I want to go camping

9/26/2026 ~ 11:39pm

It's hard to still my thoughts enough to figure out what to write about, so today I want to write about my desire to go camping and my internal struggles with it as a Black genderfluid-trans man.

A seemingly innocent and fun hobby/activity that millions of people enjoy each year. I want to do it, but even with camping there is complications to it caused by things outside of my control. To the outside world the first thing noticed is that I appear to be an African African Female, so when I say things like "I want to go camping" most of my family and friends look at me like I'm crazy. It is no secret that a lot of Black people consider camping, hiking, mountain climbing, etc to be "white people shit". Some people even go as far as to say that Black people who enjoy exploring the great outdoors deserve to be victims of horrific racial violence because "You should have known better". When people, especially other Black people, say things like this make me want to crawl into a ball and fucking die honestly. It takes me out of my reality, a reality where I can go anywhere, do anything, be myself and be free, and places me back on Earth. I don't understand why the world has to be such an intensely scary place all the time and i'll be honest, if I could shapeshift into a white man in order to be able to minimize the risk of being attacked for being a woman and/or Black while camping I'd probably do it in a heartbeat lol.

I don't hate being Black. I have no wish to actually be a white man, I only wish that the world wasn't so unsafe for people like me. It's the fact too that even IF I got a Black group to go camping with I would still not be able to disclose mostly anything about myself. As a Black trans man theres never really a "safe" group of people to be alone in the woods with on paper. On paper unless its other Black queer people the blame would publicly fallen on you for choosing to go into go camping when "you knew better". In reality the political correctness of your camping group doesn't usually matter. For most people they pick people they feel comfortable around and trust. My heart breaks knowing that in many situations it is that comfort and trust that gets people killed.

I don't know that I'll ever find the "perfect" group to go camping with that I feel comfortable enough to come out to, but I do know that I want to go camping, and I'm going to try to make that happen.