Stella*, a secondary school teacher in her late 30s who identifies as lesbian, doubts that she would ever publicly come out, citing concerns about job security.

“I know there will be a public backlash, despite the support I will get from some teachers and even students.”

“MOE has been very upfront about its policies and teachers have often been warned of following the ‘code of conduct’, and what we say should not contravene the MOE’s public stance because we are public servants, and since we are teachers, we are held to an even more ‘stringent’ standard from the rest of public service.”

“The school environment, especially at higher levels of authority, is still very conservative. Even if they may privately support, if public pressure is too great, they may be forced to take actions to be answerable to the shrill demands of certain segments of society.”

I would be negatively judged by MOE, no matter how capable I am as a teacher.

Ren*, another teacher in her 30s who simply identifies as queer, agrees that she wouldn’t come out, partly because she prefers to remain private.

“This is none of my students’ nor MOE’s business,” she says, although she does also fear reprisal from MOE—“I would be negatively judged by MOE, no matter how capable I am as a teacher.”

As for John*, coming out remains an unlikely possibility. He’s well aware that it would turn into a “rather heavily politicised event”.

“The moment it’s out there, there’ll be all sorts of narratives ascribed to my identity, narratives that I would not be entirely comfortable with and which I have no control over … parents might think I’m out to corrupt their children. The pro-LGBT side might see me as some martyr figure. My bosses will suddenly think I’m this dangerous individual whose moderately liberal beliefs are now newly recognised as radically subversive perspectives. So on and so forth.”

This lack of control over their personal narratives and the judgement cast from all sides is what queer teachers risk if they come out publicly.

Only Kenneth*, a 34-year-old gay teacher, bucks the trend; he’s the only queer Singaporean teacher I encounter who’s come out publicly. But here’s the caveat: he came out not in Singapore, but Australia.

“I have left the teaching service in MOE permanently because of my inability to be authentic and real with my students. I took it one step further by migrating out of Singapore completely.”

As an international school teacher in Melbourne, Kenneth doesn’t have to hide who he is, and is free to teach without fear. To remove yourself from Singapore may seem like a drastic step, but if queer teachers want to be authentic and real with their students, it may be the only way to do so.

At the same time, surely people must be more accepting of queer educators and queerness in education?

Stella is blunt about this: “What’s the point in even wasting time to think about such issues when the culture of non-acceptance is an open secret with the government ignoring the pink elephant in the room?”

Whether it’s heard, observed, or experienced, it seems that discrimination is the word of the day for queer teachers.

“Sexuality education is meant to teach students that being gay is wrong.”

This is the sort of thing Stella hears her fellow teachers say to students.

Another fellow teacher of Stella’s who voiced support for queer rights and publicly disclosed their membership in a queer NGO, was told to delete ‘objectionable’ social media posts and “warned to distance themselves from anything related to LGBT issues”.

John, another victim of the chilling effect, declined to talk about the discrimination he has faced himself, citing fears of being traced.

But he’s heard of prospective teachers being blocked from joining the service because an interview panellist was “openly homophobic” and refused to pass applicants with “effeminate behaviour”. He’s also heard that being suspected of homosexuality is reason enough for superiors to judge your annual performance negatively.

Ren explains, “If a queer teacher comes out or says something supportive of LGBTQ rights, their job could be at risk. All you need is one conservative student to tell their parent, this one parent complains to the school/MOE etc, and these complaints—even anonymous, unfair, inaccurate ones—could really get a teacher in trouble, harassed by school authorities, and/or blacklisted for future teaching positions.”

“MOE doesn’t even need to get the teacher’s side of the story.”

Unfortunately, my attempt to reach MOE for clarification on their policy stance towards queer teachers was met with silence.

While the queer teachers I spoke to are all unaware of any official guideline or policy that MOE has, they’ve all heard of incidents and rumours: from being left to hentak kaki without promotion to Dominic’s speculation of a ‘blacklist of gay teachers’.

In the absence of an official policy stance, some queer teachers like Stella and Ren take their cue from how 377A is incorporated into Singapore’s education curriculum.

“What do you think? When sexuality education still teaches that homosexuality is illegal because of 377A? What sort of message does it send to teachers?”

“Homosexuality is cited during the sexuality education programme only in terms of “current legal provisions concerning homosexual acts in Singapore”, as a legal deterrence. So 377A is enforced—through education!”

Others, like John, feel that a non-policy is a policy unto itself with obvious implications.

As John muses, “If there is an actual set of rules/policies/directives, then there are protocols to be followed, cases to be investigated, and rules to be consulted. In the absence of such rules being set in stone, what we end up with is a carte blanche of sorts, where the powers-that-be get to make all sorts of arbitrary decisions without needing to consult some official document. This also means that the capacity for discrimination and abuse is there. When you have an entire demographic rendered invisible in your policies, so too would the methods be for dealing with issues pertaining to queer teachers. If there’s no directive in place to consult when a homosexual teacher is accused of sexual harassment by a fellow colleague, then you get complete powers to decide. That is, I think, a very frightening thought to entertain.”

“If there isn’t the slightest mention of LGBTs in guidelines/policy/directives, then the message to you is pretty clear-cut: stay invisible.”

The ambiguous absence of official policy clarification also creates a grey area in education as to how queerness should be handled in a school setting. Just look at how Singapore Polytechnic (SP) removed Joshua Simon from it’s TED Talks’ speaker list. According to Joshua Simon’s account, a representative of SP admitted to him that the action was taken to abide by MOE’s ‘rules’. Just days later, however, SP came out to dispute this version of events; Joshua Simon’s statement was reframed as an allegation, and responsibility for what had happened was shifted onto the student organising committee.

The fact is that all of the teachers I spoke to remain unaware of any official MOE-mandated ‘rules’ governing queerness in school settings. What it might have really been was SP practising self-censorship to toe the pink 377A line, and then regretting the action taken after coming under fire for it.