Gender is a slippery notion. We are all engendered creatures. But in what ways are we engendered? The ways in which we imagine what gender is shapes how we see ourselves in relation to others. Yet it is not clear what the category gender is, what it means, how it functions, whose interest it serves. The paradox about studying gender is that the more I have studied it (the monstrous creature that it is), the less clear I have become about what it is. I wonder whether gender is a useful category at all. Is gender a fiction? Generally, this article will examine the complicated relations between gender and sexuality. More specifically, I will couch gender and sexuality in the field of queer studies and education and argue that whatever gender and sexuality might mean, these concepts must include discussions around queerness, otherwise gender debates get aligned with heteronormative assumptions. Finally, I will talk about queer life and school culture. Teachers need to understand what queer life is like for young people. If teachers have no clue, they could perhaps unconsciously make it harder on queer students and queer faculty by projecting pre-judgments and rigid gender expectations onto people who are different from themselves.
