All the time in middle school and high school, I’ve heard, for example, “My girlfriend doesn’t like that I do X” or “My wife and I did X this weekend”, and since the teacher is a man, it’s seen as acceptable.
Would casually mentioning having a girlfriend cause angry emails from parents, even if I’m not discussing forms of romantic attraction in schools? These kids are like 11-14 anyway, parents’ job to teach orientation (which I’ve heard argued) or not.
Also, we learn relationship descriptions in middle school Spanish if you choose to take it, which includes words like novio, novia, esposo, and esposa. (Shouldn’t matter, especially if the school I teach in is at a non-Conservative community)
Tbh, ignoring the current political climate, a teacher would be wise to minimize exposing their private lives to students at all, and even co-workers. Just as a matter of privacy and minimizing bullshit. Yeah, you should absolutely have the ability to talk about a partner or spouse equally and without fear of reprisal, but that’s a different issue from people just being assholes in general.
Since the current US political climate is rocky as hell, not exposing your private life, even when you live somewhere with progressive policies now, is just a safety issue for one’s career.
If you want, and/or are willing, to be a fighter and defend your rights, and thus everyone’s rights, that’s great. We need people willing to not give in. But, that’s never a requirement, and it’s still too soon to tell how bad shit is going to get, so I’d at least delay such examples from your lessons if you don’t want to take the risk.
It fucking sucks that this is even something to worry about in this century.