As a male professing feminism to his female elementary education students, an education professor faced problems, philosophically and pragmatically, as he and his students contested feminist theory and pedagogies in class. During the summer of 1986, 62 of his students conducted oral histories of retired or veteran teachers of literacy in the elementary grades. In retrospect, the professor is embarrassed by his patriarchal tone and his ready use of the teachers' oppressed work roles as a potentially desirable state. The construction of the teachers as heroes/heroines now seems a problematic rhetorical solution. Without acknowledging the oppression that they faced daily, the teachers who were interviewed and those who wrote about them, participated in the production of the patriarchy. After completing the oral history workshop but before recognizing how little he had critically analyzed the project, the professor saw himself as a feminist teacher and began organizing his courses as such. However, his students in an advanced graduate seminar refused to engage in feminist dialectical exchanges, one of a series of contentious courses that the professor offered. Even with "feminist intent," his patriarchal and occasionally sexist stances toward his students' work was not deconstructed or even named as an overt part of the workshop. As a male feminist, he can study and learn from feminism as an outsider. As a gay man attempting feminist informed teaching and knowing, the professor faces an additional layer of problems, as well as extra promise. (Contains 46 references.) (RS)