director & Golden Girls Counselor: I woke up at 6am Friday morning and dragged Jill over to see the trash can and look for bear prints.

Kristen, Contributing Editor & Scissor Sisters Counselor: I kept waking up at 6.30 even though official things didn’t happen until 8.30. But I met a bunch of weirdos with equally fucked up sleeping patterns and fresh brewed coffee to boot. So while everyone else was working off their hangovers I met up with the Breakfast Club and traded gummy Vitamin B12 for paper cups of French press coffee. I’d like to thank Melisa, Meredith, Stephany, Naomi, Crystal and everyone else for introducing me to Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter, TimTams and 4,000 Femme and Not-So-Femme Feelings.

Gabby, Writer & Foxfire Counselor: I was so so sick! I was burning up with fever and feeling like I was going to faint! Holy crap, could I please just take a moment to thank Megan for everything she said/did on the mountain and in the way she had my back and giving me Tylenol and Gatorade and hugs? Literally, every time we bumped into each other, Megan asked me if I was ok, if I needed help, handed me some type of hydration, huggation – literally she even sat with me for a moment when I felt dizzy and wanted to cry.

Mary, Calendar Girl & Little Rascals Counselor: Leading The Truth About Cats and Dogs discussion with Jill is always a highlight. Listening to her talk about anything makes me feel like all is right in the world.

Cara, Contributing Editor & Bombshells Counselor: The Care and Keeping Of Plants was the only workshop I helped lead and I was SO NERVOUS about it. Luckily A-Campers are so smart and awesome that every activity ends up a crowdsourced cabinet of wonders. The picnic tables were soon as smorgasbord of glitter paint, artful twigs, homemade seed envelopes, and really great advice about keeping green things alive in the New Mexico desert.

Crystal, Music Editor & Toros Counselor: The Introvert Meet-Ups are always a really chill time. Whitney and I broke everyone into two groups and we sat around getting to know each other via a series of conversation-starter style questions about our hopes and dreams and worst first dates. It was really great to see all the campers hanging out together once the event was over, that was the best part.

Sophia, Inferno Counselor: I learned a lot from Jill’s Car Repair I mean, I don’t know how to drive but I did really enjoy watching that butch action in in the sunshine, just gotta say.

Stef, Contributor & Bombshells Counselor: I asked to be on the Non-Monogamy Panel this camp ’cause I actually have a ton of experience despite not really identifying as a polyamorous person, and I’ve never really talked about it in public before. It was really cool to sit on a panel with four super knowledgeable babes and share our experiences. Like so many activities at camp, we talked a lot about communication. Communication! You should do it.

Daniela, Intern & Starjammers Counselor:  Stef and I sat along with three campers and told a chunk of camp about our experiences, knowledge and understanding of relationships outside of monogamy -we each had an approach that illustrated just how different non-monogamy is for each person. I loved hearing experiences from the audience and being there to validate one another over the challenges we face as people in non-monogamous set-ups. More than anything though, I really liked how the take away was you do you because you’re doing it well as long as it feels right.

Brittani, Contributing Editor & Hellcats Counselor: Going into the Improv Workshop, I was afraid people would be hesitant to participate and everyone would get shy and then there would be no workshop, it would just be me standing in the ampitheater by myself laughing nervously. I was especially worried because improv games can be very similar to ice breakers and I HATE ice breakers. I suspect I’m not the only one that holds this opinion so when everyone was on board and didn’t look like they wanted to kick me in the shins, it was a huge load off. I got a lot of good laughs as the hilarious campers talked about their pet peeves, smacked each other with imaginary frying pans, and argued about fixie bikes.

Rachel, Senior Editor & Slayers Counselor: The period panel (Bloody Hell: A Menstruation Feelings Atrium) was something that we had talked about as camp approached, but I think I had sort of always thought “nah, we can’t actually do that. No one else wants to just talk about bleeding for an hour, do they?”

Riese, Editor-in-Chief & Runaways Counselor: Personally, I did not want to talk about bleeding for an hour. It is a constant source of tension between my sister wife Laneia and I that she always wants to talk about periods and I never do. Except when I want to complain about cramps.

Rachel: BUT APPARENTLY PEOPLE DID. The group that attended this workshop was so incredible – I learned new things about reusable pads and PCOS and our weirdo bodies, and everyone was super hilarious while doing so.

Ali, Contributing Editor & Outlaws Counselor: We really had no idea what to expect, since all of us individually could talk about our period feelings for an hour apiece, and then we had to condense our collective feelings into an hour.

Rachel: Liz and I performed some Very Educational roleplaying about how you can talk to your partner about period sex, which we had practiced extensively. Also a male campgrounds employee may have walked in while I was explicitly propositioning Liz for [hypothetical] period sex, which I sort of regret, but also maybe he learned something!

Ali:  Liz taught me all about Leptin and hormones and such and I got to draw a Diva cup on a large piece of poster paper. Basically my life was complete after I drew the cup for a room full of queers.

Riese: This was the first camp where I wasn’t scrambling to plan for my next activity every free minute I got, so on my off-blocks I could go to other people’s things! DeAnne Smith & I hit up the Non-Monogamy Discussion and then I ducked out to catch some of Bloody Hell. Non-Monogamy and Periods are two things I generally fail at but wish I was cooler about, but isn’t that what camp is all about? EXPANDING YOUR MIND? Whenever I had free time to go to other activities I would sit there and think, “damn this is a really good camp.”

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Next: Quinoa. Just kidding! Um, the rest of the day. That’s what’s next, duh!

A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #1: Over The Mountain and Into The Woods We Go

Welcome to the first of four fantastic recaps of our experience at A-Camp 3.0, which took place 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles at Alpine Meadows Camp atop a mountain in Angelus Oaks, California, from May 23rd-27th, 2013. These recamps serve to ease our collective separation anxiety, enable us to wax nostalgic over times gone by and provide prospective campers with a brilliant glimpse into the A-Camp Experience.

A-Camp was the genesis of an idea Riese had at 3AM in July 2010: the concept was to take the spirit of the website into three glorious dimensions and create an affordable vacation for queers for whom other lesbian-marketed vacations aren’t a perfect fit.  In April 2012, we did it for the first time— along with 160 campers and 35 staff members, we rented out a summer camp in its off-season and enjoyed a transformative weekend of fun, friendship, panels, workshops, classes, sports, entertainment, events and so forth. It was probably the most awesome experience of our life and we knew from there it would only get bigger and better — and it did, in September 2012!

Which brings us to May 2013, when our largest-ever group of campers arrived on the mountain, and were greeted by dedicated counselors and treated to four days of kickass programming. Swagger 101! Comedy Improv! Yoga! DIY Body Scrubs! Hop-Hop Dance! Kink Panel! Know Your Whiskey Tasting! Recess Games! Drag King Workshop! Femme Luncheon! Lilith Fair! Julie Goldman & Brandy Howard! DeAnne Smith! Somer Bingham! The cast of Unicorn Plan-It! Calendar Girls! Team Autostraddle! Most importantly: EACH OTHER! And So. Much. More.

