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Carolyn Wysinger, Former Freelance Writer/Speakeasy Curator:

On May 27th, 2016, I headed up to Autostraddle A-Camp in Angelus Oaks Mountains filled with joy and hope for a great camp. I was excited to see fellow camp staff and my closest friends that I had made over the last three years of going to camp. I was MOST excited to be co-facilitating the QTPOC Speakeasy healing session and sharing spiritual ritual in the amazing space that we created alongside Speakeasy director, G. Rivera.

But I came down the mountain an angry black woman filled with rage.

A NOTE FROM CAROLYN, 2019:

The following was written a week after my last trip to Autostraddle A-Camp in 2016. So many things have change since then. Some of the cultural references will seem dated but the ideas and feelings remain the same. Since then I have gone on and navigated many white dominated LGBTQ spaces and organizations. What happened to me at A-Camp help teach me how to be unapologetically Black in all those spaces and how to demand accountability from those same organizations.

Since then, I have also watched Autostraddle continue to use Black writers and people as “the Black friend.” I know they treat them that way because I still get stories from them about how they feel with things that are currently happening. I always empower them to stand up for themselves, call out microaggressions etc etc. Ultimately, many of them still feel, as I did, that Autostraddle helps advance their careers. I always tell them, you do NOT need Autostraddle. Your work will stand on its own.

At the time that this happened, one of the affected Black camp leaders stayed in my inbox talking about how she felt about being targeted in a racist incident and how someone needed to stand up and say something. It was never her because she was trying to build a YouTube channel and wanted Autostraddle exposure. I hope that we finally get to a place where black people don’t feel they need to take in veiled racism and microaggression for “exposure” and views.

Let’s just do the work.

CAROLYN, 2016:

There comes a point where you cannot take microaggressions and veiled racism any longer. On first night of camp G & I had a conversation with our campers about meeting people where they were. I mentioned to them that coming to camp is hard for me coming from a radical woke as fuck place like Oakland, Ca. In Oakland, conversations about racism, gender and privilege are just the appetizers before the main course on your first date. At camp I try to remember that you have some campers who have never even seen a black person before.

I know this for a fact because one of my close camp friends has talked to me about how she would have never met a person like me, hella fucking black, if it hadn’t been for camp. I recognize this and try to be the same exact person I am off the mountain yet resisting the urge to hit someone in the mouth when they disrespect one of my POC family. G also made a great point in this same conversation. You meet people where you are but you never let them disrespect you. I then added that you always need to advocate for yourself on the mountain. How incredibly appropriate that our cabin would become the center of this terrible story. I would say a firestorm but the fact that it did NOT takeover like a firestorm is also the center of this rant.

The first major incident occurred at the late night comedy show when two black staffers were ordered to leave the show by a white comic for being too loud. That’s not even the disgusting part though. After ordering the staffers to leave the comic, Cameron Esposito, then gets on stage and starts her set by sarcastically asking “how dare she tell a black woman to move to the back of the room” basically alluding to national conversations about respecting black woman and making a joke of the fact that she did the exact opposite. Not only was it an outrageously offensive “joke” at the expense of black women but it left the audience of campers dumbfounded. Most expressed being confused if it was actually a joke being that it was so out of place in a space that was supposed to be safe for all.

Bear in mind, just two days before, there had been an anti-racism workshop where outside facilitators came in to talk whiteness and privilege with white campers. The outside facilitators brought in some pretty antiquated literature and worksheets that used transphobic language. That next day, after breakfast, the entire staff was brought in so that the camp directors could acknowledge and apologize for the worksheets and language that was used as well as ask the staff how they were feeling. This is great. It is great that the senior leaders took accountability for this triggering literature. However, no one at all took responsibility for the racist jokes from this comic until the last day of camp and when they did it wasn’t even camp leadership.

Dan Owens, Freelancer and Paid Talent, 2015 & 2016:

This comedy set was rife with uncomfortable content. The jokes were racist, transphobic, misogynist, and one point poked fun at the fact that we “care so much about identity.” Many people left throughout the set, but I was the MC so I had to stay.

When the comedy set ended, myself and another cis white paid and hired talent went to Cameron directly. The conversation was annoying and tense. Jenny, another white cis paid and hired talent yelled at one point. Rhea was very protective of their wife. An Autostraddle founder was in the room and said nothing.

