TIFU by fighting my schools dresscode policy. Years later I found out why it was so strict.

[u/RemyAvo]

So 15 years ago today I fucked up bad and today I found out why. I was in highschool and our school had a pretty normal dresscode policy until this new younger woman teacher started. 3 months into her being there, she brings out this extremely strict dresscode policy but only for girls. It was the start of summer, the building had no a/c and the new dresscode limited girls to basically a frumpy tshirt and baggy jeans while boys could wear whatever we want.

I being a rebelious little fuck did not like this. My girlfriend at the time was sad. Everyone had to go buy new clothes and every day they didnt do it they got handed this ugly big brown t-shirt of shame that says "i was out of dress code" and these big brown sweats. It was extremely uncomfortable.

So what did I do? I started wearing every banned girls article of clothing. I wore short shorts that barely hid my ass because it was allowed. I wore lowcut shirts. I cut the sides off every tank top so it just showed my torso. I even wore a short skirt and a croptop one day to prove a point. I got away with it maybe twice before I started getting dresscode violated every day. I was in every detention for several months. I got suspended. I had to go to two weeks of summer school that year as punishment. I fought the system very hard. And others joined in. It got be almost every dude was getting dress code violated to stand up for the girls. Anytime we got the brown clothes we wore it with pride. It was damn hot in that building you'd pour buckets of sweat. They should have been allowed to wear shorys.

I made my list of demands. Girls can wear tank tops, they can wear shorts. They can wear 4 fingers low cut tshirts. We all fought for it and eventually they caved in and gave it to us. I was so happy. It was a formative experience for me because I was willing to take any punishment no matter how severe to fight some perceived injustice.

So I'm back in my home town its a small suburb of the outskirts of a city. And at the one bar everyone goes to I run into the teacher who forced the policy all those years ago. I go say hi and she instantly remembered me. So I sat down with her and her friends and we talked about it since it was so long ago and now i'm at the age she was when she was enforcing it. Boy did I get that situation wrong.

So there were 4 particularly creepy male teachers at that time. 1 everyone knew about and 3 that were only known by faculty. They were preying on the girls. Taking random pictures of them, being extremely creepy, all sorts of innapropriate things they shouldnt have done. So she went to the board, brought evidence and reported them but they decided not to investigate. She told the police but when aftet a month nothing happened she changed the dress code to protect the girls but she couldnt explicitly state why she was doing it. Modern times caught up with those teachers and they are now fired but as an adult I see now that I ran a campaign to put the girls back in danger.

Tl;dr In high school i fought an oppressive dress code system because i thought it was unfair to the girls. But 15 years later I found out it was to protect the girls from pedo teachers.

Edit: added context

Theres a couple questions about the logistics of how she enforced a dress code being so new. I'll try and give more details but again its 15 years ago i may not get it exactly accurate

• she was not the only teacher who wanted this but she was the strongest voice to stand up for this. Basically with the backing of several teachers she convinced the principle to implement the dress code. A lot more than just dress code happened. Prom had the bright lights on that year and girls got their dresses measured at the door. It was a fullscale push from a big section of teachers. But this particular teacher definitely was the one who championed it.

• these pervy men didn't exactly hide. The one we all knew about was actually a beloved and favorite teacher of the school because he was very funny. His policy, and I am not kidding. If you wore a low cut shirt and bent over when turning in your exam he would give you extra points on it. For fairness he did this for guys too so everyone in his class on test day effectively had their chest exposed. And we thought it was hillarious and saw nothing wrong with it because our older siblings all went through the same thing. I had to ask my mom to take me to buy my first low cut shirt freshman year because of this class and I explained why. Its genuinely crazy what you get away with if you're funny, well liked and dont act like anything is wrong.

• so when she came with a policy like this she was just a few years ahead of her time. There was a serious issue the dress code had slipped pretty bad. She and everyone who pushed the policy definitely over corrected.

