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Ever had a homophobic teacher at school?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by Joe2001, Jun 4, 2020.

  1. Joe2001

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    Wondering if anyone else has had a negative experience being gay at school, not necessarily with other pupils but with a teacher who is a homophobe. Looking back, there was one of my teachers who I think got wind of the fact that I am gay and started acting real awkward around me. He only seemed to like the straight guys (didn't seem to like the girls much either). Our working relationship was non-existent for most of that year.

    Has this happened to you?
     
  2. HM03

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    Not personally affected, but I definitely have been taught by homophobes.

    My Chem teacher in highschool was openly misogynist (and he'd squeeze his agenda into class whenever he could) and appearently said homophobic stuff in the past until principal talked to him lol.

    The woodworking teacher was homophobic but shut his mouth at school lol.
     
  3. Destin

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    My biochemistry professor loved me, I sat in the front row, he called on me every class, joked with me every class etc. and I was totally planning on getting a letter of recommendation from him for grad school. About halfway through my second semester taking a class of his, he randomly encountered me on campus and I didn't see him. I kissed my boyfriend and he saw.

    The next day when I got to class, he refused to look at me, talk to me, or acknowledge my existence. Would look over my head instead of at me. After a week of that, apparently me even physically being there was too much for him. I got to class, and my chair/desk was unbolted from the floor and laying on its side. So I stood it back up and tried to twist it back into its hole in the floor. Sat there uncomfortably for the whole class trying to balance in the desk without falling. The next day, I come to class, and not only is my chair/desk unbolted from the floor...it's gone. Completely gone. Nobody else's chair out of the 200 seat lecture hall, just mine. So I had to sit in the back out of his view for the rest of the semester where the available seats were.

    Yeah. I'd say he's a homophobe. What I learned from that was to never again show affection to my boyfriend on campus unless it was at night, just in case another professor walked by and didn't like it.

    Oh, and here's our university student senate president there's currently a petition to remove because of this, which has 20,000 signatures: https://twitter.com/jonathanmmarcus/status/1268375612093333507?s=21
     
    #3 Destin, Jun 4, 2020
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2020
  4. Vesta

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    Thankfully I never have. During school I wasn't out, but much of the teachers seemed accepting. It was the pupils that were more of an issue anyway. College and university were quite different. Everyone was far more accepting of sexuality.

    That's absolutely shocking. I can't imagine how you must have felt through all of that. :frowning2:
     
    #4 Vesta, Jun 5, 2020
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2020
  5. Joe2001

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    That behaviour is disgusting - did you not report him?
     
  6. Destin

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    I did not. He was the head of the chemistry department and I was a biochemistry major. He had the power to screw with me 20+ different ways for 2 years if I angered him so I didn't want to risk it. He also could have gotten my other chemistry teachers to not write me letters of recommendation, or not hire me for their labs, which was needed to get into grad school. I should have reported him, but the potential risk was too high.
     
  7. musicteach

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    When I was in high school our band director was absolutely horrible. He was homophobic as all get out and probably a little racist too. But the parents loved him and the school board couldn’t touch him because the band was a championship band (my senior year alone we brought home enough gold medals we could have melted them into new instruments). The band stepped onto a football field and you already knew who was going to win. We went collegiate festivals because we were invited.

    It was ironic because the band had so many LGBT students. Marching bands always have a proportionately high LGBT kids — don’t ask me why because I don’t know. Maybe it’s because to the band it’s all about the band. Nobody cares as long as you pull your weight. But yeah he was awful. We tried to get him fired my sophomore year but it fell through.

    One of our PE teachers at the school I teach at is pretty homophobic. Him and I do NOT get along.
     
  8. TheodoreAC

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    Kind of... I had a transphobic substitute, does that count?
     
  9. Canterpiece

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    Unfortunately, yes.

    - I had a biphobic teacher. A student asked her who she thought was gay in our class. She didn't answer that question, but she did go into a random biphobic rant instead. "I have nothing against gay people, but bisexual isn't a thing. That's just being greedy. Pick a side".

    - My biology / sex education teacher was homophobic. A different student asked him about safe-sex practices in homosexual relationships. He had an amused look on his face when he mockingly asked the student "Why, are you gay?" then he laughed a little along with most of the class. I couldn't bring myself to laugh, I wasn't out at the time but I didn't want to laugh along either.

