School Dress Codes are So Sexist

I’ve been on a feminist kick lately - not the act of kicking feminists, though that is a popular activity among some circles, I’m sure - but the looking at everything and everyone and proclaiming with disgust “that is SO sexist!” and then looking to other people, mostly women, and demanding that they emphatically agree. (The act of looking primarily to women to validate sexism is, in fact, so sexist.)

This started when I was reading through the classics: the Iliad and Odyssey, specifically. It didn’t help that these stories were age-old tales of rapture and pillage, that most of the female characters were war booty, and that women, at the time of the writing of said tales, weren’t seen so much as people as prized possessions with added sentimental value - a bit like a particularly loyal and well-bred battle horse. Or a favourite ram. Homer? Sexist. Trojans? Sexist. Greeks, and their gods? So sexist.

The whole world, in fact - sexist! - so much so that the Wikipedia timeline for women’s rights (which isn’t about “equality” so much as “the giving of rights to women”) doesn’t start until 1718 AD.

But even that was, arguably, a long time ago. Temporarily running low on fury, I looked to modern times and my own life in an attempt to prolong my rage.

I asked my mother, a teacher, to read to me the dress code of her high school. She wasn’t able to remember it, offhand, and couldn’t be bothered to dig it out. I fumed. I wanted references to skirt length and tank tops - items who’s name implied gender. Actually, I wanted reference to gender directly - and, depending on the age of the text and its author, I might find it. And even if I found no evidence of such language in the dress code, I felt secure in my knowledge that the high school dress code is one of the more obvious examples of good-old-fashioned misogyny in action: namely, the covering up of women so as not to unduly tempt the men. (Undeterred by my mother, who was lazy and quite possibly sexist, a short google search confirmed my suspicions.)

Sure, there might be an entire sentence or paragraph on the prohibition of gang insignia, and a dress code might readily proclaim its ultimate desire to promote the “neat and tidy” appearance of students, but in my experience this code was enforced with one goal in mind - getting girls to hide their bodies.

Stained, torn, and worn-out clothing were all prohibited by my high school’s dress code - but I never saw anyone asked to cover up a ripped or grass-stained knee. All items specifically prohibited - spaghetti straps and shorts less than one half the length of a student’s thigh - were aimed at women’s fashion.

Administrators argued that boys, too, could theoretically be affected by such prohibitions, should they come to school in short shorts or spaghetti straps (which of course could not reasonably happen as no retailer within fifty miles of Tilbury, Ontario, housed any such clothing in men's sizes). But that argument falls apart when you note that male sports teams and gym classes often allowed students to go entirely shirtless, and that a popular school comedy sketch involved our male French teacher wearing a sequined, strapless dress. It’s an obvious double standard.

Sure, I understand school systems wanting at least a semblance of decorum, of respectability. And I understand everyone’s feeling of being very, very uncomfortable upon first witnessing a fourteen year old’s thong and/or ass crack. It seems logical to want to make rules against such things. But in making and enforcing those rules, teachers and administrators inevitably end up targeting girl’s clothing and wanting women to “cover up” or “hide your distracting female form in a more thorough manner, please, because I am acutely aware that you, as a woman, have breasts.”

There’s a pretty huge historical precedent for this not being okay. These acts are grounded in the practice of men feeling attracted to women and controlling the actions and appearance of women in order to assuage said attraction. Rather than addressing men’s sexual attraction or behaviour directly, we decide to control women’s behaviour - and we’ve seen this as the reasoning behind everything from mandating bee keeper costumes and keeping girls out of schools entirely to not allowing women outside unescorted and blaming victims when sexual violence occurs. And we’re supposed to be at a point in gender politics where were refuse to tolerate that shit. 

Plus, uniforms are a pretty obvious solution if school administrators are actually concerned with the presentability of their student body.

This blog posting is dedicated to Margaret Atwood, who is the less-likeable Canadian version of Ursula K. Le Guin

To Hurt and Be Hurt

We all, at some point, confront our own ability to both be harmed and inflict harm among others. Much of our lives can be shaped by our ability or inability to accept these fundamental capabilities.

(I say fundamental, because our ability to harm and be harmed concerns not only the most memorable and juicy bits of life, but perhaps also life itself. We are; in being we inflict ourselves upon the world around us, often upon the other beings existing around us. Thus we harm. Inevitably, too, the world around us hurts us - inevitably, some of those blows prove fatal. And so we are harmed.)

A couple weeks ago, I was escorting a man in the deserted upstairs hallways of the building where I worked. He was irritable, but that quickly turned to anger. He started yelling at me. Then, while yelling at me, suddenly he was holding an Xacto knife (American translation: box cutter) in his right hand, the blade exposed. “I’m not brandishing this,” he yelled, and then continued to yell, the knife exposed, until he turned his back to walk away and I darted behind a locked door and burst into tears.

The man would later appear incredulous and incensed at my (mis)interpretation of events: “I told her I wasn’t brandishing the knife!?” And I felt especially bad, because he’s gay, and it was Pride Week, and the whole situation felt very awkward - which just goes to show that even traditionally victimized people can be terrifying when holding knives whilst yelling at people. (...Progress towards equality? Yay?)

When relaying the tale to other staff members, both immediately and in the week that followed, all made attempts to be supportive, most of them genuine and heartfelt, some above and beyond. The only exception was a woman who found herself with two conflicting thoughts which could not, to her, coexist: the man was nice and she liked him vs. the man was holding a knife while yelling at Ivy.

I, too, liked the man - a little less so, now, but I wished him no ill will. I knew this action was out of character - dramatically so - and that it was proceeded by several months of declining mental health. But when I tried relaying that the man must have pulled out the knife (as he had not previously been holding it) and that the blade was exposed, this coworker interrupted:

“No.” She said. “Just - no. I can’t believe that happened.”

I’d encountered this same attitude when a former coworker slash former mutual friend had begun hitting on me and, after I declined, repeatedly yelled at me and behaved in a generally jerkish and intimidating manner. Despite admitting to having witnessed his yelling at me, she emphatically proclaimed that he didn’t really mean it, that I had misinterpreted everything, and while she was sad I felt that way, he was such a nice guy and he would never do anything to anybody.

She also said his yelling at me was kind of my own fault for not having responded to an email he sent me wherein he said that he was sorry that my stepfather had died.

No...just, no.

Whatever cognitive dissonance was occurring, it seemed to be about accepting that nice people sometimes do shitty things - that we, as adults, as people, are capable of hurting those around us. The response to which doesn’t have to be self hatred and flagellation, even - only acceptance and, maybe, hopefully, learning and attempts at reparation. And probably a stoppage to the yelling and wielding of knives. If that's okay.

...Please stop yelling at me.