Making Camp a Safer Space: Sex, Gender, Language, and the Value of Respect (3/4)

Beyond individual KTV skits or songs, sexism is sometimes built into camp traditions. For the past few years, for example, our camp has had an annual Powderpuff football game. Superficially, Powderpuff seems to challenge traditional gender roles, with boys cheerleading while girls play football. But if you look deeper, three aspects of the game suggest that the tradition reinforces, rather than challenges, gender norms. First, the boys mostly treat it as a joke. They are dressed up as female cheerleaders on the sidelines (more on this below) and laugh when the girls playing do something stupid or wrong. The mindset is one of entertainment rather than serious support. Second, boys still retain the power. Who coaches? Who runs the practices? Who sets the plays? Who makes all of the decisions? As with grilling, male campers retain the power to grant special, limited access to their otherwise all-male world of football. Finally, the boys’ dressing up emphasizes the notion that in order to be cheerleaders, they have to feminize themselves by wearing girls’ clothes. “Real” boys still cannot be cheerleaders. I say all of this to point out that that if you delve a little deeper, it’s not difficult to recast the ritual as sexist and offensive.

In its current form, Powderpuff is not a game that should happen at Yavneh. What can be done? A first simple step is to get rid of the name. Powderpuff in general has negative associations. Why can’t we just call it girls playing football? Does it really need a special distinction? Second, I would advocate for girls to play football often and early. Assign girls football in kfirim, and have an experienced female counselor lead it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but learning the rules, and playing the game is a fun alternative to kickball. In addition, let’s have more sports games where girls from different aydot can play against, and with, each other. It happens all the time for the boys on Shabbat, why can’t it for the girls as well? In fact, on Shabbat, boys should be a lot more actively inclusive, because there are usually little to no opportunities for girls to play sports. and Finally, I want to challenge the girls and their counselors to care about taking ownership of Powderpuff. Let’s have female coaches who run the practices and design the plays. Boys are not the ones playing the game. The girls are.

Even more serious than Powderpuff, though, is the lack of respect that male campers and counselors sometimes give to the girls and women at camp. I have already given a few examples of this earlier, but one more example particularly sticks out for me. I remember distinctly sitting in the roshes’ room, brainstorming with a female rosh aydah about how she could be and act more authoritative. She said that whenever she would tell a certain male camper what to do, that camper would either laugh at her, or completely ignore her as if she had no authority to discipline him or any boy campers. Furthermore, she described how the male madrichim did nothing and refused to step in and back her up. She hated how she had to go to her co-rosh for things as small as telling kids to be quiet during Birkat Hamazon. Such a status quo is unacceptable, and we can start to change it by expecting male madrichim to set an example by respecting female roshei aydah. If they do not, they need to be dealt with and spoken to every single time. By passively standing by and watching a Rosh discipline, counselors are not actively doing their jobs.

It is somewhat ironic that I spent the last few pages of this blog entry only addressing boy-girl subjects but advocating against heternormativity. Camp is and will continue to confront issues of homosexuality and transgender. Right now, the policy at camp leaves much room for improvement. It certainly is not an easy subject to create rules around, but camp needs to have a policy that does not hurt, discourage, demean, or ruin any campers’ experience because of the way they identify. In my opinion, campers can and should be expected to be accepting and inclusive. However, this is not to say that there is even a good option of how to handle these situations. Often times, home and school life for these kids can be even worse, and they look forward to camp as a place to go to get away from it all, just like everyone else. However, when it comes down to it, if you identify as anything that isn't purely straight, is camp going to make you feel accepted, both explicitly and implicitly?" I think the answer is a pretty definitive no. We need to figure out how to be a place that is accepting of everyone and eliminate our heteronormative tendencies.