The next morning we met privately with the camp co-directors, both white and being paid, they said we should not have approached Cameron to talk to her about her set, we should have instead come to them. The comedian was racist and transphobic in a place you have told people was supposed to be a safe space, my face was on your poster next to hers… why would I talk to someone else about that instead of talking to her directly? She is the one that said the shit. They say they are the directors and they want to be able to handle that kind of thing… ok

What they could do now that Cameron was gone? How could they take responsibility!?! I am confused that they have to ask this question, but I tell them don’t invite her back and tell everyone why you made that decision. The exact phrase that was used in response to my suggestion was “we don’t want to throw Cameron under the bus.”

If they have to either save Cameron from being thrown under a bus or save a shit ton of campers from being thrown under a bus. They choose Cameron.

They were really acting like the set wasn’t as horrifying as it was. It feels very validating to read other people’s stories and reactions to that comedy night because the directors of camp were treating all of us like it was no big deal. I suggested making an announcement and at least acknowledge that we were all not in a safe space and that’s not the environment we want to create. They said they would think about it.

It is my understanding that after this conversation the co-directors had a talk with G and Carolyn about ~what on earth to do~

CAROLYN:

If G hadn’t literally told the camp leaders that they needed to apologize to the staffers that the comic offended there would have never been an apology. Why did she even have to do that? Is it because most of the camp entertainment is the personal friends of leadership and they didn’t want to offend them? Well that makes you feel very supported now doesn’t it.

I was pulled aside by a camper that was struggling with a decision they had to make. The camper stated that they thought I would be the best person to come to for this matter.

They were getting a group together to have a non-camp gathering in one of the lodges and they had to figure out how to tell one of the campers that they were not welcome. That a part of the group stated they would not come to the gathering if this particular camper was present because they did not feel safe. Oh and the uninvited camper was black.

Well of course both my ears and my defenses perked up.

The story I was given by the camper that approached me was that there was an incident between an Asian camper who is a trans woman and a black masculine of center woman. You may ask, Carolyn, why do you have to list their entire social identity? Because unfortunately the intersections of those identities are where the source of this conflict live.

I was informed that there was an incident that occurred on day one of camp where the trans camper felt that the black MOC camper was being transphobic. At one point, a cabin counselor was brought in to speak with the black camper about being transphobic but they felt that she “doubled down” on transphobia and walked out of the conversation. Apparently this happened a couple of times in just the first two days of camp.

Camp is five days y’all.

I immediately call G into the conversation so that we can all figure out how the two of us can get involved and facilitate some sort of understanding. At the time, G and I were the co-facilitators of the Speakeasy — a camp space provided for Autostraddle readers that identify as QTPOC. Off the mountain, in a private Facebook group, we participate in lose discussions about our experiences navigating the world as QTPOC folks. On the mountain, in real-life at camp, we facilitate a closed QTPOC space where we can continue those discussions. Just that week we had facilitated a QTPOC healing session that was amazing.

This situation would turn out to be the complete opposite of that work we do in the Speakeasy.

G and I decide that we need to go find this camper and speak directly to the situation. The camper in question was one of our immediate campers who we spoke with everyday and ate meals with. She never alerted us as to what was going on. Nobody did.

We walk down to our cabin to find this camper and we sit down for a discussion. At first, she is hesitant to talk about it. I would find out later that she felt as if this was just another disciplinary conversation that apparently she had been inundated with all week. I won’t get into all of the intimate details of what we were told was the interaction between the two campers because there is a lot of debate as to what happened. As the old adage goes, there are three sides to every story; yours, mine and the truth. Unfortunately, it seems that not everyone knows that adage. And who do you think came out on the short end of that?

This black camper was called in front of makeshift disciplinary conversations over and over again throughout the week. There were conversations about how to handle this camper. There were questions posed to camp leadership about if this camper could be banned from spaces. She was truly passed around and handled, in a way, not too differently than the unruly black student that administrators can’t figure out how to deal with.

Meanwhile, the trans community on the mountain rallied around the trans camper and had feeling sessions and were able to offer her support. And NO ONE offered the black camper a goddamned thing.

