It was acceptable in the 80s

[Tinlegs]

Need to feel a bit more positive about progress. And a laugh. (Or a shocked gasp)

What was acceptable in the 80s if you were at school / work then (Or 90s etc, just liked the title)?

I went to an all girls' school (mostly boarding) on the outskirts of London. Things which were acceptable:

We were regularly flashed while playing rounders on a pitch near a public footpath. A class of 30+ girls and one female teacher and everyone just shrugged. No police, I am pretty sure.

Our Board of Governors was all male and the Chair once openly expressed surprise that girls were studying Maths.

We wore prefects' badges which staff instructed us to pin as close as possible to our shoulders when a certain male Governor came to visit. He liked to examine them closely and touch them, while pinned to our chests.

In part time jobs:

Silver service waitressing involved being trained (by a woman) how not to drop gravy and turkey on a guest if another guest surprised you by putting his hand up your skirt.

There are loads more.

Any of these now would have involved police (and social services). We just accepted it (wrongly) and tried to laugh it off.

If you couldn't go swimming because of your period, the male gym teacher wouldn't just let you off with saying woman's problems or whatever, he made you say that you had your period.

Comedy was sexist and racist - maybe more 70s than 80s. Men going going down the pub on a Sunday and women expected to make the Sunday lunch. "Ooo...that's going to cost you luv" down at the garage. Wolf whistles (or maybe I'm just too old to get them now).

At work in the 80's, a guy with known record for perving was placed at a desk opposite the flex machine (for recording when you arrive and leave), everyone would have to bed over to put their key in, with him watching behind. He would hit on the temps as they were less likely to complain and would make lewd comments when us temp girls bent over in front of him.

Triple Rainbow

That is awful...what a shock when realising as well!

Doing PE in vest and pants in primary school
Doing PE in ‘gym knickers’ and tshirts in secondary school
Our secondary school used to get head of year to wiggle a biro under the very back hem of your skirt as you went into assembly (to show you how short /long your skirt was)

I was however surprised to hear that dd doesn’t have to shower or have the option to shower after sports at her high school now- I would have thought this would still be encouraged but they aren’t allowed due to time constraints.

Going back 25 years, my secondary school had showers but no one was forced to use them. It was just annoying that they didn't even have curtains. It's the worst age to have to be naked in front of anyone.

We all hated those gym knickers though even with netball skirt covering them.

It's really sad how young we are when we become aware of pervy men.

The lack of supervision on trips. On our youth exchange we went out clubbing in the evenings. We were under 18. On school camp we did overnight hikes, cooking on a fire etc with minimal supervision. I bet you need a risk assessment to open the sausages now.

Yes those days and the dr comments are too familiar! When entering uni (Europe) for first time we had to have our heart rate checked by a uni dr.... with our bras down 😖

How brainwashed those parents were that they thought that the only way of getting the heartbeat was by removing the bra!

Avoided the worst of it since I went to an all girls school - but every perv and letchy bloke going would try to rent houses overlooking the school for a good leer and got away with it.
Bra strap pinging was rife - but girl-on-girl pinging at least
Geography teacher who would slide back in his chair so far he could see up the girls' skirts and comment on who was wearing bright pink neon lycra cycling shorts under them (this was the 80s and 90s and neon lycra was A Good Thing - allegedly)

6th form college and we had a bunch of total dickhead lads in one of my classes, along with a couple of girls who'd went to their school and a couple who'd went to my school. Every lesson the lead-wanker would announce the "scores" for that session and one of the girls from their old school told me in an ever-so-concerned manner that they were taking bets on which of the women spoke up in the lesson the most (as in it being a bad thing for girls who didn't know their place) and she thought I should know since I was usually quite high in it. My reply was along the lines of that I would make sure I topped their chart every week so they had no point in betting on it anymore. College staff let them bloody DO it! Was the first time I ever really had seen in action the expectations boys had that girls should sit quietly by and let the manly men do the talking and opinions and stuff.

I’m going to out what high school I went to with this but fuck it.

We had an ex footballer PE teacher (local hero to half the area) who used to march into our changing rooms and shout “shut your eyes and I’ll go away girls!” like it was all a big joke to walk in on half naked teenage girls. Dirty bastard.

Lots of us told our parents and nothing was done, so my dad collared him one night outside school and told him if he ever looked at me again he’d fucking bury him and that nobody would believe he’d made that threat because of who he is (true).

Funnily enough he stopped with my class but not others.

He died recently and everyone was fawning over him on social media and in the news. It made me sick.

But, in lots of ways, they were more innocent times. Certainly, DD knows much more stuff at 16 than I did.

I saw "Officer and a Gentleman" 5 Times and howled each time at the sad bits.

Men wore make up and ruffles and lace and became "Dandy" and (pre Lycra) we used coat hangers to pull up the zips on jeans we had hand stitched to our skinny legs.

I think the idea of there being a glass ceiling wasn't there so I, naively, assumed I could do anything.

Thatcher was in power so it seemed, in theory, like we were on the verge of taking over. (I know that is not what happened but, aged 12, a woman was in charge and I assumed it was just the start.)

Not 80s but 90s. We had the pervy teacher who would be on the floor under the desks looking up our skirts. It was well known and joked about throughout the school, by the other teachers.

