By Clare GM
In my final year of high school, I shared an English Literature class with half the boys’ football team and a handful of girls who hated my guts. Our school was a conservative Christian school in a conservative city in Australia, and I was desperate to get out of both. Our English Lit teacher that year had gotten sick of trying to force Shakespeare into the brains of bored teenagers, so he’d decided to shake things up a bit. Alongside studying Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, and a poetry unit which helped me discover the works of W. H. Auden, we were going to watch the iconic 1972 film Cabaret. The football boys were unimpressed from the start. I was enraptured. I had first whispered the words: “I’m bisexual” to a close friend in an airport bathroom 3,500km from home while on a school trip when I was 13. Since then, I had been quietly soaking up every bit of queer culture I could get my hands on and carefully carving out tiny pockets of community wherever I could.
One moment in the film grabbed me:
Brian: Screw Maximillian!
Sally: I do!
Brian: So do I.
My heart leapt. I’m not sure if Brian was the first explicitly bisexual character I encountered, but he must have been close to it. And I was getting to study him!
Of course, just as quickly as joy hit me, it was ripped away again, as everyone else in the room started groaning and yelling. “Gross!” “Ewww, why are we watching this?” “That’s so wrong.”
I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t let them see me be weak. And I definitely couldn’t let them see me care. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. All year, our teacher had taught the class somewhat laconically from his desk at the back of the room. He didn’t get up for anything, and he basically let us settle disputes among ourselves. But not today! Today he switched off the video, got up from his desk, walked slowly around to the front of the class, looked us all in the eye and said firmly, “If you are going to be homophobic in my classroom, you can get out and you will fail.”
It was all I could do not to leap from my desk and cheer. This was the last place I expected to find support—I’d certainly never heard an adult say anything positive about queer people in real life at this point! But here was a teacher I’d written off as being pretty much checked out, glaring down some of the most privileged kids in the school and telling them that homophobia had consequences. After making his pronouncement, the teacher returned to his desk, started the movie again, and the moment passed. But I never heard another homophobic word in that classroom.
My English Lit grades improved immensely after this incident, and I even got up the courage to start dating my first girlfriend somewhat publicly. I found it really inspiring to have someone who was willing to stand up for me, even if he didn’t know it was me he was standing up for. I often think of that teacher. He exemplified, to me, a number of the values I wanted to demonstrate in my own life, such as honesty, bravery, justice, and compassion. I’m now a community advocate, both in the queer and disability spaces, and this is a story I frequently share about the effect speaking up against discrimination and bigotry can have.
Clare GM is a disabled queer person living in Melbourne, Australia. They love singing and advocacy work.