G&STC’s Therapist James Vining talks with Brittany Wong at HuffPost about What Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Could Really Mean for LGBTQ Kids
CHECK OUT G&STC’S THERAPIST JAMES VINING TALK WITH BRITTANY WONG AT HUFFPOST ABOUT FLORIDA’S “DON’T SAY GAY” BILL AND WHAT IT WOULD MEAN FOR LGBTQ CHILDREN.
For J Wilson, a college journalism student in North Texas, it was a school choir director whom he felt safe enough to come out to in seventh grade.
“I was leaving the counselor’s office after bawling my eyes out to her when my choir director ran into me in the hallway,” Wilson told HuffPost. “He asked what was wrong, and I told him. I just felt like I had this huge secret that no adult that I trusted had heard, and it felt like the dam was broken.”
In that moment, Wilson cried and confided to his teacher, even if it meant being late to Spanish class. The teacher stayed in the empty hallway until Wilson wasn’t hyperventilating anymore and assured the teen that, gay or straight, he was still the same person at heart.
“I remember him telling me that anyone who would see me differently as a result was in the wrong, not me,” Wilson said. “While I didn’t tell my parents immediately after this, it definitely did help that I had already gotten the chance to come out to an adult on my own terms before and had a positive response.”
Wilson said that coming out to a teacher is like a “trial run for a kid who’s preparing to have to do it over and over for the rest of your life.”
James Vining, a therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York City, said that feeling is incredibly common.
“Students sometimes feel like they can rehearse with a teacher as a trusted adult whom they know will not retaliate because it’s a school environment,” he told HuffPost.
School itself can function as an alternate home where a student who’s questioning or is LGBTQ+ has room to “feel seen and free,” Vining told HuffPost ― a space to figure out how they want to express themselves without having to worry about their parents’ judgment. (And, in some cases, find other gender-questioning peers at school to talk to.)