The angel's playground : same-sex desires of physical education teachers

H. Sykes

This article examines narratives about same-sex desires between teachers and students in physical education, based on the life histories of physical education teachers who described their sexual identities as "gay man," "lesbian," "bisexual," "queer" and racial identities as "White," "Bi-racial," "Latina" and " Armenian-American". Many teachers talked freely about desiring their teachers when they were students, yet rarely spoke about similar desires now that they had become teachers. The article uses the psychoanalytic concepts of transference and counter transference to explore these narratives about same-sex desire between teachers and students. Teachers' counter transference mechanisms involved disavowing, being aware of and validating students' same-sex transferences.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]