The article discloses male preschool teachers’ and queer schoolteachers’ personal experiences of gender-based microaggressions and other forms of exclusion in Swedish educational contexts. I analyse the effects of exclusion on the professional, emotional, and relational aspects of working in educational institutions and the spatial distribution of bodies, highlighting institutional and structural power dynamics. The interviews with teachers show that male preschool teachers regard guardians as the main agents of exclusion. The interactions between male preschool teachers and guardians involve surveillance, questioning, positioning teachers as a threat, and preventing them from performing certain work tasks. Exclusion hinders relationship-building and reinforces female colleagues' normative position. Schoolteachers identifying as queer describe their colleagues as the primary agents of exclusion, highlighting the contextual nature of exclusion. While queer schoolteachers avoid certain social situations, they do not feel directly prevented from teaching or interacting with students. The proximity of privileged bodies and those positioned as invaders and benders disrupt norms and expectations, leading to disorientation, questioning or fear. Non-normative teachers evoke emotions that circulate inside institutions and impact the emotions and reactions of targeted teachers, leading to their subjection, transformative learning, and subversion.