Upsetting Desires in the Classroom: School Sex Scandals and the Pedagogy of the Femme Fatale

This paper examines the female teacher sex scandal involving former Canadian teacher Annie Markson and false allegations that she indecently assaulted an underage boy student. Using feminist psychoanalytic theory I argue that the media coverage of the story had a voyeuristic quality to it that can best be understood by interpreting the role of the counter-transference in education. The news story also reveals a psychic anxiety about normative masculine identity development, heterosexual bifurcations of gender, and female teacher sexuality.