I'm the Trans Teacher who has Found (More) Peace in Baltimore
Some more info about that Baltimore Banner Story
This post is going to be lower on text and higher on image content than is usual for me because this is where I am going to post (moreālike maybe 5%) of the receipts of the story that recently ran about me in the Banner.
Before I go any further I need to give a pretty severe content warning. I am telling more of the story here of experiencing a lot of transphobic, homophobic, racist, and ableist hate. If being exposed to screen shots of violent threats of that nature is going to be harmful to you then please take care of yourself and skip this post.
Iām a high school teacher (social studies mostly) and I came out publicly and at work as trans in late January of 2022. I worked with our admin to craft a message that would be clear but not distracting. It ended up being a letter introducing myself to parents & staff.
Things actually went surprisingly well (I was teaching in one of the more conservative neighborhoods in the district at the time) and many of the faculty and students were wonderfully supportive. There was some grumbling but less than I had feared. t took until May when someoneāI still don't know whoāsent a photo of me in my classroom standing in front of a BLM flag to LoTT who posted it with an... unkind caption. When we talk about stochastic terrorism, well, here is where it started for me.
The post started showing up in place beyond Twitter and some of them are less moderated. As a result the threats got to be less veiled. They were also a lot more disturbing (turns out that a lot of transphobes are also super racist) CW on these images for racism & transphobia.
Then an alumnus of one of my classes saw it and that got uglier because the threats grew teeth. This is about the point where I found out what was going on an promptly reported everything to my admin.
After that Benny Johnson shared the LoTT post on IG and it turns out that several people in the community follow him. It got uglier there and on FB.
They ID'd me and the school again and that is when the direct message threats started..
The Admin at my school were great. They took this all seriously and backed me to the hilt. there was increased police presence at the school and they ended up charging one of the people who threatened me with a hate crime. Meanwhile the queer students were (very reasonably) terrified. Most of themāmost of the schoolāwere aware of what was happening by then and seeing the violent hatred towards queer people and their community and teacher specifically was rough for them.
Unfortunately the queerphobes in the community had tasted blood. Things were quiet-er over the summer but started back up in the fall. This time the charge was led by the woman who had already been charged with a hate crime, and the parent of a student who had been in the GSA
They shared videos of students making out and claiming that I was present. They shared a video of a student dancing at a party and experiencing a wardrobe malfunction and tried to imply that I was behaving inappropriately. I won't share any of that for the student's privacy.
The parent in particular mostly seemed desperate to catch the attention of rightwing anti-trans media outlets. They REALLY wanted me to be fired. When they worked out that our club used IG to coordinate club activities they asked for an investigation.
This group of parents went as far as faking a FB friend request (an odd choice since it was so easy to disprove) to try to get me in trouble. The investigation concluded that I hadn't done anything wrong beyond using an unapproved platform to coordinate club activities.
But the threats continued...
As a result, the school district decided that *I* wouldn't be safe at my original school so they transferred me to another school in the county, teaching the same (AP World History) courses. Unfortunately the mob (and my harasser Steph) found out where I was. CW: Transphobia
Admin at the new school handled it well (there was one other minor incident) but there just comes a point when you're just tired of itāworn down. A friend told me about an opening at her school in another district and I applied and got the job. It's also a shorter commute.
Closing thoughts
Let me just drop a few salient facts to dispel a few rumors I have seen floating around online
1. I was the victim of hate crime harassment; my harasser plead guilty and got 3 years probation and 100hrs community service.
2. I was never fired (I have never been fired in my life); I was investigated because of a combination of faked and misrepresented stories about me. The investigation found I did not say anything inappropriate at all but I was transferred to another school for my safety. During the investigation I worked to help my county write their LGBTQ+ History curriculum.
3. Just for the record, nobody at LoTT, Reduxx or any other anti-trans "news" org ever (to my knowledge) reached out to me for comment before publishing misleading and hateful things about me.
It is *hard* right now to be queer in education. It is *really hard* to be transgender. I was the faculty sponsor for my school's Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) for a decade before I came out but once there was a trans teacher in the classroom all hell broke loose. I have a sterling record as an educatorāhighest possible rating 7 years running including the year all of this went down; excellent AP scoresābut none of that mattered to people who couldn't stand to see their students taught by a trans woman.
And to this day I worry about the queer students and faculty back at that school. The admin there are good people who do all they can but if the county didn't think they could keep me safe there, what does that say about those kids' safety? So please go find a way to volunteer with and support a local GSA. Queer kids need to know that you are fighting for them. Support the teachers unions that support their queer teachers. It is a hard time.
As I reflect on all of this I want to add a few more thoughts on to the end of this. I made it. I am genuinely well supported at my current school. And also it was hard; it was really hard. You tell yourself that you are above the hate but when it comes in torrents (I shared a trickle) it adds up. Two people who were absolutely steadfast and essential to me getting through this are my friends Megan and Holly who volunteered to monitor the biggest and most hateful accounts (including my harasser) and grab screenshots and let me know when I needed to be aware.
The work they did let me exist outside of hyper-vigilance and without having to constantly expose myself to that hate. As my friend Gabriel likes to quote C.S. Lewis (via Edmund) "if there's a wasp in the room I like to see it". They let me stop wasp scanning. That is the work of allies for sure, but more deeply it is the work of friends and I am so so grateful for their friendship. When I needed it desperately they carried what I couldn't and I will always be grateful for that.