I have to say I initially was caught a bit off guard - but I was seriously dissed at Asia Source II by a camp participant who apparently found me to be an arrogant american.   What was fascinating about it all was that it started out as a bit of fun by the Participants in the track I was facilitating.  They decided to prepare a short skit for morning circle that included them imitating the facilitators of the track.  Before the day was through, I found myself being seriously dissed on the camp blog, cries of homophobia being voiced by some of my closer friends at the camp and a series of events occuring that initially had me very troubled but ended up with me becoming very proud of the response by the camp participants.

It all started innocently enough.  Every morning we start the day with everyone in the camp forming a circle and report backs from each of the four tracks being given to report on progress and keeping everyone up to speed as to where everyone's learnings are at.  The report backs had taken on a major creative edge since the first day when one of the tracks performed a short skit rather than give a verbal report.  These report backs were participant-driven, meaning they thought them up themselves and presented them.  Apparently our track was feeling that with three facilitators with three very distinct personalities, we were ripe for parody.  Unfortunately, the fellow playing me decided to go for a cheap laugh and potrayed me as a being a bit limp-wristed along with flexing his muscles now and then.   It did get a huge laugh and I tried not to let it bother me but I walked away from the circle wondering if it was a bit homophobic.

When we started session, I offered to allow the participant to facilitate the session mimicing me some more.  There was a good laugh among the participants and he declined the offer.  I thought that would be the end of it.

Three hours later when we concluded the session, I was stopped by fellow veteren source camp facilitator and good friend from Manila, c5, who told me that she was troubled by the portrayal - thought it was way homophobic - and worse yet, there was now a post on the camp blog by a participant saying it was dead-on.  I groaned, opened up my laptop and took a look at the blog. ADD QUOTE FROM BLOG HERE

I soon found myself at the center of the first major camp controversy.  There was a swirling chain of events, including meetings with the camp organizers about whether the post should be deleted and the participant who wrote it ejected (neither happened, thankfully), lots of participants and facilators approaching me to say how much they disagreed with the post and heartfelt apologies from the guys that had put the morning report back together.

What was really interesting to me was how the whole subject of homophobia raising its head. A lot of my defenders were quick to jump to judgement that I had been the victim of homophobia, both in the portrayal but also in the blog post.  When the guy who portrayed me in the morning came to me to apologize (he actually hadn't seen the blog post yet), I told him that I had been a bit offended at being passed off as a stereotype.   He told me he had no idea I was gay and had simply gone for the cheap easy laugh and now deeply regretted it.  He knew what he'd done was wrong and was very disrespectful.  Ultimately I believe the homophobic piece was not so much his intent, it was just an easy laugh and thats easy enough to forgive.  He was also very disturbed that someone had thought his potrayal was "dead on".

However the blog piece shows no sign of being homophobic, I am simply being accused of being an arrogant american (which is another stereotype altogether).  Arrogance is not necessarily something I can deny and I won't.  Still it did hurt most of all that someone would take a public platform and single me out for it.  Though by the end of the day, I found that the discourse that had gone on about it all had acknowledged both and there was major disagreement with the nature of the post and that it was a shame that something so disrespectful had happened to a member of the camp.

Ultimately, I was glad that it had happened, I felt the dialogue had given a lot of people an opportunity to reflect on what was actually disrepectful.  Of course it was personally very vindicating to have camp participants defend my character for me.  It also had the extra added benefit of the camp blog suddenly taking off like you wouldn't believe.  Nothing like a little controversy to liven things up! 

Thank god my skin is pretty thick, I think if I had overeacted things would have escalated into something very ugly.  Instead the tact not to address it publically infront of the camp worked well and by the next day it seemed the intent to disrespect me by the blog poster had had the opposite effect. Seemed he had only attacked himself by attacking me.  He also was scheduled to leave in the first group of departures the very next morning, I ended up only have to sit in the same room with him once at the end of the day during a gathering of the entire camp.  Every other person departing at the same time made the rounds that night to say good bye and say thank you to everyone, yet he chose not too.

technorati tags:queer, AsiaSourceII