In the past, these recamps have been exhaustive recollections of every minute of A-Camp, but this time we’re tightening it up a bit. See, A-Camp is whatever you want it to be — and it’s something different for everybody. You all have your own stories in your hearts and brains and cameras and in the notebook paper pieces in your back pockets and this is our story of what goes on behind-the-scenes and also in the front of our brains to make this whole she-bang come together with relative grace. Are you ready? I don’t think you’re ready. (Also, we miss you!)

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A-Camp May 2013 Recamp #1: Pre-Camp & Day One

 

Monday, May 20th

The night before traveling to Los Angeles, a lengthy reply-all takes place as everybody panics and also worries about Gabby having bronchitis. 

Tuesday, May 21st: Pre-Pre-Camp

The day before Pre-Camp, the A-Camp staff makes its way to the campsite in Angelus Oaks, a mere 2.5 hours outside of Los Angeles. This involves locals driving in vehicles and foreigners traversing land and/or sea via air and landing at the Los Angeles Airport to be retrieved by an overpriced shuttle and taken up the mountain as a family or, for those arriving later in the day, via rented automobile. It is a joyous time of reunions and introductions.

Riese Bernard, Editor-in-Chief & Runaways Counselor: Marni and I drove down to Los Angeles on Monday and stayed at Alex’s, and then drove to Angelus Oaks the next morning while Alex and Mary fought the epic battle of Boxes-Of-Hoodies vs. Car. As per ushe, I’d had to compact all five feet and ten inches of my body into a overhead-bin-friendly size in order to fit all our camp supplies into our economy-sized rental car, which included three bags where my legs would normally have rested. But once we began the mountainous ascent, my fixed-muscular-position-induced fibromyalgic pains faded and were replaced by this nervous anticipatory feeling of being back at Alpine Meadows! It’s so weird how much it feels like home. And I knew that in 24 hours it wouldn’t even seem like a big deal that all my best friends were a pebble’s throw away and in 48 hours there’d be 147 brand-new faces and 112 familiar faces right there with us!

Marni, Contributor & A-Camp Co-Director: Altitude aside, I feel so lucky that we’ve found Alpine to host A-Camp. Katie, the site’s Group Coordinator and erstwhile “lunch lady” has been nothing short of amazing in accommodating all of our weirdo requests (can we use your photocopier to make flyers for our afterparty at “Klub Deer”?), and the kitchen staff (who had only been recently installed on-site a week before we arrived) were champions in meeting our group’s exhaustive dietary needs. Even the housekeeping staff and groundskeepers ask me for camp t-shirts and tell me how excited they are to have us and how much they want us to come back. And for a group like ours – weirdo queers of all stripes – that kind of warm, welcoming, enthusiastic acceptance is really something.

Stef, Contributor & Bombshells Counselor: Katrina and I didn’t fly together, but we did go to the airport together, and in the process we were chased up the subway stairs by a very scary and very aggressive crackhead. Suffice to say, by the time we disembarked from our respective redeye flights, we were a little bit fried.

Rachel, Senior Editor & Slayers Counselor:  I was able to recognize Taylor immediately because she was the only person in LAX wearing Google Glass to drink lemonade in an airport bar. Kristen and Whitney were there too, and Kristen had thankfully brought several full-size bags of ketchup chips. God bless Canada.

Stef: I want to talk about Ali, and the fact that Ali flew in a goddamn bowtie. She stepped off the plane looking like a million bucks. Like, I thought I was ahead of the game because I followed Lizz’s article about how to feel less disgusting after flying, but Ali took this to another level entirely. I was about to learn a lot of amazing things about Ali this trip, like the fact that she rises with the dawn each morning, beaming widely, looking fresh as a daisy and ready to greet the day, while I communicate exclusively in dinosaur noises before my morning coffee. I am obsessed with everyone on Autostraddle staff and every single camper, but currently I am obsessed with Ali the most.

Riese: Also Ali got stopped by airport security because they thought her binder was a bulletproof vest, which is horrible/hilarious.

Carmen, Contributing Editor and Inferno Counselor: Geneva and I were coming from Los Angeles and expected to be on time, but a mixture of overpacking, last-minute camp cabin decoration shopping, and general inabilities to coordinate our time well led us to show up at LAX fifteen minutes later than our peers with a Quesadilla Maker (a gift for Brittani Nichols, of course) and a 12-pack of beer in tow using one of those Smarte Cartes (why the e’s?) to cling to our sanities and lives.

Lizz, Contributing Editor and Starjammers Counselor: I know it sounds lame to say “I had so much fun hanging out with everyone in the airport,” but it was just so good to see the staff. We were all exhausted and giddy that we ended up just shooting the shit for hours instead of doing typical airport things like listening to music or reading.

Stef: Because I was wearing a goddamn captain’s hat, somehow I ended up in charge of collecting all the staff members and putting them on a shuttle, and in this process I was able to shed the negativity that had literally chased me here and start getting pumped about what we were about to do. It was so exciting to slowly amass a giant group of Autostraddle staff, both returning counselors who I already knew I loved working with and the newer writers, who were all amazing in their own right.

Mey, Contributor & Slayers Counselor: I was totally starstruck… these are some of the people who helped to shape my queer identity. This is the website that I lurked on seemingly forever in order to get advice and find like-minded people when I was too scared to come out or couldn’t find queer lady friends in my hometown. And now I was sitting on a bus with them? Now I was getting hugs from them? This was too much.Meeting all these people and becoming a part of their community filled me with so much hope and love and warmth and brightness.

Lizz: Even the long drive up was fun. As we approached the mountain Ali started to get a little nervous about the huge death cliffs. Okay obviously I did too. I tried to tell Ali stories to make her feel better but the only ones I could access in my brain-space were scary ones about me and heights. We got there safely in the end though I suppose.

Mary, Calendar Girl & Little Rascals Counselor: It took Alex about four hours to pack our car before we nabbed Brittani and drove up the mountain. By the time she was done, the vehicle looked like it belonged to a hoarder. Driving on the freeway in downtown LA with no way to check your blindspot? Priceless.

Riese: Robin and Carly got to camp right after we did and we were SUPER-EXCITED about the shuttle showing up with all the humans in it so we hid behind a tree for 20 minutes waiting to leap out from the woods and surprise everybody. It was super-exciting, and then I got to see all the people and also meet Mey and Cara and Kristen for the very first time! And later that night I’d meet Kate for the first time!

