*Trigger Warning: Mention of sexual assault.*
I first learned camp instincts as a tenth grader while watching Jack McFarland on Will & Grace. I didn’t know how to theorize about it at the time, but as an aspiring music theatre performer, I carefully studied his perfectly timed jokes and eventually adopted his way-of-being-inthe-(straight)-world. This consisted largely of interrupting the tension of a serious situation with a bit of funniness. He didn’t shrink from pain or trauma; he met it head-on with a joke. The example that has always stood out to me is his recollection of dressing up as the original Wonder Woman for Halloween. “I once went as Lynda Carter,” he reminisced, “but from the Maybelline commercial. That stuff really works! Kids made fun of me all night. I cried and cried. My mascara never ran!”3 I remember being absolutely floored by that line because I, too, had suffered my fair share of bullying for being the kind of kid who wore makeup, both on- and offstage. What was liberating about watching Jack was discovering that it was possible, even in tragic situations, to choose to laugh and to invite others to join you.
This book, and the dissertation it’s based on, was born out of an almost lifelong situation of oppression, the culmination of which was three years of ex-gay therapy at the infamous Liberty University. I even had a few (yes, more than one) exorcisms performed for all my gay demons, which, I am happy to report, are still here with me these many years later. Several years after I left Liberty, I once again felt the crushing weight of conservative Evangelical homophobia when I was fired from two jobs in one year. The first job was at a big Christian musical theatre, which was run by millionaires who apparently were shocked to discover that they had gay male dancers on their payroll. The second job was at a Christian arts academy whose owner kept track of my “sexual sins” and had a very strict three-strikes-you’re-out policy, where a “strike” meant doing something gay with someone gay. I hopped around from job to job for a little while, and then, just as I started to rebuild my life—Bam!—I was drugged and sexually assaulted by a dentist who decided to have a little fun with me during a routine tooth extraction. Then there were the more everyday kinds of burdens, the bad-luck events, like getting evicted from my first apartment because I couldn’t afford rent, or getting dumped by a man who thought my love handles were too big, or having to endure the antigay bias that colored almost every interaction I had with people for decades, whether they were classmates, church leaders, gym teachers, or camp counselors. These experiences have left me wounded, and I continue to attend weekly therapy sessions to learn
how to manage all the trauma that chewed me up and spit me out and left me for dead on the side of the road.
And yet I am laughing. This laughter, I suspect, is God’s doing.Not laughing was also an option, and I know plenty of folks, especially some who also underwent ex-gay therapy, who chose this option. I suppose that, like them, I “have a right” to carry on being offended and angry about the abuse I’ve experienced. At the same time, if I’ve learned anything from cognitive behavioral therapy, it’s that obsessing over negative events that once happened to me will eventually take a toll on my emotional and mental health. A camp posture, on the other hand, helps me take these instances of oppression seriously without giving them the last word on who I am. Camp is a form of the ultimate spiritual practice of letting it go, it being any situation of oppression, victimization, or stigma.
Granted, for those making their first visit to these campgrounds, the thought of letting go of one’s own suffering and oppression might at first sound disrespectful, and possibly even like something an oppressor might say. After all, ignoring oppression of any kind seems like a practical way of not doing anything about it, of letting it continue to grow and fester and strangle those who are already marginalized. But this criticism is misguided because it is grounded in the assumption that the only way to dethrone oppressive structures is by burning them to the ground, that the only way to convert oppressors is by shaming them and stripping them of their wealth and power, that the world can only be fixed by destroying it and starting over.
Well, this book is driven by a simple wager: Camp, with little more than a feather boa and clever quip, offers us a better strategy for transforming the world.