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Teacher Transsexuality: The Illusion of Sexual Difference and the Idea of Adolescent Trauma in the Dana Rivers Case

University of Western Ontario, Canada, scavana2{at}uwo.ca

This article focuses on a media-induced school scandal involving a male to female transsexual teacher, Dana Rivers, who taught for a school board just outside Sacramento, California. Rivers was fired for allegedly talking to students about her sexuality and the importance of gender self-determination. I offer a psychoanalytic reading of the transphobic response on the part of parents lobbying for Rivers’ dismissal and appraise the adolescent trauma thesis used to validate concerns about teacher transsexuality. I argue that the panic surrounding the Rivers case is not about adolescent psychological health (as argued by intolerant parents) but a psychic investment in heterosexual bifurcations of gender and an insistence upon sexual difference.

Key Words: adolescents • education • gender • psychoanalysis • sexuality • transsexuality

Sexualities, Vol. 6, No. 3-4, 361-383 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/136346070363006


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