Ew, Why Are You Wearing a Pink Shirt, Mister? An Autoethnographic Response to a Gendered Microaggression

• In Event: Applying Critical Methodologies to Curriculum by Male Educators in Predominantly Female Teacher Education Programs

Abstract

Utilizing auto-phenomological data, this paper centers the researcher’s positionality as a queer Latino as he addresses how he responded to a seminal teaching moment that took place during a teacher education course taught at an elementary school. The microaggression at the heart of this study focuses on a kindergarten student who reacted to the researcher’s attire in a gendered manner, drawing further attention to a pink shirt he was wearing in front of a room of students and preservice teachers. Used as a catalyst for the development of the paper, the microaggression ushers in an auto-ethnography with the purpose of using a variety of data to inform a proposed conceptual model for critical pedagogy that not only challenges sexism, but other systems of power. Subsequently, the central research question addressed is: how do the teaching experiences of a queer Latino male inform a critical pedagogy?

The theoretical framework employed in this study draws from critical race theory (CRT), queer theory and Anzaldua’s (1987) borderlands theory in a conceptual model referred to as Jotería. CRT accounts for the role of race and racism in education while acknowledging the intersection of race, class, and gender (Solórzano, & Delgado-Bernal, 2001; Solórzano, & Yosso, 2001). This intersectional perspective of CRT is used with queer theory’s power to analyze gender and sexuality and borderlands theory’s concept of La Facultad. Indeed, La Facultad captures a consciousness of borderlands that exists as an in-between state that refuses to privilege a single core identity, but rather speaks to a hybridity of identity that confronts racism, sexism and homophobia (Roque Ramirez, 2006).
To flesh out the significance of this study, approximately one out of every four youths under the age of eighteen living in the US are Latina/o (US Census, 2010; Pew Hispanic Center, 2012). Latino males in particular face challenges that are specific to their racialized, gendered, and sexed social locations. For example, a Latino born in 2001 has a 1 in 6 chance of going to prison in his lifetime compared to a 1 in 45 chance for a Latina (Cradle to Prison Pipeline, 2008). To help shed light on this problem, Malagón (2010) asserts that Latino male bodies become physical and discursive sites, marked within a raced meaning-making process, in turn becoming a reading literacy that must be unlearned by educators.
Both Latina/o population growth and educational experiences germane to Latino males continue to have implications for the preparation of teacher candidates. Staple courses for preservice teachers often approach topics of gender using a segmented approach instead of a more critical stance informed by intersectionality on teacher education topics of inquiry. Compounding the problem, there is a lack of Latino male, much less a queer Latino male centered and informed praxis with regards to the creation of teacher education coursework. To help close this significant gap, this paper will conclude with the development of a conceptual model of teacher education informed by a queer Latino male’s perspective and ten-year teaching experiences in the field.

Author

• Eduardo Lara, University of California - Los Angeles