This article addresses the social construction of gender in a preschool context. The data are from ethnographic participant observation in a Montessori preschool and interviews with its preschool teachers. I identify a discourse of suspicion surrounding male preschool teachers preconstructing them as threats. The dimensions of the discourse of suspicion in early childhood education characterize male preschool teachers as pedophiles, homosexual, effeminate, and/or violent. I also identify several strategies preschool teachers use to minimize suspicion. Minimizing suspicion is a discursive and self-presentation strategy with the goal of avoiding and/or limiting suspicion. This article suggests shifting the focus from the dearth of men in early childhood education to the underlying tensions at the intersection of the social construction of gender and early childhood education. (author abstract)