Homosexuality In Paul Sargent's Study

The younger the student’s age, the more nurturing and protective the teachers have to be in order to best aid the students’ development and also to please the parents. By being more protecting over things such as bullying or abuse puts even the teachers up for suspicion. Men doing anything feminine causes others to question their masculinity and leads to suspicion of homosexuality and pedophilia. In Paul Sargent’s study on male elementary school teachers he writes, “Suspicions of homosexuality and the conflation of gayness with pedophilia are powerful sanctions that carry legal implications. Loss of one’s job and threats of jail time can bring even the most rebellious gender outlaw into line,” (pg. 414, 2000). This further reflects my earlier statement about how undoing and challenging gender has very serious and harsh consequences for men that nearly prevent them from …show more content…
One teacher gave his students the option to high five, hug, or handshake him while going into the classroom (Sargent, pg 427, 2000). Taking out the emotional aspect of the interaction allowed the teacher to avoid the physical contact to be interpreted as intimacy or pedophilia and as a purely interactive element. However, these men backing out of nurturing and working towards become distant from their students perpetuates and strengthens their masculinity which eventually leads to further gender difference and unequal power dynamics. Malcolm Haase theorizes that, “The social distance men, as a group, have from children can produce an unfamiliarity and wariness amongst children, of men. This wariness when translated as fear can develop into respect,” (pg 1, 2010). This respect is what gives them more authority and power when disciplining, which is one of the tasks that always falls into the responsibility of the male teachers rather than the female