'Just wear their hate with pride': A phenomenological autoethnography of a gay beginning teacher in a rural school.

HIGH schools; SOCIAL support; RURAL conditions; HUMAN sexuality; NEGOTIATION; PSYCHOLOGY of teachers; HOMOPHOBIA; HABIT; PSYCHOLOGY of gay people; EXPERIENCE; PHENOMENOLOGY; ETHNOLOGY research; GENDER identity; LGBTQ+ people; RESPECT; VALUES (Ethics); THEMATIC analysis; REFLECTION (Philosophy)

In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my embodied identity as a teacher and how students' homophobic attacks attempted to disempower this identity. I explore how colleagues' responses to these incidents advocated for a disembodied understanding of practice which positioned my sexuality as the issue and attempted to straighten me as a teacher. As a result, this paper argues that being an effective ally to queer beginning teachers starts with respecting and valuing our embodied subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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