    The student slumped down awkwardly in his chair. "I mean, no, I'm not, but there might be some people here that might want to know that stuff, I was asking for them".

    Our teacher ignored the question for most of the class until he finally addressed it at the end of the lesson. "If you can help it, just don't have gay sex, it's pointless".

    Well, I call it sex ed but that's generous. Our school had an abstinence until heterosexual marriage and only to reproduce approach. In another room, they had to ask a heavily pregnant teenager to leave first before teaching us about the importance of abstinence.

    During a two year course (that was separate from the previously mentioned school), when I was sixteen I had to fill out a quiz to test our knowledge on sex ed. Admittedly I had to lean over and discreetly ask someone else what the answers were since I hadn't covered anything that quiz was asking me. It was focused on heterosexual relationships.
     
  10. Loves books

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    None of my teachers were obviously homophobic but I went to a Catholic all girls school. Lesbian was the worst insult you could give someone. We were taught by some retreat group, I think it was called NET Canada, that being gay was fine as long as you didn’t act on it. We were also taught the no sex before marriage idea that no one had any intention of going along with. My religion teacher was probably homophobic but everyone joked she was probably a lesbian. Her idea of religion class was a video we were shown called Abortion : the silent scream. I never wanted to see an ultrasound of a baby being ripped apart in an abortion and the narrator telling us that the baby’s mouth opening as it’s leg was ripped off is the baby screaming. I am pretty sure if that woman ever came in contact with an out person she would be openly homophobic. The convent and church was next door to our school and our history teacher was a nun, She was very sweet but she might have been homophobic but everyone loved her.
     
  11. musicteach

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    The bad part is that there’s so many schools that focus on abstinence education and extremely heterosexual “sex” education — I use the term lightly. Frankly it’s not helpful and more often than not results in higher teen pregnancy rates. Some districts in the US have found out that the approach doesn’t work and that by offering actual education — how to use a condom, what to do with this, blah blah blah — the rates of uh-oh’s have gone down. It also depends on how the state’s laws/curriculum is written as well. Unfortunately, sometimes the states education departments are extremely thick in that department.

    In my district, band counts as a PE/health/art credit because it’s a full year course instead of a semester course. Which also means I’m responsible for the sex Ed talk. And I’m going to be honest, I give the honest answers. I don’t beat around the bush, and don’t lie about it. I don’t preach abstinence until marriage or any of that b.s. I firmly believe if you tell a group of teenagers don’t do this until you’re an adult it’s dangerous they’re going to want to do it even more. Then they do it once and nothing happens, so they figure it was just a scare tactic and it keeps happening until oops. And because you didn’t actually teach them anything, they don’t have any of the tools or knowledge to deal with anything!

    Right now in the band that I know of, there’s some 30 students who are something other than heterosexual. Those are just the out ones that I know about. I’d rather give them the information to make sure that if they’re going to do something they do it safe because guess what. You can’t participate in marching band if your butt is sore/bleeding because you and your friend didn’t know how to do things safely. You can’t do marching band if you’re pregnant, either.
     
  12. Destin

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    You're a good teacher. I wish I had more teachers like you when I was a kid. Not even just for the sex ed reasons, it's that you actually look deeper into an issue and how to handle it best for the well being of the students. Many teachers just do the bare minimum as required and parrot whatever some 90 year old administrator who hasn't dealt with kids in 60 years wrote for them to say, which obviously doesn't help at all.
     
  13. musicteach

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    I generally have the same students for all 4 years of their high school, or however many years they’re actually here in the case of a transfer. During marching band season, I see my students more than I see my actual family. I care about each and every one of them, perhaps disproportionately more than a regular teacher. So I have to take into consideration that when I have a class of freshmen, I will be influencing them until they graduate, more so than any other teacher in the building.

    I also have to take into consideration the overall consideration and well being of the band as a whole. Even though we’re set to march 500 students this fall, each is just as important as the next. Each has a dot, each is part of the whole. Someone being out because of injuries or whatever effects the entire band because each individual set of drill has to be adjusted to compensate.
     
