Hi, everyone. A while back, I had posted a thread asking for advice on teaching university (undergraduate) classes as an 'out' transwoman, since I'm a teaching assistant and must teach two classes each semester. I came out to my department and all of my friends in the U. S. in December, though my family--excepting my parents--still doesn't know I'm transgender because they largely live in a part of the Caribbean that is fairly homophobic. And so I'm out to everyone but my family, more or less. I hadn't been sure about teaching, though, since I was uncertain how my students would react to me. My voice is still largely masculine, and I'm only (hopefully) going to start HRT this month or early April, depending on what my meeting with my endocrinologist goes like. I've only now filed my petition to legally change my (unambiguously male) name to my preferred one, Gabrielle, so my students would see me listed under a male name in all their emails, server listings, etc. And I'd encountered homophobic undergrads in my classes before, which made me warier.
I was so scared that I went to teach the first day of the semester presenting as a male. And I hated myself for it. So, so much.
So much that I pushed myself to simply come out to them on the second day, which I did. It was nerve-wrecking, but I worked up the courage to wear a bit of makeup, flats, and a subtle pair of dangle earrings, and I told them I was transgender. Fortunately, queer issues are tangentially part of the course--it's about global literature--so it wasn't completely out of left field, but I still remember my heart feeling like it was going to leap clear out of my chest as I walked to the department building, then to the classroom.
And since then, I've simply been myself with my students. Although virtually none of them appeared to know what it meant to be transgender (most of them also struggled to define the letters in LGBTQIA in a subsequent class, though I understand the QIA is a tad more obscure to the general public) when I asked them what they understood by the term (one kid thought it meant 'sexually different'), they took me well, for the most part, in that they didn't show me any disrespect and simply called me by a neutral-gender title, as I requested.
I did lose a few students who dropped out immediately after I came out, and a few later due to absences. I suspect at least some of those were put off by having a non-gender-conforming teacher in front them, since I've been teaching for five years now at this university and have never before seen that many kids leave. (It's a large class, so it's not a very noticeable loss overall, but still.)
But beyond that, I feel so much happier with myself, having come out to my students. One of them told me I was brave in an email; another came out to me later and thanked me for the LGBT education I'd provided so far. While I still have a long long long way to go, I feel so much more at peace.
Thanks to everyone who had written in with suggestions and feedback to that earlier post, and I'm sorry for not replying sooner--I've been tied up with a lot of problems from my parents (can't return home, am an abomination, won't accept children from me even if I bank my sperm and marry a woman, am a freak, should forget I have a mother, etc.--almost the usual, at this point, sadly). Despite those issues, I feel like I'm moving towards something, and I just wanted to thank everyone here for that.