The communal showers after pe where we all had to strip naked and stand in a line waiting to get under the shower six at a time, while the teacher stood there and watched.

The young unmarried male teachers who between them must have shagged half the sixth form girls. Yes the girls were all 16 or over but still!!?

Having lewd comments cat called whilst wearing uniform. They built a new housing estate next to my school so I had to walk home past a building site for a couple of years. It was hideous and we all used to dread it (I was about 13).

A teacher had a relationship with a girl in the sixth form. Open secret - he didn't lose his job (still teaching there).

Flashers and sexual assaults of young girls were just one of those things you put up with - and not just strangers. My parents had a friend who my mum warned me and my sisters to keep away from because of his 'wandering hands'. We were under the age of 16.

He wasn't the only one who got a bit too 'friendly' after a few drinks either.

Being made to shout 'period' to the PE teacher taking the register, with your periods being tracked to make sure you weren't shower dodging. Oddly enough everyone desperately tried to shower dodge since it was a communal shower you were made to walk to stark naked and use with the PE teacher standing there watching. She used to make a lot of disappointed comments about how none of us washed properly and just shot in fast enough to get shoulders wet hoping she wasn't looking and would accept you were done and could escape and get clothes on. No clue on her part about the utter embarrassment of everyone else involved.

Steadily ongoing sexual inappropriacy that everyone was aware of in both schools from the age of 9-18. Hands up skirts, patted bottoms, girls seated on laps from a member of the SLT, (mixed blessing here, the 'pretty' ones were the specified prey and were both envied and not envied), male teachers actively seeking sex from girls on ski trips, the one teacher actually removed was the only one who focused on boys instead of girls. Doing this with boys apparently was appalling; girls, crack on, it's normal.

A couple of years back I met someone who had known and worked with one of the senior people who had liked little girls in very inappropriate ways and he dismissed it with a jocular laugh and a comment that things were different then. I obviously wasn't supposed to disapprove.

Oh and being captured at the age of 9 when playing alone in a park (my first lesson that this was a really bad idea), forcibly undressed while kicking and screaming by a gang of teenaged boys who were total strangers, and wanted to see my genitals. For the record, they weren't remotely interested in how I identified or felt about this, I was assaulted purely for having female biology they wanted to access. When I returned to my parents, sobbing, my mother flagged down a passing police car and told them. There was a bit of a chuckle about boys will be boys and the police would have a word if he saw them hanging around, and that was it.

Or the seventies, when my head teacher told me not to aim for a degree in Architecture because 'girls don't do that'. I did it anyway.

Strangely though, all 6th form girls did woodwork and metalwork, and the boys did needlework and cooking.

@Justoneman - like you I am worried for DD.

It is sad to hear the stories of the (former) girls on this thread.

Apart from communal shower embarrassments, which appear to be common to both sexes, there is no direct male equivalent school experience to the stories above.

I hope to god things have improved these days - but, who knows!

The PE teachers checking your knickers were regulation.

They had to close off the showers because the janitor was caught too many times ogling girls through a specially installed unmisted window. He wasn't sacked though.

The maths teacher 'accidentally' brushing your breasts as he leant over you with his eye watering BO.

A man was regularly caught wanking in the alleyway by our netball courts, no one seemed to care. Another man set up a long lens camera in his back bedroom overlooking the sports field.

Regularly getting asked if I fancied a fuck from random adult blokes from the age of about 12.

Doing this with boys apparently was appalling; girls, crack on, it's normal

This says it all really.
Women and girls are always seen as fair game and this is why keeping women's right to female only spaces is so vital JustOneMan.

When we were in Primary School one of the old male teachers would call the girls up to the front for reading and basically cuddle them. I don't think we actually had to sit on his knee but he would pull the child up against him. We didn't like him but we didn't know why. Hard to believe none of the other teachers noticed this behaviour.

Being told by my Physics teacher that girls can't do Physics. There were only three of us in the class and one of them changed subjects, she couldn't take the relentless 'jokes' he made for the benefit of the (other) boys. He wouldn't put me in for O level because I was a girl, but the grade I got at CSE would have been a pass so he was wrong about my ability. I internalised all of it and although I knew it was unfair I believed I was rubbish at the subject.

My PE teacher used to select the girls with the biggest breasts and let them go on the trampoline for ages. The rest of us would complain and he told us we were jealous because we were flat chested.

Being called to see the deputy head because I'd picked physics as an option. He was quite annoyed and asked if I was sure I wanted to take up a boy's place in the class.
In IT there were fewer computers than pupils so myself and the one other girl in the class (another 'optional') had to do 'the theory' reading from text books in another room. I didn't touch a computer keyboard at school even once.
A teacher screaming at some disruptive boys that they were 'gossiping like girls' he then calmed down and apologised to the girls for saying it.

I science lesson a week in the 70s. Girls school. No physics or chemistry. There was lots of needlework and home economics though.
Career choices - teacher - if you were really clever. Otherwise secretary, shop work. Nothing else.
Lots of pervy teachers.

Oh. And we had a temporary French teacher who had one hand permanently in his pocket and used to read all lesson, ignoring us except to read out bit (often rude bits) from his book.

I also went to all girls. We too were regularly flashed doing cross country ( pretty much unsupervised) through the local woods.
We also used to get our legs slapped in school by one teacher if we dared walk on the grass!