Ta-ta, French Immersion Camp

The other day, after JJ, 15, applied for a job at our local health food store, they realized with alarm that the business might try to contact them by phone.

Gen Z texts; they do not call. “This caller has a voicemail that has not been set up,” a monotone informs me whenever I try calling them. It enrages me every time I can’t reach my kid on the very phone I purchased for them, but, choosing my battles, I let it go. 

This time, though, I told them to set up voicemail. Turns out they didn’t know how. (If you expect this generation to be tech savvy in ways you are not, prepare to be let down.) I grabbed the phone, determined to demonstrate my expertise, only to discover JJ’s phone language was set to Francais. This posed a problem, as French is a language I neither read nor speak. 

Cultish

JJ has been studying French for years: at school, with tutors, on their own, and at a French Immersion Camp. According to tutors, their accent is excellent.  

French Immersion Camp was last summer—a little dream that came crashing to the ground.

I’d heard much about that camp’s magic over the years. Facebook friends rhapsodized about the songs they learned, which, they said, they sing to their own children at bedtime. A certain president’s daughter was an alumna. Secretly, I liked that the camp was cultish and prestigious, but I was more excited by JJ finding community with other teens who cared about learning languages—other nerds, I thought happily. Plus, being fluent in French would ensure their future as a diplomat, non?

JJ and I had talked about French Immersion Camp for years. Then we discovered they had only gendered dorms. JJ reconsidered.

“Very nice lady”

I called the camp. Was there really no nonbinary dorm? There had been discussions, they claimed, but no. Something felt off about this. I called back and spoke to a very nice lady who assured me they had “several” trans campers and counselors. It was her "impression” that trans folks were very much welcome, and JJ was freer to choose the (binary) gender dorm they felt comfortable with.

In the end, JJ agreed to go and stay in the boys’ dorm. Age 13 at the time, they had been on testosterone for about six months before they climbed aboard the coach bus in Minneapolis that would carry them, along with other campeuse, to Bemidji, Minn., that day in July, 2022. 

When camp ended, I returned to pick up JJ. I was dying to see the grounds and hear details of what I expected would be an intense but great experience. JJ seemed fine and appeared to have formed at least one trusted relationship, with the camp nurse, who had given them acupuncture for their anxiety. At closing, parents gathered to hear counselors and campers sing the famous lullabies. JJ sat in the back, refusing to join in. (This had nothing to do with being trans; I forgot that JJ hates singing. Clearly it will be me serenading their future babies.) 

Ironic

In the car, JJ was so accustomed to speaking French, they were inadvertently speaking it while we talked! Gleeful, I assumed camp had been a success. But not really. Although they learned a lot, JJ would not return unless they could stay in a nonbinary dorm.

They’d been misgendered frequently in the boys’ dorm, which struck them as ironic, given that they’d chosen to stay in that dorm in order to identify as male. (JJ is trans-masc; they use “they/he” pronouns and very intentionally hope to pass as male.) And there was the ever-present anxiety about gendered bathrooms and showers.

They had made two friends, both trans. So JJ wasn’t the only one who would choose a nonbinary dorm! I emailed the camp: would they consider offering a nonbinary dorm next season? They responded that while they’d “discussed it,” they did not anticipate being able to offer it in 2023. “But,” I said, “The Swedish Village offers nonbinary dorms!” This fell on deaf ears.

Blacksmiths

Here is my main point. Saying something doesn’t make it so. Saying you welcome trans people and not having housing to accommodate them is a contradiction. You can say it all you want, but until you have legit nongendered facilities, don’t tell me you welcome trans kids. I will not pay you a chunk of my earnings to put my child squarely in a tense, if not downright harmful, situation.

Trans folks are constantly told to “get over it,” as if their ask for a safe space is not reasonable. As a dear friend told me, accommodating a trans person is not supporting them. Real support involves creating the spaces that allow trans folks to lead full lives. 

This summer, I sent JJ to a camp for LGBT+ teens. As my partner and I eased our car down a dirt road toward a campground in New England, we knew we were in the right place when we spotted the rainbow flag by the roadside. A counselor waving a giant rainbow flag in the parking lot welcomed kids (picture a lot of pink and purple hair) getting out of cars lugging their bedding and stuffed animals. The parents following them sported t-shirts that proclaimed their allyship. One individual, a man with a beard, wore the t-shirt of an organization of inclusionary blacksmiths. 

Relief

In that moment, I felt an enormous sense of relief, like putting down a very heavy weight I did not know I had been carrying. 

JJ would be with people who understood them. For once, they would not have to worry about discrimination, possible violence, or the negation of their sense of self. As a trans friend of mine told me recently, “I am only ‘trans’ around non-trans people.”

In a week, at pickup, JJ would not be sitting in the back, refusing to join in song. They appeared with a group of kids at the top of the hillside, having exited the “closing circle,” at which the counselors wound embroidery floss around the campers’ wrists to create for each a bracelet that would keep them all connected after camp. 

And then the strangest thing happened. After introducing me to numerous friends they’d made, JJ went in for a group hug with a few of them. (JJ does not generally “do” physical affection.) They smiled a huge, toothy smile, their braces glinting in the sun.

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Postscript: I wrote this essay in September 2023. This summer, 2024, JJ has been waitlisted for the amazing LGBTQ+ camp in New England. They started a lottery for admission because they have so many applications they can’t accommodate everybody, thus proving the need for camps that embrace full-on inclusion and support for queer kids. —T.C.