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.

Yes to 80s/90s naked communal showers.

Teachers dated pupils - the other teacher said tutted but that was it really. Do you remember it was even a storyline on Grange Hill..?!?

School priest slept with the boys. The bishop got him moved. The police left it to the church to deal with in those days.

JustOneMan

Teach them to scream and shout now.

Pick up on EVERY word that is ever said that is anti girl/women so 'you throw like a girl' or'make me a sandwich'.

And don't think this is for the future, unfortunately at your eldest's age I'd had two assaults, one in a swimming pool, one an older child pulling my pants down.

I went to an all girls school. An all girls RC school run by nuns. For some men that apparently means that from the age of 11 I was gagging for sex.

We had the flasher, he was in a block of flats and the bus stopped outside, we got in trouble because he flashed for a week and no one told the school, police or parent. One day Sr Mary Dominic took the bus home.

Teachers going to the pub at lunchtime.

Lech of an English teacher, I was squatting between two desks talking to the two girls sitting at he desk, he came over, bent down and wrapped his legs around me, I could feel his erection in my back, None of us said anything.

He would give us regular spelling tests and the words included things like 'buxom' he would then suggest sentences the word could be used in.

I don't remember being academically disadvantaged though for being a girl, but perhaps I was and it was just so normalised that I didn't register it.

In September 2012 I was doing some supply at an FE college and two things rankled so I wrote a very nice email to the head of sport and got a very nice reply.

The first hing that annoyed me was a poster for boxing to keep fit, it had pictures of three men with those big belts they win. In the blurb it was made clear that boxing was open to both men and women, I suggested he was unintentionally sexist as Nicola Adams had just won a gold Olympic medal and whatever the men had achieved she will always be the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal for boxing.

The second thing was a round up of sports in the college, the men's basketball team had defended heroically to get to a final, the women's team had done well to get as far as a semi final. I pointed out that until that game the men's and women's team were at the same stage so both teams should have been fighting heroically.

The reply, as I said was nice and had opened the eyes to the head of sports to unintended sexism.

In my last year at school there were two girls in chemistry and the teacher told us that "girls couldn't do chemistry". As it happened we both did well; in my instance it was mostly out of spite.

I remember commenting on a text I was reading for class which talked about "the Aboriginal people and their women".

In a class on ethics (which was thinly disguised religious instruction), we had a session on "perversion", which encompassed homosexuality and single motherhood.