Young gay male teacher aide robe fittinh
My Journey to Hug “He/They” as My Pronouns!
Thanks for reading this blog posted on National Coming Out Day, Oct 11th. For some time, I’ve reflection it would be a good thought to “come out” and celebrate that I’ve considered myself “about 25% girl” for quite a while. I was in a reasonable amount of denial about this until a dramatic LSD and MDMA mediated initiation into essence world in Amsterdam in a gay trance club called Mazzo, in the winter of ‘95, that was also the main underground spot.
In that experience, I realized that I wasn’t “straight,” “gay,” or “man” or “woman”—but incarnate heart here to assist and get down, and that my toxic insecure violent masculinity was doing violence to my own feminine world and soul, as well as my partner at the time. I unpacked this on some level for a while that in our deepest essence this is factual for all of us, but also gradually embraced that I am, as we all are to an extent, on a spectrum of gender and orientation, and while I identify as “relatively straight /masculine” I also perceive “relatively queer and feminine.” In medicine space and at Burning Man, I celebrate this dimension of myself, cross-dressing my costume and appearance, expres
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— By Camille Ungco —
Two years ago, I was a junior at Rutgers University and I had just finished training my first semester-long course. Each week, I’d document the completion of learning my class by taking a mirror pic or having a friend accept a photo of what I wore that day because (1) trying to dress like a 20-year-old-who-doesn’t-have-a-degree-yet-but-some-students-still-trying-to-call-me-“professor” was playfulness and (2) for Instagram, of course.
During the last week of November, I finished teaching my first semester in Indonesia and those “outfit of the day” photos from 2013 are still up on my ‘gram. Instead of posting a photo everyday of what I wore throughout my first semester here, I idea I’d start to review the past few months through an entry of repeated outfits.
While Americans may reach for business or business casual (button downs, dress pants, pencil skirts, blazers, blouses and such) when teaching, Indonesia’s formal and sometimes informal wear consists of “batik”. Indonesian batik is the name for clothes, fabric, and the techniques for their creation. Desi
‘You’re gay, sir, innit?’: As a teacher, I kept my sexuality a classified – until I couldn’t
It was my first week as a fully fledged teacher. Pinned up next to my sixth-form college whiteboard, the neatly coloured timetable told me that the AS literature organization were next. They milled around outside the classroom, brimming with nervy start-of-term small talk: how huge the site was compared with the various secondary schools they’d said goodbye to a few months ago; stuttered lists of subject choices. I opened YouTube on my monitor, increased the volume and beckoned the students in.
Twenty bemused kids made their way to their seats as I clicked to the beat at my desk, before rising to my feet to give a laid-back two-step. I got a quizzical thumbs up; one brave heart testingly called out: “Yeah, funky, sir?” As they peeled out of their box-fresh hoodies, Fela Kuti’s Water No Get Antagonist strolled towards its chorus.
Playing “cool tunes” as students filed in was one of many gimmicks I used at the begin of my teaching career, all of which now seem utterly laughable. But back in 2011, I was a bushy-tailed, 26-year-old newly qualified teacher (NQT), thrilled to have my first job at an “outst
The Professor Is In
UPDATE OCTOBER 2023
I was sure that I updated this upload in about 2019 but I can’t find where I did. I recognize that I absolutely planned to from some years ago because this consultation in no way reflects my current opinion about academia and what to wear as an academic. This 2022 post is much more reflective of my current thinking: https://theprofessorisin.com/2022/01/21/the-professor-is-in-has-changed-part-ii/ The tl;dr of this post is: “I don’t give a flying fuck what you wear.”
However, that is a flippant line, and wrt this 2011 post and any actual academic fashion advice, it needs more elaboration.
I am not going to undertake a dirty delete and remove the 2011 announce. This WAS my thinking in 2011. However, as many readers have since pointed out, it’s sexist, ageist, elitist, and ironically for me as a gay person, heteronormative and transphobic. It is repressive and judgmental and part of the toxicity of academia that I am dedicated to exposing and challenging. I repudiate most of it now completely, except for the confront mask part. I perform love a face mask. And now hand and foot masks as well.
Here’s what I’d say now: there a
How to Support Kids Who Are Questioning
In recent years, the way kids and teens think about gender and sexuality has moved beyond the simple binaries of male/female and gay/straight. This gives them a lot more flexibility to express their gender and sexual orientation in ways that feel right to them. But sorting out these feelings and thoughts can be confusing — for kids and their families. And questioning kids do best when they have the support of their families.
What does it mean to be “questioning?”
It’s normal for very new children to experiment with gender identity, but “questioning” in this context refers to older kids and young adults who are in the process of exploring their gender culture and/or sexual orientation. Immature people might question who they’re attracted to (their sexual orientation), what gender they identify as (male, female, or another gender), or both. According to a 2025 poll, juvenile people are much more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than older generations. Kids who are trying to figure out where they fit along these spectrums are often referred to as “questioning.”
For more on the terminology that people use to portray sexual orientation and ge