several events. Peter Taubman 1979 doctoral dissertation relied on Fou-
cault to destabilize gender categories generally, and gay/lesbian categories
specifically. Taubman's work anticipated much of the work that would
follow concerning essentialism and identity ( Taubman, 1979; for a genea-
logical history see Pinar & Reynolds, 1992). In December 1981, merged
with Chodorow, in bed with Hocquenghem, I attacked the macho Marxists
in our field, insisting that for curriculum to escape reproduction it needed
to be degenerate. The piece is reprinted in this collection. About this time
Meredith Reiniger ( 1982, 1989) employed Mary Daly's provocative work
to study internalized misogyny in her secondary English students. The next
year, Jim Sears appeared. No man has done more to challenge heterosex-
ism and to promote understanding of educational issues associated with
homosexuality than James Sears ( 1983, 1987a, 1987b, 1988, 1989a, 1989b,
1990a, 1990b, 1992). But of course, this is not (only) a man's job. Several
women have been prominent in this complicated, arduous, necessary effort,
most notably Deborah Britzman, Mary Bryson, and Suzanne de Castell.
Britzman's "stop reading straight" essay (which appeared in Educational
Theory and which I included in the "new identities" collection; see Pinar,
1997) signaled a heightened visibility for scholarship focusing on gay/les-
bian/queer concerns, concerns de Castell and Bryson had also articulated
( 1997; Bryson & de Castell, 1993a, 1993b). Jonathon Silin ( 1992, 1995)
and Elizabeth Ellsworth ( 1986, 1987a, 1987b, 1989, 1992, 1994; Ellsworth
& Miller, 1992) work has been influential as well.

Homophobia (not to mention heterosexism) is especially intense in the
field of education, a highly conservative and often reactionary field. Still,
the closet is being emptied, identities are being declared, practices and
theories are being challenged, and, as this book testifies, new ones formu-
lated. Queer Theory in Education seeks to heighten the visibility of the issues,
complicate and intensify critique and theory, while challenging homopho-
bic and heterosexist nonsense--for the children's sake; for all children's
sake, including queer children, who must feel as if they come "from another
planet--Planet Queer" ( Watney, 1996, p. 24). In memory of those who
have been murdered and beaten in gay bashings, those exterminated in
the Holocaust, those who struggle (d) to survive in families whose "values"
justify sadism, for all those who have died of and are living with AIDS, you
are with us here. We acknowledge all those who have come before us,
especially those whose courage has now made possible a certain (if slight
and problematical) clearing of the public space for us to speak. It is long
past time for us to speak. Will our colleagues in education hear us?

Queer theory is not unique to education, of course. In this, as in other
areas, we are late. For more than two decades, lesbians and gay men in the
profession of language and literature have been engaged in the projects of
research, interpretation, and theory development, as well as the populariza-

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