DAN OWENS:

Camp is five days but it feels like 4 months. Every morning they made announcements we were like… are y’all going to say ANYTHING or are we literally pretending it never happened? I expect this kind of thing at my old mormon church, but I want this space to feel safer than that. The morning announcement song feels like a horror film to me now.

One afternoon an announcement was made that if you have been called out by trans person for your language, to educate yourself on your own time bc we are not here to educate you. It’s a part of keeping our spaces safe, we do not demand emotional labor from one another. As someone who was about one half day into questioning my own gender, I was grateful for this announcement. As a non-binary individual on their journey, I personally felt much safer in this space now that someone spoke up.

One of the camps co-directors comes up to me about an hour later and leans in to say, “so, we’ve thought about it and we’re not going to say anything because we don’t really do big announcements to the whole camp like that-“

They were happy to support the trans community and they refused to support the black community. And the only reason I can truly pinpoint is out of convenience.

At this point in the week I was experiencing so much anxiety. Almost all white staffers and hired talent stopped making eye contact with me which is a majority of the staff. I was going through my own personal shit with family and I understand now that I became overwhelmed and disconnected.

The energy changed drastically and though we haven’t talked about it, I believe G and Carolyn were experiencing something similar. Our cabins were connected by a bathroom so we were spending most nights in each other’s rooms in a bit of an Uproar that the entire staff refused to do anything. Carolyn and I barely had any details about each other’s stories until now but the group of us still managed to hold long conversations about what was going on because the prioritization of cis white women at camp is so blatant and consistent.

CAROLYN:

I slept in a cabin with two of these staff members. Slept right across from one and not one of these muthafuckas said a thing.

When the situation was brought to camp leadership, do you think they said anything? Nope. Nothing. Multiple staff members were made aware of the situation and brought in to “deal with it” and no one at all thought to offer any sort of empathy or support for this black camper. Because black MOC women are assumed to be inherently transphobic so she must have done and said things that warranted her being criminalized. No one reached out to G nor myself either, as her camp counselors, OR as the co-leaders of The Speakeasy. No one reached out to me or any black staff.

Because whatever she did, she deserved to be x’d out and treated like a convicted felon in a space where she knew no one.

Even she didn’t say anything because

#1- when we actually spoke with her we realized that she had way more empathy for the other camper than anyone at all gave her.

#2- she did what black women do. We make our way. We navigate in spite of. When she attempted to socialize with other campers and found out she had been basically ostracized by other campers she made her own space and did what she needed to do to enjoy her time.

That is the beauty and tragedy of this situation. The concept of a black woman who has been charged, tried, convicted, criminalized and left off on her own doing what she has to do to make a way. Camp officially became an exact emulation of the world people were supposed to come there to escape.

DAN OWENS:

Almost two years passed with Autostraddle issuing no apology and continuing to work closely with Cameron. Things had not changed and I outlined many of the hurtful things said by Cameron as well as my personal story in trying to advocate for our communities in this tweet:

This tweet is a thread containing hurtful language around racism, transphobia, and misogyny.

After sharing this, many many people came forward with their experiences w AS over the past decade.

ANONYMOUS:

“I went to ACAMP twice. I’m a black/mixed race POC person. There were MANY weird racialized moments at camp. I found the cabin sorting strange. I asked initially to be placed with other black campers and was not.”

EV’YAN WHITNEY, CAMPER 2015:

“I went to ACamp in 2015 and it was one of the first queer events I had ever been to after I came out. The entire vibe of camp (which is predominantly white) reminded me so much of the vibes I felt as a black kid in a predominantly white high school. It was very obvious that there were the “cool kids” (the more well-known, popular, and desired campers/staffers that were largely part of creating ACamp) and then “the others” — folks like me. I would often try to make friends with the cool kids but wasn’t really given the time of day. And because many come to Acamp for romance and hooking up, it was very obvious to me that white trans men and white masculine of center folks were prioritized and desired heavily while folks of color like me were left feeling like were invisible. All of that cliqueyness, combined with the casual racism I witnessed and microaggressive atmosphere of camp in general, made me not want to go back. I haven’t been back since.”

