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

Abstract

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.