Fit to Teach: Same-sex Desire, Gender, And School Work in the Twentieth Century

by Blount, Jackie M.

• ISBN13: 9780791462683
• ISBN10: 0791462684
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Jackie M. Blount offers a history of school workers in the United States who have desired persons of the same sex as well as those who have transgressed conventional gender bounds. Despite recent impressive social and political gains for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, schools remain a zone of great vulnerability for the larger LGBT movement. This thoroughly researched, vivid, and engaging book details the largely untold story of how this state of affairs developed during the twentieth century. It also profiles some of the remarkable people who have risked their careers by brilliantly organizing for LGBT rights, openly challenging discriminatory laws and practices, and educating their communities about conditions for LGBT school workers and students alike. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(11)
The Gender and Sexual Transformation of School Work	12	(17)
Passing Through That Phase of Homosexuality	29	(16)
A Spinster's Profession	45	(14)
A Rising Threat	59	(21)
The New Moral Menace to Our Youth	80	(28)
Sometimes You Just Have to Take a Stand	108	(27)
How Sweet It Is!	135	(21)
By the Students	156	(24)
Epilogue	180	(7)
Notes	187	(36)
Index	223