Gay academics in China face multiple risks when addressing queer issues on heteronormative and repressive campuses. Little is known about their experiences of navigating the social and political constraints placed upon them. Drawing on interview data from 40 gay academics in China, this article explores participants' strategies for addressing queer issues in the classroom. It is shown that a number of strategies were adopted by closeted participants to lower potential risks and enhance the legitimacy of engaging with queer concerns. Despite Chinese universities being heteronormative spaces in which teaching about queer issues is constrained, closeted gay academics can exercise pedagogical agency to challenge heteronormativity in the classroom. Such agency is located between the extremes of conformity and subversion. By unpacking closeted teachers' agency, this research interrogates the normative discourse of the 'coming out imperative' which considers queer teachers' coming out the only way to empower students and challenge heteronormativity.