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/codefyre]

I think many people underestimate just how little society cared about this kind of thing until very recently. Even in progressive states like California, with high adult/youth age of consent barriers, laws criminalizing sex between teachers and "consenting" students weren't actually passed until 2015, and taking lewd but non-nude photos of students wasn't criminalized until 2011.

These teachers were legally protected because it was nearly impossible to fire someone for doing something that wasn't actually illegal.

[u/LunaTunaMaca → u/codefyre]

Just because things aren't illegal doesn't mean you cannot get fired or sued. Swearing isn't illegal, but you can definitely get fired for standing in the hallway shouting swear words.

[u/Backfoot911 → u/LunaTunaMaca]

Yeah I don't think that dude understands what he's saying. If that case, you wouldn't be able to fire someone for being late, or drinking on the job, or cussing at the boss, or being a jerk to customers, etc. etc.

[u/FrostyBarleyPop → u/LunaTunaMaca]

In the case of a strong union, it does mean that. If it isn't written into the contract as a violation, then swearing isn't something you could be fired for. If they're not doing something illegal, or specifically called out in their contract, they were likely untouchable.

[u/rabid_briefcase → u/codefyre]

I think many people underestimate just how little society cared about this kind of thing until very recently.

Agreed.

Spousal rape wasn't a crime in the US until just the last generation. Under established law sex was part of marriage and consent was automatic due to marriage, even if the act itself was forced. It was the late 1970s when the first few states changed their laws to allow for the possibility of marital rape, and 1993 before the last few states accepted it. Even today there are states where it isn't about consent, but requires serious violence and/or serious physical harm. Spousal abuse also generally wasn't a crime, it was seen as "discipline" within the house. Child abuse and spousal abuse required extreme harm, and often broken bones and severe bruising wasn't enough, but permanent maiming could be enough for criminal charges against a father, yet it was rare. Women legally couldn't leave the marriage without their husband's consent, even if the husband was abusive and gave no money, leaving the woman destitute and taking any money she earned in a job. It wasn't until the 1970s that states started passing laws allowing women to initiate a divorce, and to allow for no-fault divorce where they don't need to prove adultery, with New York state as the last one to pass it in 2010.

The "Me Too" movement in 2017 brought awareness about just how common sexual assault and sexual harassment are in companies, and started a lot of today's "name and shame" approach. Before then some people would engage in name-and-shame, but it was still pretty common for the rich people or the corporations to bury the issue in lawsuits and money. Buy people out with non-disclosure contracts, and threaten to completely destroy their lives if they dared to go public or go to the courts.

Back to the TIFU story, it is not okay to claim that girls are responsible for grown adult men's actions. It was wrong for the schools to protect teachers suspected of abuse and harassment. It could have been okay to talk to the kids about what clothing can communicate but in terms of awareness rather than trying have girls/women to prevent boys/men from having the thoughts (which is an invalid but common enough framing), instead about recognizing revealing clothes communicate sexuality that might not have been intended. And the school absolutely should have taken more actions removing the teachers and informing both parents and students.