Reflections on Kinky Gay Summer Camp

If we open our minds to new information and perspectives, the world can be a more welcoming, accepting, and joyful place.

I’m writing this post on the first day of Non-Binary Awareness Week 2025 (July 14-20). If we open our minds, non-binary people can teach us that we don’t have to categorize everything into two separate boxes. The gender spectrum is quite diverse, and that’s an important point pertinent to today’s post.

I just returned from an annual weekend I spend each year in the country with 100+ kinky gay men. Without mentioning any specifics about the event, let’s just say it’s an annual outing with a cadre of good friends, social circles, and intimate community counterparts. I look forward to it each year.

I use the word “gay” here as a cultural reference as much as a sexual orientation identifier. Yes, gay can identify an orientation, but it also encapsulates an entire culture unlike any other aspect of society. Gay people have their own nomenclature, rituals, mores, values, and social cues. While most of the men who frequent the event I was at are gay male identified, some might see themselves outside of the male/female binary (non-binary).

Indeed, the weekend catered not just to adult cis gay men like myself, which did comprise most attendees, but it also created a gay male-centered affinity space with masculine energy that openly welcomes trans men and non-binary individuals who live and play on the masculine end of the presentation spectrum.

Not only does the event readily welcome a more inclusive gender realm, but it is populated with an array of men of all ages and body types as well as BIPOC. This adds to the diversity of the event and, for me at least, heightens the enjoyability of the overall weekend.

I provide that background to make a point. Cis gay men, trans men, and nonbinary masculine-presenting individuals all mixed, socialized, and played in the same countryside setting for three full days and everyone got along swimmingly. And it was lovely and fun.

Not only were the conversations and social mixing excellent, but everyone also learned a bit too. Apart from the official education workshops held during the weekend, the most important learning came from simply being together in a beautiful rural setting and mingling with people both alike and different from ourselves.

I’m an advocate for affinity spaces. While mixing all types of people and erotic cultures together is great, there is a time and place for clearly demarcated affinity spaces. In “The Need for Erotic Affinity Spaces” I wrote this about affinity spaces.

Let me be clear that I am not a proponent of hyper exclusion with every orientation, sexuality, and demographic neatly compartmentalized only in their own spaces. That’s not at all what I’m proposing But, there is a time and a place. There are times and there are places that are and should be frequented entirely by people who closely resonate with the cultural norms, attractions, erotic practices, and sexual mindset of those most like them.

The event I was at was indeed an affinity space attended by a specific subset of gay culture. I need such events and spaces in my life and other people do too.

Creating a vibrant community is often a balancing act between thoughtful and compassionate inclusion and exclusion. The question people must continually ask themselves, especially event producers, venue owners, community leaders, and organizations, is whether the guidelines for the spaces they’re creating are a generalized public space or specific affinity space in alignment with current reality.

For example, trans men are men. Full stop. That is reality to me. I know some will disagree. They’re wrong. For me, this is not negotiable. I’ve also come around to realizing many of the gay men I socialize with now more appropriately identify as non-binary and I’ve needed to update my mindset to accept this reality. I say reality because when someone says “this is who I am” I believe them. No one has the right to tell someone else who they are inside.

Are these mental adjustments always easy? No. Even I have struggled over the decades to update my worldview about such things. Despite my deep roots in LGBTQ civil rights and community building, that doesn’t mean I come with a fully formed set of understandings and views. I keep learning and growing. Everyone should keep learning and growing.

While the event I was at was for kinksters, the side benefit of this particular event is how organically it acculturates its attendees into the normalization of trans and non-binary understanding and acceptance. I hope to see more events do the same. The world will be a better place if they do.

You can use this link to access all my writings and social media and ways to support my work. My content is usually open and free to view, but for those who are able your paid subscription (click the Subscribe button) or patron support are always appreciated.