Headteacher bans skirts as if too short they 'put girls at risk'

[Northernlurker]

here

I was pretty apalled by this - banning skirts because they give out 'signals' and the girls are putting themselves at risk by wearing them????
Thankfully my daughter doesn't attend that school but I have e-mailed the school address protesting at these comments. What does anybody else think?

haha precious post

previous post

I agree Dittany - the school concerned has uniform only up to yr 11 - therefore any girls wearing it are under 16. That should make them absolutely off limits sexually speaking regardless of the length of their skirts.
Oh there's such a long way to go isn't there - children are receiving unwanted attention so it must be because men think they are adult women (in the face of all the evidence) so we put them in trousers and that will restore them as sexless beings - as children in fact........I don't think so!

'These blokes know exactly how old girls in school uniform are. It's what's turning them on. This headmaster needs to get a grip. And if he's worried about girls being "vulnerable" how about doing away with the school uniform, which is a massive sexual fetish for some blokes.'

Sad but so true. The acceptable face of paedophilia. Makes me want to kill in all honesty.

Chuck, sadly teenage girls in leotards are the subject of pornographic fetish.

Maybe they could get all the children to wear age badges on their school uniform so that men can be sure of the age of the child they're making sexual advances to.

Chuck if all school uniforms became leotards, leotards would be fetishised.

If jeans became school uniform, jeans would be fetishised.

Basically, school uniform fetish is all about allowing men to express paedophile fantasies which would be met with horror if they were more open about it.

Oops, cross posted with Milly and Blinder.

"I said that wearing a short skirt attracts sexual attention. Would you disagree with this?"

When it comes to children, I would disagree with that, unless you are talking about paedophiles.

I think the most disturbing thing for me, about the HT's response to NL, is that he obviously didn't mean to give out the message that short skirst = asking for it. That in fact, all the equality and diversity courses he must have been on in the course of his career, have not made him aware of this issue.

Which brings me back to the sheer fury I feel about how sexism and mysogyny are simply not being recognised and tackled in schools. If racism and homophobia are so important, why isn't sexism? WTF is going on in our education system and how can we get sexism moved up the agenda?

Someone way down the thraed said she was disturbed at having to teach PHSE because of this approach. I'd like to know more about this because OMG it needs to be challenged.

Dittany, you do have a point but I can completely see the other side of this. I see girls quite a lot from our local schools around - they wear their skirts really short and their long locks down. Sometimes they have ladders in their tights. It looks scruffy and also, whether it is a point you agree with or not, it does make them look cheap, particularly when every other word that comes out of their mouth is the f* word. Sometimes I don't think they know what they are doing but quite frequently I am sure they are fully aware that they are trying to make themselves look, how can I put this nicely, very approachable.

HerBeautitude: ""I said that wearing a short skirt attracts sexual attention. Would you disagree with this?"

When it comes to children, I would disagree with that, unless you are talking about paedophiles."

You don't think that it attracts sexual attention from teenaged boys?

I was a schoolgirl with a short skirt, potty mouth and laddered tights.

I most certainly did not want to be approached by strange men and it unnerved me when it happened.

You really believe that normal schoolgirls "quite frequently" dressing like this so that they can get propositioned by random passing middle aged men?

You are viewing them with the eyes of an adult and ascribing meaning to their style of being, that is simply (usually) not there. Can't you remember being a teenager?

And do you really think that the sort of middle aged men who like to approach schoolgirls will be put off by a longer skirt and a bit less swearing?

This is all getting a bit odd.

noblegiraffe I think that teenaged girls will attract teenaged boys if they are dressed in a floor length sack.

AliGrylls, what on earth are you talking about? What has hair length got to with adult men approaching school age girls?

Oh I missed the bit about the hair.

that gets a

Maybe ali is a member of the exclusive brethren.

ISNT: "This idea that schoolgirl in a short skirt = looking to attract sexual attention is weird to me TBH. Sure some might be, but to think it of all of them? "

If this was prompted by my post, I was clear that I was suggesting it as a motive for some of them, not all of them.

"I think that a lot of people are pasting their experienced adult perceptions onto these children & teens."

Actually, I'm going off my experience as a teacher of teenaged girls. When you hear what some 14 year olds get up to, the idea that they might wear a short skirt to attract sexual attention is, in fact, pretty tame.

I also wore my hair down at school

Clearly I was sending out all sorts of signals

Yes like "I am a schoolgirl and this is the current way that schoolgirls at my school dress.".

Thinking about it my friend who got the most unwanted attention from random men, was the one who developed large breats when she was quite young. Was that her fault too? Clearly they were sending out "signals" that men were not to blame for acting on.

You are aware that a lot of teenaged girls make things up to shock adults, I take it?

Basically you think that most of your teenaged charges are little slags.

Nice.

Agree with ISNT. Teenage boys are attracted to teenage girls whatever they wear.

However when I was growing up, it never attracted unwanted sexual attention from boys. They would back off pdq if you signalled that you weren't interested. (All the unwanted attention I got was from older men, men who had actually had sex and were therefore fucking scary.) But that was before the porn culture and the Backlash, before racism had been adopted by the establishment as officially Evil (people like Diane Abbot and Ken Livingstone were still being lampooned as lunatics for saying racism was bad), and sexism and racism were seen as equally evil by people on the left.

It simply never crossed our minds that we needed to dress to attract the boy's attention - we already knew we had it. (And we also didn't assume that how we looked was the only variable in our sexual attractiveness.)

Good post HB.
That last one of mine may have been a little strong. But it is how some of these posts are coming across.

ISNT: I know that police records are unlikely to be made up. No, I don't think that all my charges are 'little slags' (what a charming phrase, one that I certainly didn't use...do you think that anyone who courts sexual attention is a slag?).

But we seem to agree that some girls would wear a short skirt for sexual attention anyway.