Mey: Here were Riese and Laneia, who had given me chances and encouragement to write for Autostraddle and share my feelings and experiences in a way that no one ever had. Here were Kristen and Lizz who wrote things that had helped me shape my identity and grow as a femme. There were Kate and Carmen and Hansen, whose columns I read all the time, and Whitney and Katrina whose articles I love (and everyone else I didn’t mention, it’s not that I don’t love you, I’m just running out of room to gush).

Sophia, Inferno Counselor: I was a hot mess Monday night, I didn’t have my flights in order or anything, I was sending nutty emails out like PRE-CAMP IS TOMORROW?? when my flight left in less than four hours. I missed my first flight out of Dulles, but managed to get on the next flight to LAX leaving seven hours later and arriving in the evening. It turned out to be very fortuitous as Kate missed their flight as well and we got to chill with “I’m in a black suit and know everything about LAX” Konstantin who gave us free snacks and showed us how to be truly indifferent while driving 60 mph up the mountainside.

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Wednesday, May 22: Pre-Camp

The day before camp, the A-Team prepares for camp: we meet with our panel groups to finalize conversation topics, decorate cabins, prepare gift bags and workshop supplies, rehearse the opening ceremonies, participate in Being a Good Counselor 101, tour the grounds, make pigeonholes, and talk about our feelings.

I. The Cool Clear Light Of Day

Hansen, Contributing Editor & Scissor Sisters Counselor: For some reason, every morning at 6:30am, Kristen and I would wake up without alarms, she’d look over the edge of her bunk to see me staring at her and then we’d quietly creep over to Wolf for coffee. Intern Grace and Crystal were usually there, too. One morning, Intern Grace insisted we watch T is for Twig. Don’t EVER watch T is for Twig.

Riese: This year Robin and Marni were super-serious about everybody completely planning out and being 100% ready for their workshops like a month before camp even began, which made pre-camp oddly… not stressful? Which’s an uncommon feeling amongst employees of Autostraddle.com.

Meredydd, Business Advisor & Golden Girls Counselor: There is always a moment during pre-camp when I look around and can’t believe that I am surrounded by such an amazing, diverse, dedicated bunch of staff. And that everyone is giving their whole selves to make sure camp is as good as it can be. It is inspiring.

Mary: Co-counseling with Grace is my favorite everything. She is seriously one of the best people I know! We just love seeing everyone and learning about our campers. Also we decorated their cabin with baby shower decorations, including “Welcome Baby!” balloons. Grace let me use confetti and I love confetti!

Crystal, Music Editor & Toros Counselor: Carly and I were under the impression that we’d ordered one single inflatable cow to act as cabin mascot for the Toros cabin, so imagine our delight when we tore open the Amazon package and discovered an entire inflatable cow army inside. We’d only been on the mountain for 24 hours and I was genuinely concerned that my A-Camp experience had peaked.

Riese: Prepping for the sex panel = talking to Lizz, Daniela and Ali about sex for an hour. I learned a lot about lube.

Taylor, Contributor & Vipers Counselor: I love everything about pigeonholes, from the fact that they are called pigeonholes to the full range of creepy to heartfelt messages (and objects!) that arrive in them to the ongoing saga of how to make them structurally sound. And making tiny notes for my cabin (VIPers!) during pre-camp gave me a great way to impress everyone with my Artistic Talents, by which I mean showing off a miniature watercolor set that I bought to make it look like I have Artistic Talents.

Riese: Vanessa followed Kate around for most of the afternoon making headlines out of their every move – Butch Writes On Her Laptop. Butch Eats Breakfast. Butch Sits On A Bench. Butch Eats An Egg Roll. For sure Kate found this HILARIOUS. (Seriously though, still waiting for Butch Bleeds, inspired by the altitude-inspired nosebleeds.) No but really we don’t know how else to express love besides this manner of joviality.

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II. Butch Goes On A Solo Hike

starring: Kate

Kate, Contributing Editor & Tiger Beat Counselor: I’ve never been to the West Coast before, but I grew up in the Adirondacks and I was a hiker before I was a walker. Living in Philadelphia makes me miss the mountains more than anything, and being in the middle of California mountains? My heart just about jumped out of my chest. Actually, it literally did that too, since binder + high altitude + physical activity = continual lack of proper breath.

I heard about the lookout point and decided I would go find it myself. I need a lot of solo moments to regenerate myself when I’m in an intense situation. Since camp is one intense situation after another and I’d been there since Tuesday, I needed that regeneration by Wednesday. So, I took a hike. By myself. Which we explicitly told you not to do, and which I would explicitly advise you not to do.

I saw a lot of blue-bellied lizards. Y’all have lizards! With blue bellies! And birds I’ve never seen before, and trees I’ve never seen before, and my favorite thing about the very limited travel I’ve had is seeing things I’ve never seen before.

The lookout was stunning. I took a couple very deep breaths and had a moment to myself. And despite the fact that so much of camp was beautiful because there were amazing people around me, the moment in which me, myself, and I processed everything that was happening was so very worth it.

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III. Ice Ice Baby

Brittani, Contributing Editor & Hellcats Counselor: In the weeks leading up to Camp, Stef jokingly tweeted about how many Smirnoff Ices she should bring to Camp. Since it’s been a dream of mine to unironically Ice people, I showed up with a variety pack. They were well worth the space it took up in Alex’s packed car might I add. It didn’t take long for me to ice Carmen which she fully appreciated because she knew it was a sign of affection.

Carmen: I got pinned to go first. I chugged valiantly on one knee in clashing patterns while Brittani lovingly chanted, “bros icing bros, bros icing bros…”

Brittani: Carrie also found herself iced before I eventually lost interest and decided it was too difficult. There was no way to predict who would walk through what door when, making it impossible to effectively ice anyone. I think Robin got iced the last day of camp with a Smirnoff I left in Julie and Brandy’s room but I missed it. Maybe next time with more people down for the cause, icing will make a comeback three years after its initial popularity.

Riese: We capped off the evening with a fire circle in which everybody cried and shared their feelings about what Autostraddle meant to them, and it was intense and beautiful. Also: cold.

 

IV. Over the River and Through The Woods and Up The Mountain We Go

Crystal: Somer Bingham and DeAnne Smith joining us on the mountain late Wednesday was a definite highlight. I am the biggest fan of both these people, they’re just so funny and talented and chill! They showed up a little after midnight because Somer Bingham experienced a series of travel mishaps that I now feel could’ve only happened to Somer Bingham.

Riese: I’d rented a car in Somer’s name and she realized when she got to LGA that her drivers license was expired, but assured me she could “turn the 3 into an 8” by the time she landed in LAX.

DeAnne Smith, The Talent: Somer and I drove up the mountain in the dark, late at night, pretty sure we’d be murdered. When we arrived, we were greeted by Marni, who offered to park the car, carry bags, and give me lip balm. That was way better than dying, and only a tiny taste of all the goodness A-Camp and it’s amazing humans had yet to provide.