ANONYMOUS CAMPER:

“ACAMP was one of the most othering things I have ever experienced not only as a Latinx NonBinary person, but also as a person who is disabled. ACAMP was not accessible to me in a LOT of ways. And watching the transphobia directed at trans women constantly was hard too. I was at the 2016 ACAMP with Cameron Esposito and boy that was Not Fun to sit through.”

ANONYMOUS CONTRIBUTOR:

“I remember the founder being annoyed that they were getting so many messages from people pointing out that they were working with and paying someone who was an abuser. They continued working with that person. And they never apologized or called out their decision to have a comedian at camp who was racist and transphobic.”

ANONYMOUS READER, 2008:

“Long before ACAMP I went on a cruise because the Autostraddle founders were promoting and saying to join them. I was bullied a lot growing up, but the week that followed was the worst I’d been bullied in my entire life. Including making fun of my fairly masculine presentation, joking they wanted to throw me overboard, telling my girlfriend to avoid me, cruelly and loudly making fun of the people I traveled with who they considered to be overweight…”

ANONYMOUS, 2018:

“Please keep me anon but about Autostraddle, they out sex workers in the Portland community to the people they’re dating. Online they act as if they’re sex positive and in support of sex work, but they have on more than one occasion “warned” people against dating them and called them “dirty” because of their work.”

TRENT DJUAN, Camp Counselor and Unpaid Talent, 2015:

“My first year at a-camp, I was invited to come as a counselor as well as talent. My flight was covered, and that’s it. When I inquired about being compensated for my time as both counselor and talent, I was given an explanation that all counselors were only having their flights covered and nothing else — disregarding the fact that I was also being brought in as talent (to sing). I had no idea other talent was being compensated for their time.

The following year, I was asked to return as both a counselor and talent, with the same offerings. At this point, I was still in love with the space I believed Autostraddle was holding for community, and so happy to be a part of something that had played such a huge rule in my own queer as discovery journey, I said yes. I’d started a new job that included me relocating. I was unable to get all of the camp days off and the little time I did have, i needed to move my shit from kentucky to new york. I contacted my folks at Autostraddle, they said they understood and asked if it was possible for me to still show up as talent (for 1–2 days). It seemed feasible, so i agreed — however, my flight was no longer being covered.

I arranged my work schedule so i would be able to work, relocate my life to new york, and fly right out from new york to cali to perform at a-camp. The day before I was supposed to fly out to Cali, I got into a huge fight with my partner at the time that became both physically and emotionally abusive. I was in no condition to go anywhere or be anything to anyone. I contacted my folks at Autostraddle to tell them that bc of my current situation I was no longer able to make it. I never heard back from anyone.

There was no follow up. No concern for me. Nothing. I felt so hurt and tossed aside and like… nothing. Like, i mattered when I was easy to use, but because of this, I was also so disposable and easy to forget. AND THEN when i found out that others were being compensated and having shit covered and the works… oh hunty… you better believe, that did not sit well w me and was eye opening to say the least.”

AUTOSTRADDLE CONTRIBUTOR:

I attended A-Camp during one of its first incarnations, I hooked up with another person of color. In hindsight, that connection was unprecedented and meant the world to me. Long having dated white girls, I didn’t know that it was possible to be so utterly seen by someone with whom I was sleeping.

Somehow, someone in the staff cabin divulged those details comedian Julie Goldman, who was performing at A-Camp. The next night, she went on stage in front of 300+ campers and integrated it into her set. In Goldman’s routine, she not only called us on our supposed erotic misdeeds; she made rhyming puns for our genitalia using our ostensibly difficult-to-pronounce surnames. Like a lot of people who’ve attended A-Camp who come from rougher places, my thick, survivalist skin is my pride and joy. But within the context of A-Camp, everything is intimate and you can’t escape the venue. You are eating and sleeping with the audience and the jester for days on end.”

TALIA, NON-BINARY ARTIST, JUNE 2019:

“They misgendered me in a piece just a few months ago. They didn’t reach out before including me in an article. They copied a quote from a previous interview I’d done where the writer used varied pronouns for me, my preference. They instead use “she” throughout. I didn’t ask them to change it because I didn’t think they would consider doing it. All they had to do was click on my instagram where it says I’m non-binary.”

Two weeks ago a trans influencer was dead-named and misgendered on a panel put together by The Trevor Project — in front of hundreds of their supporters and fellow community members.

