A British trans man has reflected on when he was a teen and his mother backed him up in the best way possible when he was being bullied.

Leng Montgomery, now 31 from London, has gone back to when he identified as a lesbian when he was younger and how a teacher said horrific homophobic comments to him.

Even though Section 28, the law that banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’, was in force at the time his mother stood up for him and supported him.

‘When a teacher was bullying me for being gay – he was also racist and they dealt with the fact he made racist comments – me and my mum were told it was his "sense of humor" and we should adapt to that,’ Montgomery said in an interview with Gay Star News.

‘He would also make comments like "maybe you should be more like our type of people".

‘I remember a particular incident when I had missed one of his lessons. When he was being unpleasant, it didn’t make me want to go to his class very much.

‘He made me stand me in front of everyone and told me I had missed his class because I had AIDS like the rest of my friends.’

Montgomery’s mother, shocked, challenged the school actively to make sure something like that was never said to her son again.

‘It actually made me fight,’ Montgomery said. ‘I worked extra hard in his lessons because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, I didn’t want him to put me down for anything.’

Now a little older, he is now working to fight against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the UK and across the world. GSN spoke to Montgomery after a Kaleidoscope IDAHOT event, where he said it’s important to ‘bring equality to this heteronormative, cisnormative world’.

With Diversity Role Models, he goes into schools himself to teach young kids about equality.

‘The thing I share with children at schools, what transitioning has taught me, is that I can be anything I want to be in life,’ Montgomery added.

‘It’s taught me you can change people and if you believe in it, you can make the change happen.

‘There will be obstacles, people will always challenge you, but people will respect you for being who you are. If you’re honest to yourself then people can’t fuck with that.

‘Never apologise for who you are. If someone’s ignorant then that’s their problem and they can be educated.’