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Next: Our first day of actual camp!

OPEN THREAD: Let’s Talk About How A-Camp Rocked Our Socks Off

Hi! I’m super confused right now because we’re not at camp. Specifically: we’re not at A-Camp. See, the past week has gone by faster than any other week in the history of time, I swear it.

Maybe it was the Super Moon, or maybe it was the slap to DeAnne Smith’s vulva or the Klub Deer stamp you’ve yet to wash off or the Lilith Flare songs you can’t get out of your head or maybe it’s that quiet spot in the woods you found or how we carry you in our hearts all the way down the mountain and how we can’t stop talking about you and what we’re gonna do next.

Marni’s sleeping beside me and Crystal’s gotten into bed in the other room and we’re in Los Angeles and we’re not at camp! There’s not always a lot of time to sleep at A-Camp so the fact that they’re both sleeping means we’re definitely not at camp. You guys, WHY AREN’T WE AT CAMP? I’m so fucking tired but I had to write a thing anyhow because I want to be right there, right at camp, and this is how we make it last a little longer.

It’s really beautiful up there and when you show up with your hearts wide open, pretty magical things happen and fun is had.

One of you told me that going to camp was like going home, and everybody who’d been back and forth once or more said it felt that way too. I feel like A-Camp is becoming different things for different people, and I like that. How some girls just wanna have fun and others wanna completely transform how they see themselves as a queer lady in a weird weird world and others just wanna be outside without internet for a minute or 500.

I’m proud of our team who worked their asses off for free, threw themselves completely into creating workshops and panels and performances just because they believe in you, believe in this, and wanted to have fun. It kinda seems like we’re finally getting our shit together, and maybe that’s why every time it becomes more and more and more apparent that YOU are camp.  Thanks for hanging out, weirdos. You’re really fucking fun to hang out with.

There will be the feedback survey for all of your feelings about how things got done and could be done better. There will be the recamps to pretend like we’re still there forever and finally see all the photos you haven’t shown me yet, which is almost all of them.

So, for now: what’s your favorite memory of A-Camp? How do you feel at the bottom of the mountain? HAS ANYBODY FOUND THE SUPER GLUE???

A-Camp 4.0 will take place from October 9th-13th. Registration will open in mid-to-late June. Stay tuned for more details.

More Than Words: Notes On (A-)Camp

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of More Than Words, where I take queer words of all sorts and smash them apart and see what makes them tick. Every week I’ll be dissecting a different word, trying to figure out where it came from, how it has evolved, where it might be going, and what it all means. It’s like reading the dictionary through a prism. Feel free to send word suggestions to cara@autostraddle.com.

Header by Rory Midhani

What does A-Camp mean to you?  The mountain air was all rareified with that question this whole weekend. It’s possible that no one actually asked it, but I heard it anyway.  I also gleaned various answers from the spontaneous cabin chants, the smiles of panelists whose lived experience made them experts, and the creak of swing chains going slack. But as helpful as those metaphors are, I’m still not satisfied, so I’ve decided to break down this invented word into its component parts and study their histories (you do you, self).  Let’s start this climb at the beginning.

“A”

A is for Autostraddle, of course, as well as “amazing” and “awesome” and “ahhh a billion queers.” It’s a leading letter, always first in line, so associated with success that apparently just seeing it can help people do better on tests. It can sound like anything from a sigh of relief to a shout of surprise. It kind of looks like a mountain, which is helpful for t-shirt design, but its shape actually grew out of a glyph of an ox’s head. Or it looks like the tip of a ready pencil, or a Try-It badge — anything that grows a sharp point out of a strong base, which makes sense. And if you want to get all casual and understated and smooth the experience into the rest of your life, or you just don’t feel like explaining this vacation to your boss, you can shut off your caps lock — “I was at a camp!” — and still be telling the truth. Kinda.

“-” (OR no “-“)

Although “A-Camp” is officially hyphenated, its corresponding hashtag is not, which leads me to believe that A-Campers/ACampers are encouraged to choose their own punctuation or lack thereof. This also makes sense.

“Camp”

Like several other words that have become important to us, the word “camp” comes from a root that means “not straight” — in this case, the Proto-Indo-European suffix “*kamp,” which translates as “bent” or “crooked.” This evolved into the Latin word “campus,” for “open field.”  Rome’s Campus Martius, or “Field of Mars,” was a large public park where the army trained, and private citizens went to pasture their livestock and work out with the army’s leftover equipment. Eventually the army started throwing big parties there after successful campaigns, and the city built small temples to host the “foreign cults” and ambassadors who weren’t allowed inside the city proper.

The Campus Martius was the original camp, and over the centuries the word moved into Italian, French, and English, dropped the “us,” and became generalized to mean a battlefield, or any other large place where people fight, presumably either over land rights, religion or proper bowtie technique. By the mid-16^th century, the word loosened its grip on the military connotations, and by 1871, it meant a “body of adherents of a doctrine or cause” — not just a place where people with things in common could meet, but the group of people itself. A space mingles with those who occupy that space. I think we can take this to mean that the Angelus Oaks dust is permanently spiked with glitter, and the local bears are giving each other alternative lifestyle furcuts.

The word’s next big moment in the sun came thanks to Protestant Christians on the American frontier. These settlers, scattered across the land and without the resources to build and maintain permanent churches, missed the religious communities that they had left behind when they ventured out.  So every once in a while, an itinerant preacher or three would announce a “camp meeting” at a certain location.  News spread by word of mouth (this was long before AutoProtestant.com), and people came from far and wide, slept in tents or wagons, and made up for lost time by taking part in “almost continuous service.” Preachers would take shifts — when one was exhausted from spreading the good word, he’d tap out and another would immediately take his place, not unlike our own Sex Panel columnists.  The zero-to-sixty nature of these camp meetings resulted in “emotional conversion experiences, with crying, trances, and exaltation.” The most popular art form was “spontaneous song,” scrapbooked together from familiar melodies, the day’s teachings, personal experiences, and “liberal interspersings of Hallelujahs” (the snaps of the 19^th century). Due to all the high emotion, which often manifested itself physically in the form of crazy dancing, “some accused the camp meetings of promoting promiscuity.” Hmm.

The first US summer camp for kids was invented by William and Abigail Gunn, a husband-and-wife team of school headmasters who decided to take their students into the woods for a couple of weeks in order to build their character. The idea caught on, and the the turn of the century found hundreds of camps dotting the whole country.  By the end of World War II, overnight camping was “as American as apple pie,” and when people used the word “camp,” most of the time that’s what they meant.

