Coming out through the NUT
1988
Coming out through the NUT in 1988
“I came out through the NUT
which was really strange because these days it’s all male dominated.
People knew but I wasn’t out. When Clause 28 came out it just made me
so angry. I was a good teacher and what I felt that was doing was
stripping away my authenticity as a person. It was a local government
thing about not promoted homosexuality, not discussing it. Piss off,
it’s my life you’re talking about here. So I went to an NUT meeting not
with the intention of coming out but people were very sympathetic
because it’s a good Union, the NUT was red hot then and I just thought
I’m going to do it so I stood up and said ‘I want to speak as a gay
woman’. ‘As I lesbian’, I think I said and told them what I felt that
Clause 28 meant to gay teachers not to mention gay pupils. I was a
primary school teacher so really, although we did have children who we
thought were possibly going to be gay, what the government was trying
to do was stop a gay teacher interacting with a gay pupil and saying
‘If you ever need to talk to me just come and see me’. I thought it was
dreadful that they should do that. I got a very good response, people
came up afterwards and said it needed a gay person to do it really. As
far as I knew, nobody had come out at an NUT meeting at the time. You
have to remember this is the 80s we’re talking about and (Union)
membership had fallen off drastically, I was in a small room in the
city centre with about forty people.
Contributed by: Jean Turley, 72