I have been going to an all girls camp since I was 10. Several of the staff and LITs are queer and one of the new staff members who I already knew from previous years recently came out as agender. It's very inclusive and accepting of queerness and gender non-conformity. It's honestly my favorite place ever and all of my closest friends are people who I know from there. I have recently come to terms with being non-binary, and one of the hardest things for me was trying to figure out how that identity fit in with camp. I will be leaving soon to go there for 3 weeks as an LIT, and I'm hoping to come out to at least one very close friend when I'm there. Before I do, however, I want to have a better idea of how I fit in at camp given that I don't identify as female. I'm uncomfortable in most all female spaces (eg. gym class, sports, ect.) but I'm completely comfortable at camp so I don't feel like I shouldn't be there, but I'm not entirely sure how to explain that. All I can really think of is that I still have the shared experience of living as female for the most part but I'm not sure how that would change if I came out. My biggest concern is that I don't want to seem like I'm saying that I'm close enough to female or something like that because I don't identify as female. I'm also concerned that by setting a precedent of AFAB non-female identifying people at camp it would make it harder for trans girls to be allowed in since I'm identified as female based on my body, although I see it as having more to do with my history I guess. I've tried doing research but of course there aren't any official rules about non-binary people. When I'm forced to chose, I do chose female though, so I guess that's part of it? What do you folks think?
i totally get what you mean about just feeling comfortable at camp. i'm a member of girl guides, which i obviously shouldn't belong to, as i identify as male, but my closest friends are there and i am completely at home. that's kind of how i justify my participation in my head: i abide by the rules, laws, and mottos, i agree with the vision, and i love it. so what's wrong with me being there? it sounds to me like the camp is very accepting. i wouldn't worry about not being accepted. it's tough to decipher how you fit into a group that you shouldn't belong to, but do, hey? just think about what the camp aims to do, and if you support that aim, i'd say you have a place there.
We still have a long way to go. I know some places in large cities have unisex bathrooms but if you have female equipment that you were born with then unfortunately you have go to with your birth assigned sex in this sense of being in sex assigned places. :/ And think about it this way, there is so much to the label of "female" than the way he or she thinks or what is between her legs. So you don't feel female at all but you are in an "all female" camp that has a lot of queers. I am questioning that, are you certain that every female there identifies as female? I say come out to one of your friends there if you feel comfortable when the time is right, but once you come out you will find that there are people like you at your camp, and then you will have even more friends!
Bathrooms definitely suck. I tend to avoid them whenever possible since I'm usually read as male. I know of one person there who identifies as agender and I've talked to them about it before. I'm planning on coming out to one more person when I go this year, and you're right. There may be other people who just haven't come out yet either.
I think it depends on the individual person/situation, but I would say it's generally fine. Personally, I'm NB and will be going to a women's college in the fall, because it's a decision I feel comfortable with and because nothing about my presence will interfere with the goals of a women's college. Basically, when you're NB, the rules about these things aren't really defined, so as long as you feel comfortable with it, and you aren't interfering with the purpose of it being a gendered space, I would say you should go for it.