But sometimes “camp” was an adjective, and in those cases it meant something entirely different. Entirely different AND entirely gay. “Camp” in this sense is hard to define — that’s part of the point — but it’s associated with exaggeration, flamboyance, naivete, and artifice. Linguists argue about where this usage comes from — some trace it to the old English word “kemp,” which meant “rough” or “rude,” others to the French term “se camper,” or “to flaunt.” Others say it’s because gay men used to “camp out” on street corners, where they could hang out together and then scatter if they needed to. Regardless, this kind of camp first shows up in print in 1909 in a Victorian slang dictionary, where author J. Redding Ware defines it as “actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis” used by “persons of exceptional want of character” (contemporaneous Victorian slang for “gay men”). Oscar Wilde is often considered the original camp-er of this kind, as his artistic calling cards (“gender-bending, wit, and aestheticism”) combined seamlessly with his public persona until camp style and gay style became intertwined.

According to scholar and camp revivalist Mark Allen, the “qualities of sophistication and secret signification” that characterize camp “were developed out of necessity by the underground or outsider gay world” in the early and mid-20^th century “in order to identify oneself to like-minded or similarly closeted” people, and “to operate safely apart and without fear of detection from a conservative and conventional world that could be aggressive hostile towards homosexuals, particularly effeminate males and masculine females.” Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay Notes On Camp, which went 1960s-viral and made her an instant Important Voice, attempted to separate camp from its social history and pin it down as an aesthetic, and a philosophical and artistic lens.

I don’t agree with all of the ideas in Notes on Camp — if I tallied it up, I don’t know if I’d even agree with half (camp is apolitical? Really Sontag?).  But it’s a really rich text; depending on what you bring to it, you get something different out.  A couple of its treatises marked the first time I started to understand the possibility of self-presentation as an intellectual statement, a reaction to the outside world as well as a distillation of the inner self — really, it’s the first text that made me think about queer theory. Sontag cited “Being-As-Playing-A-Role” a good quarter century before Judith Butler broke it all down in Gender Trouble. Linguist Julia P. Stanley credits the increased interest in camp among critics, intellectuals and the general public (entirely Sontag’s doing) with aiding in “the gradual lowering of social barriers to homosexuality.” And the essay itself is so queer — rather than trying to stuff itself into a traditional frame, it’s structured in a way that reflects its content. Plus Sontag dated Annie Liebovitz, you guys.

A thorough exploration of camp history and camp theory is beyond the scope of this essay (a brief summary — it’s problematic! it’s polarizing! it’s undefinable! it’s good fodder for category-based party games!). But researching the history of both senses of camp, I was struck by how fantastically campy our camp is, in all ways. Get a bunch of queers from all over and put them in the same wide open space, and it’s as serious as a war and as playful as a Mae West routine, as intense as sunrise-to-sunset prayer and as beautifully, complexly artificial as a drag show. It’s everything, because we’re everything. Even after we have to go home.

Idol Worship: Ten(ish) Questions About Camp with Julie and Brandy

Welcome to Idol Worship, a biweekly devotional to whoever the fuck I’m into. This is a no-holds-barred lovefest for my favorite celebrities, rebels and biker chicks; women qualify for this column simply by changing my life and/or moving me deeply. This week I managed to get Julie and Brandy to answer some questions about camp for me as we all spent our last minutes at ground level, and it was sexy as fuck. Obviously.

Header by Rory Midhani

There are a few words that come to mind when one thinks of Julie Goldman and Brandy Howard. Some of you may think about the Hunger Games, Cloud Atlas, or any other movie shitty enough to be torn apart in their personal Box Office. Some of you may think, “damn how could two people on Earth be any hotter than those two?” But I will instead always wonder why they are so god damn nice.

They’re my favorites.

Julie and Brandy have given us all the pleasure of their company at the last two A-Camps, making rounds to talk to us and cover us in water (a lot of water). This A-Camp will be no different, with the two sexpots taking a spot among our star-studded lineup of talent (which technically doesn’t encompass one Brittani Nichols, but should, because that bitch is damn talented). Every camp, they fulfill their official duties of bringing Laughter and Lightness to the mountain, and every camp they fulfill their unofficial duties of ripping us out of our comfort zone, forcing us to laugh out of sheer terror and sexual desire and uncovering our greatest truths at Faggity Feud. (I have yet to forget about the time a random survey indicated that campers, as a whole, weren’t interested in threesomes. Y’all are weird.)

I also wait with expectant nerves to see whether or not Brandy gets blackout drunk on stage this year. I’m willing to gamble on this one.

Independently, Julie and Brandy each bring a touch of the Hollywood life to their mystic partnership. Julie Goldman, after all, is like a totally famous comedian in her own right who has been bringing executive lesbian realness to various parties, venues and unsuspecting family television screens for years. And Brandy is possibly the most adaptable commercial actress ever, playing a variety of roles that all involve shiny hair incredibly well. I know this because I once went through her video channel and watched every commercial she has ever been in. Even the Tropicana one.

But even though Julie and Brandy are stars in their own right, it’s fairly common greeting card knowledge that in life, it’s better together. And my lifelong principled liking of “chicks in twos” becomes further cemented with the various fruits of their partnership. Because though apart they may shine, together Julie and Brandy bring a warm glow to my entire life. Or maybe that’s the whiskey talking.

Julie and Brandy have been big pimpin’, giving advice to strangers as a career and getting deep into your box… office together for years now, and we all can’t get enough because we shouldn’t have to learn what enough is. There is no limit. The limit does not exist. At A-Camp that rule is generally applicable to everything from exposure to sunlight to exposure to other lesbians, though. But still. THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH JULIE OR BRANDY OR THE BOTH OF THEM COMBINED, THAT IS MY STORY I AM STICKING TO IT AND YOU CAN’T CHANGE WHO I AM.

And thus I asked Julie and Brandy ten-ish questions. About camp. For you! And for us all. And for my homies.

Here goes.

Idol Worship: Ten(ish) Questions with Julie and Brandy

**Questions answered by Brandy, with Julie half-ass contributing as she drinks coffee and watches American Dad.**

How did you two become such a dynamic duo? Can you tell me your shared life story?

We met on a gay Rosie Cruise in March 2008. Julie was there performing with Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show and I went as a guest of my former frenemy Nicol Paone, who was also a castmember of BGSS. Julie and I hung out a lot on that cruise and we had a ton of laughs. At that time, she lived in New York and I lived in LA and when the cruise was over, we really missed each other. Without getting too corny or LEZimental, we inspired each other creatively at a time when we were both sort of in a rut. We really wanted to work together, so we met up on both coasts and started writing. Our first script was a feature length lesbian romantic comedy called Nicest Thing. Less than a year later, we wrote a gay zombie horror comedy called Gay Baby Army. As we tried to sell those, we were hit with the cold hard reality that gay movies were not the thing. We went through a brief (but intense) mourning period for the future we would never have as queer comic scribes, and then we sold out and wrote a straight sitcom starring all men. It’s about a guy who comes home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan and goes to work as a TSA agent at the airport. It’s called In*Security. And it never sold either.

