Queering Mathematics: Disrupting Binary Oppositions in Mathematics Pre-service Teacher Education

Abstract

Borders - territorial, political, economic, and ideological - are processes of social division. They monitor and exclude and are typically regulated, patrolled, maintained, and defended by an array of power regimes, but borderlands are also sites of movement, agency, and resistance. We draw on Thomas Nail’s and Gloria Anzaldúa’s theories about borders to elaborate on processes of social division around gender and sexuality in mathematics education. The goal in this chapter is to recognize and challenge salient borders around gender, sexuality, and other identity categories in mathematics education and to work toward opportunities for hybridity created by these borders and in the blurring or queering of them. We provide a review of literature documenting the extent to which sexist and heterosexist ideologies patrol, reinforce, and perpetuate borders in mathematics that often marginalize women and queer people. We conclude the chapter with recommendations around how to blur borders around gender and sexuality in mathematics pre-service teacher education.