  14. Brokenheart4now

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    Many time I do not even know where to start. I went to all girls schools my entire life in a homophobic society. So you can imagine my struggle. I had huge crushes on two teachers one when I was in elementary school and another one in middle school.
    The elementary school teacher did not even look at me and punished me for liking her. I was 9 years old
    The middle school teacher told me I am mentally sick for being gay, and how disgusting I am, I was 13
    I stopped liking teachers, I started to have issues with women in authority in adult life. Legit I had no idea how to speak to female managers as an adult I act awkward and worried.
    Funny thing is in college two teachers wanted to sleep with me. I did not do it. One of them was married to a woman and I cared enough about her not to ruin her marriage. the other one she was with a bf and still confused about her sexuality. I am pretty sure I would have been able to sleep with them if I wanted to. The one with bf still in and out of my life and keeps telling me to be her friend and never leave her. I am 100% confident that we will end up together even as on night stand. Its weird how life works. I feel the need to be with her, maybe to heal the childhood wounds I had with other teachers LOL
     
  15. Canterpiece

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    Which is exactly why I cast a doubtful eye in regards to teaching abstinence. I understand that the curriculum isn't always in the hands of the teacher. Before the lesson started, our sex ed teacher was talking quietly to an overseer about the notes approved by the regional education board. He told the overseer that he thought the idea that teenagers would listen to this was laughable, but that he had to do it because that was his job. So sometimes even the people teaching abstinence don't believe that the lesson they're teaching will actually be heeded. The area I grew up in unsurprisingly had a significantly high rate of teenage pregnancy. Which led to a rather halfhearted teaching that felt outdated and detached from reality.
     
  16. musicteach

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    Here’s the thing, and this logic applies to guns, knives, drugs, sex, (rock n roll), stealing, and anything else you could say is bad or dangerous. If you tell someone “this is bad, don’t do this, because it’s bad” — grown people too but especially children and teens — that’s the first dang on thing they want to mess with. And the first couple of times, they probably get lucky nothing happens. Then they think, “oh well that wasn’t so bad, nothing bad happened, maybe they just didn’t want me to mess with it or they lied”.

    So then they do it again. Everytime they do it again, and nothing bad happens, it reinforces the idea that you had told them a small fib. So they get bolder. Maybe they start by stealing a candy bar from the register. Nothing bad happens so they steal some underwear. Some DVDs/CDs.

    And that’s how you get dead kids because they played with the gun. Or they shot too much heroine. They got caught stealing something big now they’re in jail. Somebody is pregnant or has an STD.

    If you don’t believe me, here’s an experiment anyone can try with their kids/nieces/nephews/etc. Take something harmless like a pack of chewing gum. (Personally I’d get some of that prank stuff that turns your mouth black). Put it in a safe place and tell them it’s in this safe place and they are not to mess with it. Just tell them not to mess with it because it’s bad. Give it a while. You’ll catch ‘em with some black teeth eventually.

    I say this as someone who grew up around guns, who learned to shoot when I was 9. Someone who has guns. If my fiancé is home, there’s always at least one gun in the house (his service pistol). So we’ve educated our kids how to treat them with respect and understand that they’re not toys but that they’re tools. They are dangerous, but with proper training and respect a gun will never go off on its own. We’ve taught them to clear a live gun, to clean it and handle it. With respect. We’ve let them shot, and showed them with gelatin targets what these tools are capable of and are used for. I can safely bet they won’t play with them.
     
  17. Ves2

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    Haha yea.
    I remember my old science teacher telling the entire class that homosexuals have a mental illness (I know that they used to teach that but it’s the 21st century get with the program ). I also had a teacher that absolutely HATED gay people. She would literally send the dirtiest looks to us and tell us “God created men and women to be together!1!!! It’s not right!!!”. Like bitch, go suck an egg.
     
  18. Nightlight

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    I live in a homophobic country. No one is going to kill you for being lgbt, but they might hunt you down psychologically. Luckily no one, or not even professors said anything outwardly negative. Online I see all kinds of things.
     
  19. BothWaysSecret

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    Probably. I went to Catholic school for 12 years, so I'm sure there were more than a fair share of homophobic teachers.

    Although to be honest, I didn't know I was bi at that time (don't know how considering some of my thoughts and attractions, but thats a different story), so I never experienced any of the teachers being homophobic. There were definitely some gay kids in my grade schopl and high school but I never noticed if any of the teachers were homophobic towards them. I'll have to ask my best friend (who is gay) and was out in high school if any of the teachers were blatant homophobes.
     
  20. mellissa

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    LOL
    ''Go suck an egg" That is the funniest thing I ever heard. I can't get that image out of my head.
    In Canada, saying anything homophobic would lead to serious trouble for the teacher. So those that were homophobic had to keep it quiet.