Can y’all also tell me a little bit about what brought you to comedy and what brought you to Autostraddle? What keeps you around this neck of the woods? (Aside from the Whiskey.) (By “neck of the woods” I mean “lesbian Internet.”)

Julie wants me to say, “Nothing brings you to comedy. So to speak. You’re either there or you’re not.” I guess she means, we were always funny and attracted to funny people so that’s why we are here. And that it wasn’t necessarily a choice. We were born this way. Now she wants me to say, “YES BITCHES, BRANDY WAS BORN THAT WAY.”

As for Autostraddle, it was destined in the stars, because Riese WAS ALSO ON THE GAY ROSIE CRUISE where Julie and I met!!! (What are the effing chances?????) Legend has it that Riese saw Julie do stand up on that cruise and thought she was hilarious.org, so when they launched Autostraddle several months later, she talked to her fellow Autostraddle founders and they reached out to Julie to feature her on newborn Autostraddle. After that, Julie knew she wanted to work with them, and we knew we wanted to do something together. So we reached out to Alex and Riese and they suggested we do a movie review/re-enactment type of show. And that’s how Julie & Brandy: In Your Box Office was born. We film it together in LA and then we send the footage to Riese who edits it.

As far as this neck of the woods… We continue to hang around because we love working together and we love working with Riese. That’s honestly the reason. Julie and I (and Riese) all do other things with other people, but this is the only place where we can all work together. With no boss. We’d work in this threesome for the rest of our lives. If only we could make some paper, booboo.

Julie – what do you do to prepare for stand-up? What’s your work process like when you’re gearing up for a new show?

Julie’s first response to this question was, “I stress out for hours upon hours and smoke a million cigarettes.” I read your question again and then said, “Um, I think she might mean what’s your writing process.” So, then she thought about it for a minute and said, “Usually I am moved to write something that angers, annoys or embarrasses me. Once something like that happens, I write all my feelings down unedited. It’s pages and pages of feelings and opinions and revenge plans. These feelings and opinions bring up more questions which I answer with more feelings. Then I’m left with all these pages of ramblings which I edit down into a semblance of a funny story with a point.” Then after that, I’m gonna assume she smokes a million cigarettes to prepare to talk about it live in front of live people who are alive.

Who are some of the funniest people on the planet? Who are the people who always make you laugh? Who are the people funnier, even, THAN YOU TWO?

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say anyone who makes us laugh — we assume is funnier than us. Julie has a looser funny bone than I do. She can giggle for an hour straight just watching our dogs wrestle. She has the most infectious laugh in the entire world and she laughs all the time. That’s why I love being around her. I don’t laugh at much. I think lots of stuff that’s supposed to be funny is stupid. So, when I do laugh, I’m instantly a fan. A big fan.

My favorite (current) funny people are: Julie Goldman, Louis CK, Jonny McGovern, Amy Sedaris, Howard Stern, Katt Williams, Wendy Williams, Dane Cook, Maya Rudolph, Jack Black, Regina Hall, Leah Remini, Aidy Bryant, Michael K (from D-Listed) and Bevy Smith (from Fashion Queens on Bravo)

Julie’s favorite funny people are: Zach Galifinakis, Seth MacFarlane (only when he’s doing voices, not in real life), Michelle Balan, Jonny McGovern, Amy Sedaris, Wendy Williams, Jessica Kirson, Howard Stern, Mel Brooks, Jennifer Saunders, Eric Stonestreet, NeNe Leaks, Linda James, and Brandy Howard.

Conversely, please list the people you’re more funny than as well.

Listing people that we think “we are funnier than” just invites people to hate us and tell us how unfunny and untalented we are. We aren’t totally opposed to putting it all out there, but in the interest of avoiding hearing FAIL in all the comments – here are some people we just don’t think are funny. Ever.

Whitney Cummings, Ross Mathews, Sean Penn, Mindy Kaling, Bobby Moynihan (the current chubby guy on SnL), Marc Maron, the entire cast and writing staff of How I Met Your Mother (Including Neil Patrick Harris).

Who did you two vote for in the Autostraddle Hot 100 this year?

I can’t remember who we voted for. We usually just scroll through the pictures looking for Julie and anyone on the Autostraddle staff and then we vote for them. I can tell you who we DIDN’T VOTE FOR: we didn’t vote for anyone who made the top 10. Which is great because now we don’t have to feel stupid every time we see a picture of Amber Heard with Jonny Depp.

You’ve been trying to get the A-Campers wet for two rounds now. How excited are you to be hosting the pool party this time around? Any spoilers / reveals on what’s in store? Can I request that you play more Drake before it starts or no? What should I wear?

WE ARE SO FUCKING EXCITED FOR THE POOL PARTIES!!!! We pitched the pool party idea to the Camp Bosses (Marni and Robin) a few months ago, hoping to add some more sexy fun to the mix. I am an amateur DJ and my low-level mixing skills are most appropriate when heard pool-side, so I try and bust them out whenever there is a pool in the vicinity. We spend most of the day drunk, so we aren’t allowed near panels or discussions of any kind. The pool was the perfect place to have our fun. I’m crossing my fingers that there isn’t some kind of bullshit “no nudity” rule in place, and that we will get to see some topless ladies having innocent sexy splashy fun. I will definitely play Drake for you in my DJ set at the pool party, but as far as Faggity Feud is concerned – Carly is the house DJ for that event and I will send her a formal Drake request on your behalf.

The only important spoiler for anyone to know is that this year I will not be black-out drunk during Faggity Feud. Or, I should say – I’m going to TRY not to be black out drunk, but the altitude mixed with insecurity is a heady combination.

As far as what you should wear… I vote for a see-through white bikini. At all times. And I like a naturalistic bush.

What would you say are the most important things to pack when preparing for A-Camp? What are you bringing to the mountain? Brandy, how do you keep your hair looking so shiny and soft in the woods?

Our packing list never changes, and I can tell you that BY FAR the most important things we bring are: an assortment of chips, an assortment of alcohol and an assortment of anxiety meds. Also: Gas X.

The way I keep my hair looking good in the woods is – I never wash it. Not once. No matter how many days camp is. In fact, I barely even shower while I’m there, cuz let’s be real: the shower is dirtier than my alcohol detox night sweats. But when I do shower, I use a shower cap, and dry shampoo.

(Julie wants you to know that she showers every day even though no one is looking at her hair.)

(I want you to know that I love her hair and was offended she didn’t make Autostraddle’s list of best queer hair people).

What are you words of wisdom to the weirdo queers out there trying to make it?

Julie’s first response to this question was “give up.” Mine was, “Think long and hard about the field you are trying to make it in and then go work at Trader Joes.”

