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The Time I Was Outed by My Teacher
A perspective from Sarah Clements
I don’t think he had negative intentions.
That isn’t an excuse. He didn’t have negative intentions, but it had a negative result, because he doesn’t understand. His ignorance is exactly why my parents know that I’m lesbian years before I had planned to tell them. He has a hundred different students with a hundred different stories, so of course he wouldn’t even think about one little email. I honestly doubt he even remembers doing this, but I could never forget. This is why I’m writing this: not to lash out at the teacher who outed me, even though I have every right to be upset. I want to help him and anyone who claims to be an LGBT ally understand that someone’s sexuality isn’t your conversation starter. He doesn’t even know he did it, but in one click, I felt the safe foundation I had built crack under my feet because one person didn’t understand. I put my faith in one person simply because he had a cute little flag outside his classroom, and he unknowingly ripped the choice I was supposed to make out of my hands.
Maybe I was the ignorant one. How could I be so naïve? I should have learned by now, but still I thought that he, the teacher who preached non stop about recognizing privilege and educating yourself, would actually practice what he preached. He was just so passionate about what he did, that I thought there was no way there would be any negative consequences of me casually slipping my sexuality into the seminar, because it was relevant to the conversation. It wasn’t some dramatic coming out, because in regards to anyone other than my family, I act nonchalant about my sexuality. I’m guessing that he assumed that since I could bring it up in his class, that I must be out to everyone. This thought process is why I’m writing this: because assumptions as broad as this are nothing short of dangerous. He didn’t know my parents, and just because we live in a liberal town, this does not guarantee that they would be accepting. And even though my parents were, for the most part, accepting, what if? What if my parents weren’t? What if they sent me to conversion camp, or kicked me out of the house? 40% of all homeless teens are LGBT, even though only 8% of teens identify as LGBT. If my teacher had done this to someone else, he could have made one of his own pupils a statistic.
I talked earlier about choice. Sexuality is extremely complex, and so my choice to tell a classroom of people that I only saw 5 days a week is a lot different than telling the people who raised me. Raised me on daydreams of my father walking me down the aisle in a long white dress, all to give me away to some chivalrous man who had charmed them over dinner. Filled my head with fantasies of prom dances and giving birth to a baby that I could name after my favorite movie character. So to tell these people, who had lived their whole lives in a heteronormative bubble, that their only daughter is gay? It isn’t a small feat. It took me long enough to get over compulsory heterosexuality: forcing myself to be attracted to any boy who made me laugh. I needed to fully come to terms with my own sexuality before I could tell anyone close to me. It was never his place to disclose the details of someone’s sexuality to anyone else: It’s supposed to be me who gets to decide who I tell, when I tell them, and how I do it. It should have been me.
He tells his students to recognize their privilege, just as he does. It’s a nice thing to teach, but he clearly has not educated himself if he didn’t once think about the consequences his email could have had. He needs to realize that he is at the top of the totem pole, and stop speaking over marginalized voices. I’m not just writing this for me. I’m writing this for everyone in LGBT community, so that they get to make the choice that should be theirs. To help allies not make the same mistake he did. Create a space that is truly safe and accepting, and not just by putting up posters. I want him, and everyone else to understand. He might be the teacher, but he definitely could afford to learn from us a little bit too.
