Summer camp an exercise in belonging for LGBTQ+ youth

A Keene State professor believes gender barriers shouldn’t preclude physical fitness, and she’s planning her second year of a summer camp to offer area LGBTQ+ youth opportunities to socialize and exercise.

Mel Adams, an exercise science professor, is the mind behind “Pride in Motion,” which will feature activities like cooperative games, nature walks and “aerobic drumming” — an aerobic-style class with drumsticks. The program is geared toward kids ranging from 6th to 8th grade, roughly ages 11 to 14, and will take place on Keene State’s campus from July 31 to Aug. 4 in a day camp format.

Adams said it is important to provide a camp specifically for LGBTQ+ middle schoolers because she feels kids of different gender and sexual orientations may drop off from being physically active in their early teen years if they feel uncomfortable or unsuccessful in fitness programs in schools.

“For me, I identify as lesbian, and sports were incredibly important to me as a child,” Adams said. “I felt comfortable to a point in that binary system, but I also grew up knowing that I needed to hide aspects of myself — that it was important for me to present in a feminine-enough way to not draw attention to the fact I played so many sports.”

She expressed a desire to move beyond ideas of tying exercises to masculine or feminine ways of thinking.

“I really talk to my Keene State students all the time about de-gendering: In the language that we use, push-ups are an exercise,” Adams said. “There’s not a ‘boy’ push-up, there’s not a ‘girl’ push-up, and I kind of push really hard to make sure they leave feeling and thinking everyone can do any exercise.”

The camp launched last summer as “Youth in Motion,” and was advertised as a program for transgender and nonbinary children. But with only three children partaking, she said it may have been too niche.

“In the first year, all the activities were very much focused on movement,” Adams said from her classroom in Keene State’s recreation center building Sunday. “We had some ‘getting to know you’ games, sometimes focused on mindfulness.

“This year around we’re going to be very intentional about incorporating creative aspects, so arts and crafts, a segment on theater and dance and movement as your entire self.”

She said the shift in programming came about as she found that campers in the first year wanted to be creative after physical exercise.

The summer camp has its roots in studies Adams has conducted over the past five years about cultural norms surrounding fitness she said are prohibitive to people. Those began with a resistance training study about five years ago that involved three masculine-presenting transgender participants.

“As an exercise scientist and somebody who’d played sports all my life, I never really questioned things like ‘male’ or ‘female’ on a fitness test,” she said. “... I never thought there could be a segment of people for which this does not work at all.”

She added that part of the study found that participants felt more uncomfortable in a room on campus with a number of mirrors, so it factored into Adams avoiding that room for the summer camp.

Adams said Pride in Motion was also spurred by reports she read that transgender children face difficulty in finding affirming places to be physically active.

“I definitely think the transgender bans and all the controversies around affirmation of gender really particularly hurt physical activity as a safe space for children who are questioning their gender,” Adams said. “… There’s no reason we have to follow the sports model that divides people up into two genders. We just do it because it’s the way it’s always been done.”

Sam Cook, 16, of Keene, helped Adams and other coordinators with activities as a part-time camp counselor in the program’s first year.

“Physical activity has always been something that was not very fun for me,” said Cook, who is transgender and became involved in helping younger teens become more confident with fitness.

He said he plans to return this year in a full-time role.

“There were two in particular who it was really fun watching them because they weren’t that close at the beginning of the program, but by the end, they were practically inseparable,” he said.

Those seeking more information on Keene State’s Pride in Motion summer camp may email Heather Jasmin, the college’s educational program coordinator, at heather.jasmin@keene.edu.

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