Society & Politics

I "Accidentally" Outed A Teacher

I "Accidentally" Outed A Teacher

When I look back on my life thus far, I have few regrets. I feel like in life, we go through what we do for a reason, and that is usually to grow or to change in some way hopefully for our benefit, but when I do think back and wonder if I do actually regret anything, "accidentally" outing my teacher, is one of my regrets in life.

My high school experience was not about sports, or cheer-leading, or dances, or parties; it was all about grades. Getting into college, being head of the class, making straight A's, all of that was literally everything and anything that mattered. It was drilled into us from the first day of school that nothing would be tolerated from us other than academic excellence. Every test, every exam, every assignment, and every practical became this never ending test of wills between students. I, along with my fellow classmates, were under enormous constant never ending pressure from the school and from our own parents to rise to be the cream of the crop, so when you made a B in a class or got a B on a test, you might as well have gotten pregnant and done drugs.

So along came my Trig teacher. He was this really awkward guy who in my opinion, wasn't the best teacher. He just sort of thought his students should get it if he explained something and when you didn't, it was kind of like, well who's fault is that sort of attitude rather then come by and I'll help after class or here's a tutor who can help you better explain it. He was just cold in that way and he made a lot of students feel inferior even in one of the best schools in the country. You'd be hard pressed to really have found a student who liked him as a person or his teaching style. In fact, most students weren't doing well in his class, which only exacerbated the feeling of dislike towards him because he was keeping our GPA's down, and that was just unacceptable to the point where even some of the parents had begun questioning his teaching methods.

I "Accidentally" Outed A Teacher

Then one night, I got an email from my friend with a note that it was urgent I open the message. When I did, I immediately called him because I could not believe what he'd found. There in the email was a picture of my Trig teacher with no shirt on, in a leather vest, in really short leather shorts, with a dating profile aimed towards men. I was in shock. I'd never seen a teacher outside of school for one, and let alone a dating profile for men, woah. My friend hated our teacher, like really hated him, so this to him was like a golden ticket. So after our conversation I hung up after asking him if it was okay if I sent this to a few friends, which he agreed was fine, so I sent it to 2 of my other friends with the same sort of note, that they just had to see this.

I didn't think anything of it, until I got to school the next day and people were talking about it. People I clearly had not sent the picture to were everywhere all wondering where it had come from and making fun of our teacher. From there it just spread and spread and spread. A few days later it seemed literally everyone in my class and even some of the younger grades had seen the photo. Actually being in my Trig class after picture-gate had turned into a circus of students snickering, pointing, and making a lot of under the breath comments about our teacher being gay. Then by weeks end, the full on bullying of him was on full display. I walked to my locker after one of my last classes, and someone had photocopied the image of our teacher with a nasty slur on it, and plastered several of them all over his door along with some lotion smeared all over the door to simulate you know what.

I certainly didn't think things would ever go that far especially not towards a teacher and not at our school in particular because if someone had been caught doing that, it would definitely have been an automatic expulsion because our school was extremely strict on behavior but whoever had done it had managed to do it on an off period, and to my knowledge they were never caught, but the damage was beyond done. Not too long after that, having lost control of his classroom and the harassment and bullying that my teacher was having to endure, he quit.

I "Accidentally" Outed A Teacher

I...felt...horrible. I thought the friends I'd sent the image to would merely have a giggle like I had at our teacher being topless and in short shorts, and that would be it, no harm, no foul, but what it all spiraled into was ruining a man's life and his job. I had no intentions of ever doing that, but that's what happened. It stung too because I realized what I'd done with just the click of a few buttons, and him quitting and finally getting him out of my life and inheriting a new teacher, didn't make me feel awesome, I just felt like a terrible human being. It really did force me to look at what type of person I was and how I treated others.

So after my teachers departure, not long after that, the original friend who had sent me the image started getting bullied himself because A led to B and people wanted to know who had gotten the image in the first place and how, and people sort of naturally put a few dots together and realized my friend was gay. When I asked him about it, he officially came out to me. He admitted hatred of our former teacher and of himself for not wanting to deal with the fact that he, himself was gay. My friends goal actually was from the get go to destroy our teacher because he had treated him so poorly in class basically making him feel like a dumbass all the time in front of everyone, but just as I felt horrible about my own part in his demise, my friend felt differently when ironically, the storm came back on him.

It's definitely years later, but I still think back to that moment in my life and put myself in my teachers shoes and think how awful that must have been. I don't completely feel like he is innocent in all of it for the way he did treat his students, but not to the point where someone deserved hatred and ridicule and harassment or to be outed over who he was. I never had any ill will towards my teacher because he was gay because my friend coming out didn't bother me at all, and I've since been to a few PRIDES in support of gay friends and even helped petition for gay marriage, but I definitely feel like knowing what I know now and how hard it is for gay people to come out and sometimes deal with situations like this, you can't go back, but you can move forward and not ever do or encourage anyone to do this to someone else.

I "Accidentally" Outed A Teacher
Post Opinion