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Sexuality Studies
Sexing the Teacher: School Sex Scandals and Queer Pedagogies
Sexing the Teacher is a provocative study of public and professional responses to female teacher sex scandals in Canada, the United States and Britain. Sheila Cavanagh examines the moral and professional panic over sexual transgressions in the educational milieu by analyzing several sensationalized legal cases, including Mary Kay Letourneau, Amy Gehring, and Heather Ingram.
Deploying queer theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and feminist film theory, Cavanagh analyses deep-seated anxieties about white female teacher sexualities and offers a critique of the damage that gets done in the name of child protectionism. Arguing that foundational assumptions about race, gender, class, sexuality, and family are all central to the panic, Cavanagh questions the conventional wisdom and politics governing our conceptualization of sex scandals in education. She also demonstrates that public upset over female teacher sexual transgressions, ostensibly about child welfare, is also about the regulation of gender, heteronormative, and white reproductive futures: a hidden curriculum in Western educational systems.
Timely, original, and controversial, Sexing the Teacher will appeal to scholars and students in education, sociology, gender, sexuality, and cultural studies, as well as to general readers interested in the sensationalism over school sex scandals that has dominated recent headlines.
Deploying queer theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, and feminist film theory, Cavanagh analyses deep-seated anxieties about white female teacher sexualities and offers a critique of the damage that gets done in the name of child protectionism. Arguing that foundational assumptions about race, gender, class, sexuality, and family are all central to the panic, Cavanagh questions the conventional wisdom and politics governing our conceptualization of sex scandals in education. She also demonstrates that public upset over female teacher sexual transgressions, ostensibly about child welfare, is also about the regulation of gender, heteronormative, and white reproductive futures: a hidden curriculum in Western educational systems.
Timely, original, and controversial, Sexing the Teacher will appeal to scholars and students in education, sociology, gender, sexuality, and cultural studies, as well as to general readers interested in the sensationalism over school sex scandals that has dominated recent headlines.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 10, 2007
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 25, 2025
I am pretty disgusted right now.
Was looking for some academic criticism on the media depictions of the Mary Kay Letourneau case for an article I am writing about a piece of fiction inspired by it...while its analysis of how Mary Kay's crimes betray a kind of colonial logic about white female teachers as "guardians" of the borders of heteronormative and monoracial reproductive futurity is compelling, I think that point actually could have not made without "challenging the idea of child sexual innoncence" and insisting that Vili Fulaau was "not a victim" because he "pursued his teacher" and shows no "signs of trauma." Who are you to determine the trauma of someone that you don't have the license or access to psychologically evaluate? The fact that children can experience pleasure and desire and believe themselves to be consenting in a relationship with an adult does not negate the responsibility of the adult to hold the boundary and protect them. The idea that boys are less able to be victims because of gender alone is reprehensible. I understand that sexuality and relationships are complicated and Vili Fulaau has the right to determine his experience for himself. But I wouldn't leave my child around anyone who believed this kind of relationship was ok because the kid says it was his idea.
Who peer reviewed this and said yeah, roll with that.
Ew.
Was looking for some academic criticism on the media depictions of the Mary Kay Letourneau case for an article I am writing about a piece of fiction inspired by it...while its analysis of how Mary Kay's crimes betray a kind of colonial logic about white female teachers as "guardians" of the borders of heteronormative and monoracial reproductive futurity is compelling, I think that point actually could have not made without "challenging the idea of child sexual innoncence" and insisting that Vili Fulaau was "not a victim" because he "pursued his teacher" and shows no "signs of trauma." Who are you to determine the trauma of someone that you don't have the license or access to psychologically evaluate? The fact that children can experience pleasure and desire and believe themselves to be consenting in a relationship with an adult does not negate the responsibility of the adult to hold the boundary and protect them. The idea that boys are less able to be victims because of gender alone is reprehensible. I understand that sexuality and relationships are complicated and Vili Fulaau has the right to determine his experience for himself. But I wouldn't leave my child around anyone who believed this kind of relationship was ok because the kid says it was his idea.
Who peer reviewed this and said yeah, roll with that.
Ew.
Displaying 1 of 1 review