But I guess our true advice is (coming from two people who have spent over a decade pursuing one thing): “Know that in 10 years, you are going to have a much different relationship with your hopes and dreams than you have now. Be open to changing your mind and changing your path. The pursuit of happiness is a tricky endeavor, and the way you get from point A to point B can be a long and winding road. Keep your eyes on the prize and eventually you’ll have what you want.”

Listling: 18 Things Found In The Wrong Places While Organizing A-Camp Supplies

1. Waiters wine bottle opener (first aid kit)

2. CoverGirl Liquiline Blast in purple, mine (first aid kit)

3. Setlist from “Bright Lights, Big Campground: An Evening With Haviland Stillwell” (High Tea supply box)

4. Handwritten sign that reads “I DID NOT PEE MYSELF” (general supply box)

5. Guitar tab for “Call Your Girlfriend” (general supply box)

6. Original poem written by an A-Camper (general crafting box)

7. Small water guns, green and purple (first aid kit)

8. Buttons, Thundercats cabin (Trader Joe’s bag)

9. American chocolates, assorted (Trader Joe’s bag)

10. Canadian chocolates, assorted (Trader Joe’s bag)

11. Boomerang, Runaways cabin (lip balm supply box)

12. Reasons you’re nervous to pick up on chicks, anonymously written on slips of paper (pen box)

13. Boxcutter, green, property of Trader Joe’s (library box)

14. Unopened package of plastic shot glasses (zine supply box)

15. Face paint sticks, used (library box)

16. Plastic pitcher, property Alpine Meadows Retreat (t-shirt stenciling supply box)

17. Makeup case used to hold tampons, mine (zine supply box)

18. Two battery-operated headlamps (makeup case used to hold tampons)

Introducing B-Camp

Once upon a time we had a dream. It involved 46 or 200 lady-identified ladies, a charred valley in the shadow of the San Bernadino Mountains, platform tents constructed from discarded copies of The Daily Mail, canned pineapples with warm cottage cheese, a staff comprised of former Autostraddle Interns Who Disappeared Without Officially Quitting, and a weekend packed with workshops, panels, activities and performances designed to pass the time.

It was a dream called B-Camp.

The overwhelming success of A-Camp has led to a jam-packed waiting list and hoards of young lesbians unable to fulfill their fantasies of possibly having sex with Sarah Croce or overhearing somebody else having sex with Carmen Rios. Thanks to a recent newsworthy event in the Angelus Oaks region, we were able to secure a potentially carcinogenic patch of land only slightly down the hill from A-Camp, where we intend to provided a fulfilling experience for those unafraid of ghosts, processed meats, and spending a little extra for a truly authentic lesbian vacation.

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When: 

Thursday May 23rd – Monday May 27th, 2013, the same dates as A-Camp

Where: 

Your $875 tuition includes:

Lodging

Three nights of access to an umbrella and a carpet square. For $50/hour extra, access to platform tents.

Food

Three “meals” a day, including a last-day Rise & Shine Heart Attack Breakfast co-sponsored by the Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich and Beano®. Vegetarians, vegans and gluten-free campers are encouraged to bring your own weirdo crap, as our corporate sponsors do not have time for your hippie bullshit.

Programming

Full access to a variety of activities, workshops, panels, sports and arts & crafts, some of which you may have to lead yourself because we don’t actually know how to make friendship bracelets.

Transportation

If you’re flying into LAX, you will be picked up by one of several large vans driven by Autostraddle staffers arriving at uneven intervals, as coordinated by a bunch of girls who just met for the first time. Your van may or may not break down on the highway. Includes snacks.

Kickass Tote Bag!

Our official B-Camp Gift Bags will be jam-packed with amazing things such as the official B-Camp T-shirt (designed and printed by Urban Outfitters), a CD copy of the hit single “Dirty Knees” by Dusty Ray, a coupon for a free trial membership to eHarmony, a picture collage of our cats, a fresh pack of Bic Pens For Her, an autographed bootlegged copy of The Real L Word Season One and a paperback edition of The Well of Loneliness. The first ten campers to make it up the mountain will receive a 3 1/4″ floppy disk full of desktop backgrounds Carly made when she was 18 featuring images of strong women.

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Rise & Shine Workout!

B-Campers will rise with the sun for a morning workout, which will focus on whittling away excess arm fat, toning your abdominal region, and getting rid of those thighs! (Sponsored by Jillian Michaels Maximum Strength Fat Burner®.)

Skim a F*cking Book Club

You’ve been waiting your whole life to devote two hours to discussing Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert or Bitch, Are You Retarded? by Carlos Lee. Your time is now!

Slow Dating: Because Speed Dating is For Sluts

This three-day intensive workshop, led by Maggie Gallagher of NOM, is a great opportunity to really savor the flavor of your future match, feasting on lengthy dissections about Halberstam over Frutopia and staring at each other until your eyes hurt. Workshop will culminate in fully-clothed scissoring and hand-holding ceremony, followed by a romantic walk in the forest, which may or may not be haunted.

Transgender Representation in The Media Panel

Listen to special guests Ryan Murphy and Ilene F. Chaiken discuss the difficulties, challenges and rewards of accurately representing transgender people on Television. Panel will be followed by autograph session. Ally cookies and fruit punch will be served. Moderated by Sheila Jeffreys.

Conservative Lifestyle Haircuts

Inspired by the success of Katrina’s Alternative Lifestyle Haircuts at A-Camp, conservative lifestyle haircuts will inspire you to tone it down a little. You’re not planning on going to Target like that, are you?

Taylor Swift Appreciation Club/Songwriting Workshop

Campers interested in this workshop must bring their middle school diaries and/or printouts from defunct Xanga journals to camp! In this workshop, you’ll learn how to transform self-indulgent adolescent emotion into metered rhyme and then into music! You’ll then practice how to look surprised about everything all the time.

DIY Wax-a-thon

Your underarm hair is gross. Ew.

Getting Your Shit Together Workshop

You have so many feelings, and we all know what that means — you have too many feelings. Role-playing exercises will school you in the art of bottling it up, denial, and other ways to express your feelings besides expressing your feelings, such as insomnia, violence and aggressive internet commenting.

Advanced Unfisting

All the way up in there and re-evaluating your decision? This workshop will go over the basics of how to remove your fist from an unexpectedly inflexible vagina. (Pre-Requisite: Unfisting For Beginners)

Ropes Course

Just because we don’t have access to the fancy A-Camp Ropes Course doesn’t mean we can’t make you climb a tree and then jump out of it!

Gender Roles Panel

Let A-Camp have their “edgy” “liberal” “hipster” “gender panel,” down at B-Camp we’re keeping it real with boys and girls with a special focus on why Leaning Over is better than Leaning In. Boys will collect internet porn while the girls organize their spice rack. Topics will include figuring out “who’s the man” and why that person should be paying for dinner.

