Summer Camps For Children Identifying As Transgender Open Across US
_Authored by Jackson Elliott via The Epoch Times (https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-depth-summer-camps-for-children-identifying-as-transgender-open-across-us_5375627.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge) (emphasis ours),_
**Across the United States, there’s a growing number of summer camps specifically for children who don’t identify with their biological sex.**
\_The annual New York City Pride March in New York City on June 25, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)_ (
)These overnight camps connect hundreds of children who identify as transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming.
Attending such camps is likely to create lasting gender dysphoria in children who would otherwise probably leave that phase behind, psychologist Nicholas Kardaras told The Epoch Times.
Dr. Kardaras runs Omega Recovery, a mental health clinic in Austin, Texas.
Most children will grow out of gender dysphoria if not encouraged in it, he said. But when adults encourage a “social contagion,” it will spread rapidly, he said.
“ **If you put a very developmentally fragile young person in any social group that is very dominant, they’re going to inevitably mimic the behaviors and the identity of that social group that they get dropped in,**” Dr. Kardaras told The Epoch Times.
‘Gender-Liberated’ Facilities
Unlike traditional summer camps that require separate bathrooms and sleeping areas for boys and girls, some transgender camps don’t segregate children by gender, The Epoch Times discovered.
In West Central Ohio’s Camp Lilac, restrooms and shower facilities “are split by age group, not gender,” the camp website reads. “Showers are in private stalls with locking doors.”
Vermont’s Camp Outright advertises on its website that “all the bathrooms at camp are gender-liberated.” And campers and counselors self-select which cabin they will stay in, based on their gender identity, according to the website.
\_Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, executive director of The Dunes addiction recovery center, at The Dunes mansion in East Hampton, N.Y., on March 23, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)_ (
)The Naming Project camp in Deerwood, Minnesota, advertises that separation between men and women isn’t encouraged. The group describes itself as a Christian ministry, and its website, in response to a frequently asked question about its camp for adults, reads: “At other church camps, you might have heard the phrase, ‘Boys are blue. Girls are pink. Don’t make purple.’ Well, we won’t be saying that, because that phrase erases the reality of LGBTQ people, our lives, and our relationships.”
**The American Camp Association (ACA) stands behind the emergence of camps especially for transgender-identifying children, according to Andy Pritikin, the director.**
“ **I think that mixed gender is likely going to be the wave of the future**,” he said. “I have so many kids that are transgender, so many staff that are transgender, at this point. To have mixed-gender groups makes life a heck of a lot easier for these folks.”
Transgenderism has dramatically changed summer camps, even those not specifically designed to cater only to campers and counselors who identify as transgender, Mr. Pritikin said.
While public schools must abide by government rules on transgender issues, directors of privately run camps decide on their own how to handle those situations, he said.
\_American Camp Association director Andy Pritikin leads Liberty Lake Day Camp in Bordentown, N.J. (Courtesy of the American Camp Association)_ (
)It can be complicated when counselors suddenly announce they’ve “changed genders,” he said.
“I’m hiring staff in, let’s say, March, and then we do our first training \[for summer camp\], and they’ve changed genders,” he said.
It happens with campers, too, requiring last-minute reorganization, he said.
“ **We’re enrolling campers as boys. Then, a week before camp starts, the parent calls and says, ‘They want to be in a girls’ …
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/summer-camps-children-identifying-transgender-open-across-us