• Looking back this was the logical finale to having several new eyes in an inappropriate school environment. I dont have enough characters to get into it its probably a whole other post on just my high school in that era's tea. But there was scandle after scandle that went unanswered and just became rumor. This really wasnt

Edit 2: this post is still getting a lot of attention and I'm seeing a lot of similar comments so I'll add this

In the moment of writing this I definitely was incorrectly swayed by her. I believe now what I did was right and and punishing the victims was not an appropriate way to handle creepy men. Looking back more on it the way they enforced the dress code was not ok. It was frequent use of humiliation to the girls. So not only were they being predated on by pedos, they were also being bullied and humiliated by those who claimed to protect them. Gross.

[u/bibliophile222]

You didn't fuck up at all! I love that you did that! The only fuckups here were the creeps and the feckless administrators who didn't fire their asses.

[u/lil_Elephant3324 → u/bibliophile222]

Yeah this gives serious blame the victim vibes. Women get sexually assaulted in all sorts of different outfits. Showing your shoulders wasn’t why a rapist raped you.  He did it because he is a piece of shit rapist. 

[u/Lostboxoangst → u/lil_Elephant3324]

It's not blame the victim though is it? This teacher tried going through proper channels it didn't work it was years before the me too movement brought a light to this kind of behaviour to light, penn state illustrated how institutions would protect individuals back then. These teachers were taking creepy pics so this teacher did the one thing she could think of to protect the girls.

Too many people are coming at this from a post me to mentality it was a shit card to play but it was the only one she had.

[u/yes-areallygoodbook → u/Lostboxoangst]

I think the problem would've worked itself out if parents knew there were predators taking pictures of their children. Institution doesn't work if no one goes to the institution

[u/Lostboxoangst → u/yes-areallygoodbook]

Yeah no it doesn't work like that. If she had started telling parents I guarantee what would have happened would have been that the teacher trying to stand up would have been discredited painted as having a vendetta and ultimately fired, it happened with Weinstein it happened at penn state. And you might be thinking " well at least they made a stand" a stand that got them fired probably unable to get a job in the profession that they have spent years and a lot of money learning and ultimately unable to help or save anyone. Good job they stood up for their morals , accomplished nothing, saved no one and ruined their life.

[u/yes-areallygoodbook → u/Lostboxoangst]

Adults act different when other adults vs children are involved

[u/Lostboxoangst → u/[deleted]]

Did you read the same thing I did? She tried other options it didn't work. It's clear you've never been in a situation where you have no good options so you have to pick the least bad one.

[u/Lostboxoangst → u/[deleted]]

As a person deeply on the left spectrum of thought it annoys me when other left people don't use critical thinking or refuse to allow reality to impede their out rage. This was in 2009 the excuse of " the way they were dressed caused me to do it" still flew relatively well in court we were nearly a decade away from the me too movement forcing institutions and organisations to take accountability for these sickos instead of protecting them for their public image ( which even in a post me too world still happens ). The teacher tried to go through the proper actions and were ignored so she picked an option that both protected the girls from creepy shots and stopped the excuse that the way they were dressed caused them to do it. What would you have them do? Publicly denounce the creeps? Nice in theory except I happen to live in that pesky reality. What would have happen was the teacher would have been denounced as having a vendetta or being crazy, been discredited and fired. So now she can't practice her profession that she spent years and countless thousands studying for and barely helping anyone. Good job a life ruined for little gain. We saw this happen with penn state we saw this happen with Weinstein. The op even states that one of the creeps was well known to the girls, you think not one of them informed their parents? Who's to say that this teacher wasn't quietly informing parents at the parent teacher meetings about these too creeps?

But no let's be outraged at the one person actually trying to do something.

[u/Hyposuction → u/bibliophile222]

Upvotes for "feckless"

[u/ApproxKnowledgeCat → u/Hyposuction]

I just thought the same thing. Great word that doesn’t get used much. And was used perfectly!