Glamour Shots!

A-Camp Co-Director Robin Roemer will not be doing this activity as she’ll be busy with her own photography situations up the mountain. Luckily we found somebody really talented on cragslist who actually worked at Glamour Shots in the Briarwood Mall in 1994, which’s when Riese got her glamour shot. (BRING YOUR OWN PROPS AND HAIR CRIMPER)

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That’s not all. We have overwhelming programming options. What can I say, we’re a team with a lot of ideas in our melons!

Butching It Down

Queer Your Kombucha: Put Your Vodka Into Anything

Damsels in Distress: Self-Defense For Tiny Females With Strong Handshakes

MRAs Anonymous

Pictures Of My Cat Workshop

Death Panel

Swag Workshop: How To Attract Dudes By Making Out With Chicks

Dana Fairbanks Memorial Hike

Harnessing The Power Of Your Clam

Queer Parenting 101: Instilling Gender Norms So The Rest of The World Doesn’t Have To

Public Sex is My Radical Sex

What Happened Before Ellen and “Is There Anything After Ellen?”

It’s Not Easy Being Gay: A Coming Out Story Performed As Muppet Theatre

How Do Lesbians Have Sex? A Workshop

“Marriage” And “Wedding” Planning For Queers

Mansplaining Explained

OkAwkward 101: How Panic Attacks, Anxiety and ADHD Can Get You Laid

Abstinence Panel: Because Tribadism Counts

Don’t Read a F*cking Poem Unless It Rhymes Workshop

Shane On You: A Workshop On Gender Policing In The Age Of Shiloh

Hymns for Her

Making Peace With the Patriarchy

Whiteness 101: How To Effectively Save QWOC From Themselves

Design-Your-Own Inspirational Moustache Tattoo

Get Baked Live: Artificial Insemination Or “The Other Use For That Turkey Baster”

Somewhere Over the Rainbow; or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Inequality

Pray the Gay Away

Exploring The Lost Art of Fimo Beading

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After a hearty day of activities and a healthy diet of discontinued potato chip flavors, you’ll be ready for a long night of fun and games. We are pulling out all the stops this year.

Murder Mystery Night: Who Killed Jenny?

In this 55-minute event, hosted by Ilene F. Chaiken, campers will take on “characters” from Ilene Chaiken’s unsolved mystery Opus, otherwise known as Season Six of The L Word. (Please note: mystery will not actually be solved.)

Beauty Pageant

Hosted by special guest Carrie Prejean, this classy evening of classy fancy class will feature women with sexy bikinis who know how to twirl batons. Audience is encouraged to bring underpants to throw onto the stage, men’s briefs are acceptable.

Creamed Corn Wrestling

Hosted by the ghost of Old McDonald (of “Old McDonald had a farm” fame), this is a great opportunity for lesbians to test their skills in a slippery tub of undignified mush. Expect to emerge “smelling like pussy and creamed corn” and feeling like $4,000 bucks.

Movie Screenings

On Thursday night, you can revisit the pain and misery of being LGBT via Tearjerker Marathon — The Children’s Hour, Monster, Philadelphia, Brokeback Mountain, Milk and Boys Don’t Cry. Sponsored by Kleenex® Care-Packs. On Friday, we’ll be indulging in Movies A-Camp Bitches Hate Night, where we can safely enjoy Love Actually, Lost & Delirious and Bloomington free of ridicule. Saturday night, entitled Bechdel Who?, will feature Superbad, The Dilemma and Project X, capping off the evening with the 2012 Alliance of Women Film Journalist’s Most Misogynistic Movie Pick: That’s My Boy starring Adam Sandler!

Last Night Dance

The final night dance will be DJ’ed by your friend who ipod DJ’ed the other night when you guys had people over.

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So, if you’re emotionally prepared for a loosely supervised life-changing experience, don’t delay!

What are you waiting for? Register Now!

this post was made possible by the comedic stylings of Riese, Robin, Marni, Carly, Rachel, Laneia, Gabby, Katrina, Stef, Brittani, Alex, Taylor and Crystal.

Campership Opportunity: Apply To Be Kreuzbach10’s Dapper A-Camper!

Back in November, Alex introduced you to the glory of Kreuzbach10 and encouraged you to support their indiegogo campaign, raving that “Anna Kunz, the very driven creator of this endeavor, is basically doing what I would do if I had the resources, time, or even remotely the amount of motivation that she does: masculine clothes that are made to fit women’s bodies.”

The campaign made their mark ($7,500) and then some ($14,825) and the clothes-making us underway and in the meantime, Anna Kunz wants to give back – to you!

Anna got in touch with us about sponsoring some lucky human’s trip to A-Camp, in the spirit of our general camperships. But you will be the official Kreuzbach10 Camper and will be gifted a Kreuzbach10 shirt, bow tie and hat!

What are you writing about? Well, here’s Anna:

I strongly see Kreuzbach10 as being about empowerment and hope. The name ‘Kreuzbach10’ actually comes from the street name of my family home in Germany. When my father was young, he and his brother and parents were displaced and made refugees twice in political turmoil, losing everything but the clothes on their backs. There was a bit of a saga, but the short version is that they rocked up in this little village, had people treat them with kindness and generosity, worked their butts off, and built this whole new life from absolutely nothing at all. By the time I was a child visiting from Australia my grandmother was a fat old lady eating strudel. Their ability to come so far, from having so little is something that inspires me.

I guess it’s quite similar to what you in the USA would call the ‘American Dream’ but repackaged with my Australian-European slant on it. Many queers face obstacles, and some are even reduced to literally nothing in either the social/emotional/economic spheres, but my idealistic vision behind the label is that enabling them to feel good about their physical expression of themselves can create a flow on to other areas of their lives, its the shirt that gives you the courage to join a social group, ask someone out, sell yourself in a job interview… possibilities are endless.

So that’s what we’d like to hear from you — how feeling good about your physical expression of yourself gave you the courage to move forward in some area of your life. You need not express yourself as masculine-of-center in order to apply for this campership! Just speak from your heart.

If you grant us permission, we’ll publish the winning essay and two others on Autostraddle. If you’d rather not have your essay shared, that’s okay, we’ll ask you for permission first, and we’ll do that after Anna has made her decision so it won’t impact your chances.

So here’s what you do:

+ Email your short essay to anna [at] kreuzbach10 [dot] com and cc riese [at] autostraddle [dot] com by Friday, February 15th.

+ Anna will read your essays and we will inform the winner by March 1st, 2013.

+ Any candidates must be totally cool and maybe even enthusiastic about appearing on the Kreuzbach10 website with a photograph of you wearing your duds at camp with maybe a little paragraph about you.

+ If Riese is interested in publishing your essay on the website just for kicks, she’ll get in touch with you at some point in March.

Happy camping/writing!!