Female-Teacher Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Ontario, Canada

Abstract

[The Romans] created the cult of the Vestal Virgins, high‐minded priestesses of the goddess Vesta, Guardian Angel of Mankind and Keeper of the Hearth. These priestesses were educated in special normal training schools, were forbidden to many, were subjected to drastic moral codes, and were accorded social position of preeminence.1 Spinster teachers were hired so frequently in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they eventually became an important part of the cultural landscape.2 Single women seem forever to unnerve, anger and unwittingly scare large swaths of the population, both female and male.3

Male Teachers as Role Models: Addressing Issues of Masculinity, Pedagogy and the Re-Masculinization of Schooling

“…This pathologization of the teacher on the basis of gender variance or gender non‐conformity is further highlighted by Cavanagh (2005a, 2005b, 2006) who also draws explicitly on gay, lesbian and queer studies to address issues of masculinity and gender deviance as they relate to the sexuality of the female teacher in postwar Ontario, Canada (see Bland & Doan, 1998; Faderman, 1998; Vincinus, 1985). She illustrates how following World War II, through the imposition of marriage bans, female teachers were required to remain single and chaste.…”

“…She illustrates how following World War II, through the imposition of marriage bans, female teachers were required to remain single and chaste. However, by 1950, through the intervention of mental hygienists, parents, teacher federations, school administrators and psychologists, Cavanagh (2005a) claims that female teachers were required to adopt a gender and sexual identification that confirmed normative heterosexual femininity.…”

Spinsters, Schoolmarms, and Queers: Female teacher gender and sexuality in medicine and psychoanalytic theory and history

“…I have argued elsewhere that in Ontario, Canada, the marriage bar was removed, in part, because school administrators, education professors, mental hygienists, rate payers, advocates of teacher professionalism, and others worried about the profession being a haven for female homosexuals and for those who, for a variety of reasons, were seen as 'abnormal' or socially stunted (Cavanagh, 2005b). In her discussion of spinster teachers in Britain Alison Oram (1989) argued that by the 1930s ''women teachers who failed to marry [and fulfill their culturally assigned duties as women] were subjected to warnings with ominous psychological overtones'' (p. 104).…”

Silencing Racialized Humor in Elementary School: Consequences of Colormuting and Whiteness for Students of Color

“…The question of who enforces or imposes silence-and under what conditions-is salient when middle-class White women teachers interact with students of color in school. Since the 19th century, teaching has been considered "naturally" middle-class White women's work (Cavanagh, 2005;Thompson, 1997). In the late 18th and 19th centuries, missionary zeal, U.S. expansion, and colonization played a role in the construction of middle-class White women as civilizers and educators of the colonized (Deutsch, 1987;Ware, 1992).…”

“…In the late 18th and 19th centuries, missionary zeal, U.S. expansion, and colonization played a role in the construction of middle-class White women as civilizers and educators of the colonized (Deutsch, 1987;Ware, 1992). These historical legacies are still discursively reified in the present (Cavanagh, 2005;Hyland, 2005;Lightfoot, 1978;Thompson, 1997;Ware, 1992). With the charge of socialization, middle-class White women teachers have the authority to determine what kind of behavior and socialization is best for children, and to determine what constitutes caring and effective teaching and parenting (Lightfoot, 1978;Thompson, 1997;Yoon, 2016).…”