Questioning

It’s been a while.  Again.  I started writing this post about three months ago, but things got busy and I’m only just getting round to finishing it.  I thought I’d write a post about trying to find love as a teacher and originally began with the words “I am a very single man”, which in retrospect seems a little pessimistic, but then I am indeed single and have been for a very long time.  I am also a man: so far, so truthful.

Teaching, as those of you who do it know, sucks up a lot of time, and when I think about it, most of the teachers I work with have either arrived at the job ready-coupled-up, married another member of staff or, like me, remained single.  (I do know of one or two who looked toward the student body for romance, but they’re unsurprisingly now out of the profession and, in at least one case, in jail.)  It might be a lack of time or energy or imagination on my part – or maybe all three – but there seems to be some truth in the Mrs Krabappel stereotype of the lonely spinster teacher drinking wine over a pile of marking.

As I’ve got older, I’ve heard more and more surprise expressed by others when I tell them that I’m single.  “How come?” is often asked, frequently followed up by the supposedly encouraging “You need to get yourself out there.”  Which is probably good advice, but then I’m not really sure where there is. There are gay bars, of course, but then I’ve never felt very comfortable in them, which again probably has more to do with my own insecurities than with the places themselves.  Perhaps it’s not that easy for straight people either, but I do envy the way in which heterosexuals have, you know, everywhere as a possible meeting place for romantic partners.  If I have learned nothing else from American sitcoms, it’s that a single man can walk up to a single woman pretty much wherever and ask her out; yes, they may well get rejected, but they don’t usually risk getting their lights punched out (which, thankfully, is probably in many places nowadays also the case for gay men approaching other men, but it hasn’t always been).

Anyway, for whatever reason I’ve limited my search for love to online spheres, primarily on Tinder and Grindr.  I discussed this in the post, sharing my worries about being spotted on either app by a student, particularly on Grindr, where my profile is faceless – “which,” I noted, “is a difficulty when you’re trying to persuade others to have sex with you,” but that, to me, the idea of being caught on there by a student seemed to me to be “like the virtual equivalent of being photographed in a particularly grubby sex dungeon”.

This is perhaps unfair on Grindr, a platform which I am sure has facilitated the blossoming of many a happy and long-lasting relationship, but where my experience has been mainly filled with 60-year-olds popping up out of nowhere and starting a conversation with “What’s ya dick like?” (genuine word-for-word quotation, there).  While I’ve yet to find love on the app, I have over the last few years averaged maybe about one hook-up a year there, but mainly while I’ve been in a foreign country with enough miles between myself and the students that I’ve felt safe enough to use my own face rather than a headless and somewhat unathletic torso.  On Tinder, I’ve been brave enough to use my own face, given that (a) it seems like a slightly more respectable place to be found and (b) students are only going to see me if they’re actively searching for 40+ year old gay men, which seems unlikely and indeed hasn’t been an issue as yet.

Both Grindr and Tinder are used for dating and hook-ups, but Tinder seems more open to the former.  There are lots of bare bums in profile pictures on Grindr, and more focus in people’s profiles about what they are and aren’t willing to do (or, to be a little more precise, what they are or aren’t willing to put where).  Conversations in Tinder primarily occur between people who have already matched, whereas on Grindr it’s a pretty regular occurrence to receive a dick pic out of the blue from a rando.  Aside from blunt questions about your genitalia, the question “What are you into?” also tends to pop up pretty early on in Grindr conversations.  To be fair, this is a practical thing to be asking, as establishing sexual compatibility (whether you’re a top or a bottom) can, for many, indicate whether this potential date or hook-up is worth pursuing or if the whole thing’s a complete non-starter, but it also feels kind of intrusive and personal if you’re not used to it.  And I’m still not sure I am.

I went on in my post to consider whether my concern regarding being spotted on dating sites by students was a reasonable one.  In the unlikely event of a student finding my Tinder profile, for example, what would actually be the consequences?  Some light mockery, maybe?  Does an aversion to being seen on there stem from a feeling of unprofessionalism, or is it more personal embarrassment – and in which case, where does the embarrassment stem from?  Am I embarrassed by the idea of looking for a partner, of feeling vulnerable, or – and regular readers of this blog will know where this is going – is the old internalised homophobia coming back into play?

I decided to put the question to Reddit.  I posted here on the r/Teachers subreddit, asking about other teacher’s experiences of online dating and whether, like me, they felt panicked at the idea of students discovering their online dating profiles.  I received a lot of responses along the lines of “Why would it be a problem?  Teachers are people too!”.  I posted a response to one such comment (which has since been deleted, meaning mine and all the subsequent responses have vanished too), explaining a little more about my situation and trying to explain why I felt that internalised homophobia may have made me feel this way.  Either I didn’t explain this very well or my fellow redittors didn’t get the point, but the response to this was a lot of “what’s being gay got to do with it?” comments. 

I’m aware that the majority of the teachers on that particular subreddit are from the US (and therefore, perhaps, less likely to suffer from my British squeamishness regarding dating), so I posted the same question to a UK Teachers subreddit, but thanks to an over-zealous moderator who deleted the post banned me for using their page “to fish for material for [my] blog”, I’m none the wiser.  I mean, I agree that looking for love isn’t something to be ashamed of and that being gay shouldn’t make it any more of an issue, but we live in a world where a lot of things that should be true, sadly aren’t.

So, I’ll keep plugging away.  Once again, I don’t really have any answers and the conclusion to this is probably as unsatisfying as my love life, but as I said at the start, this post has been sitting here for months and I’ve got to post it some time.  Hope you’re well, comments always welcome etc. etc.  Bye bye.