If the majority of your businesses income is going to cis white people your businesses priorities are and always will be focused on cis white folks.

Asking for an apology was weak and I don’t believe it’s productive. In this era of cancel culture, we want to receive an apology so we have a good enough argument in case someone catches us indulging in our favorite guilty pleasures: people who are not all that good for the world.

As recently as two months ago Cameron Esposito was a VIP invite to an Autostraddle event.

Instead of an apology, tell us where your money is going.

If a non-binary black femme had curated the Trevor Project Panel, that panelist would have been safer.

If the two co-directors at ACAMP had both been black & trans, and they were the ones selecting the talent, that comedy night would not have been an option and everyone would have felt protected. They would have set a precedent at the beginning of camp that invited conversation in a safe and productive way, allowing people to be called in. Rather than this Camper’s reality, being called out and exiled while still stuck on a mountain with everyone who has decided you’re cancelled.

This is a decades worth of stories from people with different levels of involvement w Autostraddle. We need our community to work harder. And we need to speak up when it’s not working. Organizations like The Trevor Project, HRC, and Autostraddle have opportunities to pay people and they are choosing to prioritize and pay white cis individuals five and six figure incomes. Only to pay disabled, queer, and trans folks of color significantly less or nothing-at-all to be the face of their campaigns and representative of their brand. That is ass backwards. And at the end of the day, if that’s how it’s gonna be, at the very least, we deserve to be informed. We deserve to know details of the spaces we are walking into.

A NOTE FROM G. RIVERA, 2019:

All anyone at the top ever needed to do was shut up and really listen to the camper and Carolyn, apologize to all parties and engage in some spiritual reckoning between the intersections of anti-blackness, gender, race.

That work that all white folks and non-Black POC must do.

i.e. You Do You but with some accountability. But that never happened.

That apathy crushed something in so many of us.

A CLOSING STATEMENT FROM CAROLYN:

I stand by the belief that there needs to be a black senior editor at Autostraddle that can help direct the ship into meaningful engagements with the black queer community. And not one of y’all friends that never engages with black queer community either!

That may offend some folks but there are some black folks in leadership positions there that get mad at even having another black person in the room. All the black folks at camp, all 15 to 20 of us, know it. The only people that don’t know it are the leaders. *shrugs* I mean since I’m telling the truth I just as well tell it all.

It would need to be someone who actually has their pulse on the black queer community and knows what we care about. What celebrities are WE swooning over? Believe it or not, there are more black queer woman out there than Samira Wiley. And black trans sistahs deserve to be featured BEFORE they die.

Entirely too often black queer people are expected to sit on their feelings in order to allow white queers to continue this façade of being progressive. We are literally afraid of being called the angry one. But I have come to understand that sometimes you have to be angry. Sometimes you need that feeling to drive you into action. If it results in calling a couple of people muthafuckas then that’s what it has to be. We have a right to our rage and we have a right to expect better.

We cannot allow the seduction of well-meaning whiteness to allow us to think that being quiet keeps anyone safe. In that same vein, we don’t need our rage policed when and where it is convenient for white institutions. Until there is some legit black leadership at AS that is how I will continue to view it. The fact that they would rather pay non-black people, no matter how radical and supportive they are, than actually bring black people to the table is telling. Or, should I say, the fact that they choose to pay non-black people and ask black folks to come to the table for free to do labor that they are too scared to do themselves is the telling part. I feel slapped in the face on behalf of all the black queer women out there. Whether they read AS or not. As I told G, at this point Autostraddle literally doesn’t have the funds to afford me.

About a week after camp I received a Facebook message from my black MOC sistah/camper. She asked a very interesting question. She referenced a conversation that she overheard at meal time about a person that made an offensive and exclusionary comment during camp. Her question was “Was that person/people who made the offending comments then told not to go to multiple places because they are unsafe to trans folks and make them feel uncomfortable? Or was it just the brown masculine of center person?” My answer? I had no answer because we both know the true answer.

The most I could tell her is that this wouldn’t be the last people heard on this matter and that I would stand up and fight for her. I hope I have done that in a way that makes her and, most importantly, my black queer elders proud. They taught me how important it was for us to be there for each other and support each other. I made a promise at my first camp I would pass that on to another sistah. I hope that I have done that.