By Mary Kirchdorfer

I come from a supportive family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an extremely liberal city with a thriving LGBTQIA+ community. Moving to Salzburg as a USTA was a pretty big adjustment in many cultural ways, especially because it’s a much more conservative city in terms of queer representation, resources, and gender roles. While my experience as a bisexual woman in both cities has been positive, there are some striking differences.

I attended Augsburg University for my undergraduate degree and the University of Minnesota for my master’s degree. Both of these schools had a queer straight alliance/women-trans-femme-type group where I was able to meet the majority of my friends. Minneapolis often has queer dance nights in clubs and bars, and 90 percent of my close friends are queer. When I moved to Salzburg, I realized how much I took this for granted.

Without a university, it was hard to find group settings not only for dating but just for making other queer friends. Minneapolis also has far more gay/lesbian bars. While Salzburg does have a few gay bars, there are no bars for women to meet women. This isn’t surprising since Salzburg is a much smaller and more traditional city. For the first time in my life, I used apps like Tinder and HER, and this is where I was able to finally meet queer friends/partners. In general, my group involvement with the queer community in Salzburg has been minimal, but I have met a few wonderful people with the help of those apps.

I was so excited to move to Salzburg and I do love it here, but as with any new space, I was nervous to have to come out all over again. In many ways, I was right to be nervous. For the first time in my life, I met homophobic students. In one of my schools, I taught a few lessons on gay rights and homeless gay youth, and I had students tell me they do not support gay rights. This was difficult (obviously), but I am always perceived as a straight woman, so it was not obvious to the students. In the same class, I had students defending LGBT rights, and it led to a more lively discussion in English, which, in the end, is the main goal. While I am not as open about being queer at work in Salzburg, I still feel safe working here and supported by my colleagues.

While in Minneapolis I had a sense of comfort being out at my workplace and an easier time finding the queer community, the people (queer or not) that I have met here in Salzburg have been incredibly welcoming and kind. I am starting to feel like Salzburg is a second home, especially with my best friend Paula. Moving to Salzburg has taught me how to rebuild my circle from scratch and find the support I need in a new country. It has also taught me a lot about being independent in my own queer identity, and I am forever grateful. It is also the most beautiful place I have had the privilege of experiencing!

By Grace Guthrie

In the canon of American stereotypes, Texas holds a particularly special place. When doing a lesson about American stereotypes, I had the spontaneous idea to ask my students about their preconceived notions about Texas in particular; and man, did their eyes light up. “What’s the rope… that they swing over their head?” “A lasso!” I replied, punctuated with a quick whip of my wrist above my head and a “yeehaw!” The students laughed, and more hands went up. They asked if there actually were deserts everywhere, if there actually were cowboys, and yes, whether or not everyone had a gun. I answered their questions candidly and watched eyebrows raise as I reminded them that I come from a metropolitan area of roughly 7 million people, their heads nodding as I addressed the political tension present in my state. While some of my students’ ideas about Texas were not too grounded in reality (i.e. “it’s all desert”), some of them were informed by difficult-to-talk-about facts and cultural realities that have shaped how I navigate and perceive the world.

Texas has a reputation for being socially conservative. And while my parents have always been tolerant, I grew up in a social setting where “not straight” meant “not appropriate.” I have many anecdotes from my school times where that was made clear to me: like when we showed a video on our high school newscast that implored queer youth to not self-harm or commit suicide and received angry calls from parents afterwards saying that we were “promoting the gay agenda.” We had to pre-record and clear our newscasts with administration thereafter.

The homophobic norm of my high school didn’t affect me as it would many queer teens. As I hadn’t accepted or begun to explore my bisexuality in high school, I was able to “pass” as straight not only to others, but also to myself. However, I find my high school experience affecting me more after the fact as a teacher. Now that I’m on the other side of the classroom, the homophobia I encountered in high school has come back to retroactively haunt me, coloring my experience as a bisexual teacher with Texas-toned trepidation.

While planning lessons I find myself wondering “is this okay to say in class? Can I talk about marriage equality? Can I do a lesson on Stonewall and the history of the gay-rights movement?” Throughout my school years in Texas, the resounding consensus was that even bringing up the existence of queer people in a classroom was “inappropriate” at best, and “propagation of the gay agenda” at worst. I have seen that that isn’t the case here in Innsbruck—a school book in one of my classes even used a photo of a two-mother family for a photo description exercise. My students and fellow teachers are, to the extent of my knowledge, quite tolerant; yet thus far, I haven’t done any lessons that are explicitly centered around queer topics. Any time I’ve even referenced queer topics, my heart starts pounding; I fear that talking about these topics will be met with controversy and confrontation. It never is.