Camp names spur online backlash

Critics slam Richmond Hill for gender-specific activities that push stereotypes on kids

Richmond Hill swiftly changed the names of its Girlz Rock and Boyz Rule summer camps Thursday, after a rash of online criticism. Girlz Rock Camp — which had more to do with manicures and cooking than rock music — has become Kidz Rock, while Boyz Rule is now Extreme Sports.

The camps have been around since 2008, according to the municipality. But a screenshot of its recreation guide that appeared on Twitter Wednesday was met with noise — not in the form of music — from people across the GTA.

Critics said the gender-specific activities push stereotypes on impressionable girls and boys.

“It reproduces the notion that girls are passive.” ARIEL TROSTER ACTIVIST BLOGGER ON GIRLZ ROCK CAMP

The town’s communications director Meeta Gandhi told the Star Wednesday that though the camps were marketed as gender-specific, any child within the 9- to 14-year-old age category could sign up for either.

Thursday, the town tweeted, “We have heard you and changed the names of our summer camp programs.” Gandhi had indicated that Richmond Hill would review the camps, the names being one of the things it would look at.

Ottawa activist Ariel Troster, who grew up near Richmond Hill, wrote about the camps on her blog, Queer Mama, after spotting the brochure on Twitter.

“It reproduces the notion that girls are passive; they should be doing sedate activities like crafts, preparing snacks,” Troster, who has a 3-year- old daughter and works in communications, told the Star before the name change. “The implication that the girls are learning cooking and the boys are not is essentially the girls are learning to cook for men. . . . Fundamentally, it’s limiting opportunities for girls. It’s telling them not to be physical.”

Susie Berg, a Toronto mother working in educational publishing who has been involved with summer camps, agreed.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Berg said in a phone interview Wednesday. She said most camps are divided by activities or interests, not gender. “I think the role of summer camp is to allow kids to develop their identity and be a supportive and safe space where they can do that.”

Berg’s 16-year-old son Mason came out as trans in the summer of 2015 and has been working at Bayview Glen camp in North York for the past two summers.

“I would probably hate it — just because there are aspects of both camps that I would enjoy,” he said, adding that the activities themselves aren’t bad, it’s the clear division that makes him uncomfortable. “There could be a nice balance between the two, but there isn’t.”

Also before the switch, Gandhi said the camps are operated in response to community demand. “Some of it is cultural-based. There’s a whole number of reasons why different groups in the community would register their child in a gender-specific program,” Gandhi said. “There’s a demand. People are registering or have continuously been registering their kids in the program since 2008.”

She said it was the first criticism of the program she’d heard of, but “we are definitely listening to the responses” and the program would be reviewed following community feedback, including from parents whose children are enrolled in them.

Meanwhile, at Rock Camp for Girls Montreal — which is part of the Girls Rock Camp Alliance, an umbrella organization for “girls rock” camps around the world — spokesperson Victoria Pilger pointed out Wednesday that the Richmond Hill camp was using a similar name to the international feminist movement.

“(It’s) using a language that is actually really intentional. . . . We all share the goal of using music to empower girls and gender non-conforming youth to basically make noise and take their place in the world.”

But at the same time, Pilger added, the activities in the Richmond Hill girls’ camp shouldn’t be seen as lesser because they’re feminine.