Last week a student used the word “faggot” in my class. I felt like I’d been punched.

Whereas it would still have bothered me several years ago, I wouldn’t have had quite as visceral a reaction as I had last week. The last time I was teaching high school, as much as I hated it, words and phrases like this – “That’s so gay,” boys calling each other “faggot” and “queer” – were still commonly used by teenagers (who would then attempt to tell me that they “didn’t mean it like that”; um, yeah you did).

Over recent years, however, it started to seem like these terms were disappearing. Although students still called each other names, those names weren’t used … or at least they weren’t used at school. I know they came up in other places, but they weren’t as common as they used to be, and that made me happy.

This is one reason why hearing that word last week – casually, as these words are so often used, and not even really to torment someone; the student who used the word is friends with the one described – hit me so hard. I thought things were improving for LGBTQ people. And okay, yeah they really, really are … but then there’s this epithet in a high school classroom, and it feels like it’s ten years ago.

The other reason hearing that word was devastating, though, has to doing with something I have always told students when they use insults related to gender identity or sexuality: you don’t know who is listening. Maybe the kid who’s being insulted gets that it’s “just a joke,” but there is a whole other classroom or hallway full of people who are also listening to the so-called joke. One of them might be LGBTQ, or have a family member or friend who is.

Of course, the response I usually get back is that no one in our class is gay. Statistically, I’ve always said, that is unlikely: if 10% of the population identifies as LGBTQ, that means in a class of 30, on average three people are, or they’ll realize they are later. Regardless, you don’t know no one is. After all, you can’t always tell just by looking at them.

For example, I don’t fit the stereotypes.

I’ve never brought up with my students the fact that I’m bisexual, although I’ve never lied about it either. I’m not in the closet in my personal or professional life. However, since at the moment I’m single, I also don’t talk about a partner, thereby possibly giving away my sexual identity through the use of gendered pronouns.

It’s true that I’ve never been a big fan of the idea of having to announce my sexuality. Straight people don’t have to; why should anyone else? It’s a part of who I am, but it is not all of my identity. I am a teacher, a sister, a daughter, a writer, a friend … I’m so much more than this one facet of my personality.

But last week, when I was talking to my student about his choice of language and why I had such a problem with it, I didn’t say that I was one of the people he might be was offending when he used the term. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve started to wonder if maybe the world really hasn’t changed all that much. Even in a school district that has an explicitly supportive LGBTQ policy, my first instinct was to not mention my sexual identity.

I excused it mentally as being discreet. After all, my students don’t need to know who I’m interested in dating, right?

(That would ring truer if a part of me hadn’t wondered about possible repercussions with my students and with my authority as their teacher. That sounds a lot less like discretion and a lot more like concealment prompted by fear.)

And so this post. I know that my authority does not come from my gender identity or my sexuality – any more than it comes from my family history, my health or any of the other million plus things that make up who I am. My authority as a teacher comes from my relationship with my students, my honesty with them and my willingness to listen when they’re struggling, whether they’re having difficulty with things related or completely unrelated to my class.

If I want the world to change, if I want to live in a society where being queer isn’t automatically used as an insult between students who should know better, then I need to be a part of making the world this way. I need to stand up and let my students know that they do, actually, know someone who is LGBTQ.

Me.