Chloe Ward’s Take on the Dress Code

One of the main issues many feminists have with the dress code is the mindset that often comes along with it; the mindset that the responsibility of the focus of men at our school lies entirely with the women.

The deal is that we all want guys to stay on task, and to not get distracted. The guys, the ones being distracted, have the responsibility to work through their own issues.

But here lies the problem: you cannot argue that it is the woman’s responsibility to keep the guys on task. You can then equally say that if she dresses in a way that some would consider inappropriate and is assaulted, that it was her fault because of the way that she dressed. This is not something we can boil down to “boys will be boys” or that the mentality of rape and sexual assault and sexualization and objectification of women is merely a mental illness, that there’s nothing we could do to teach those men to respect us; that it all lies on our shoulders. Which is not true, because those men can be taught those things. Men should take responsibility for their actions, thoughts, and their school work.

Young men need to be taught from a young age to respect the people around them, to see women as people and not sexual objects. Parents should teach this to their children. However, their home isn’t the only place they learn. They also learn at school, and not just when a teacher is lecturing them about the history of the world, or about math or science or the classes they signed up for. Students also learn valuable lessons through their teachers’ attitude and what they talk about, through the students around them and through the environment of the school. How we treat them and how people around them are treated affect the way they think about the world. If they see the dress code as sexualizing women, they will sexualize women. If they hear teachers saying it is entirely the woman’s responsibility to keep them from being distracted, they will not work towards improving themselves in how they learn, but will depend on those around them; if they see that women are being blamed for the actions of men, they will not take responsibility for their mistakes. Giving them the responsibility like this is not only harmful to the way women think about themselves, but how men think of them.

The main issue with the dress code, again, is the mindset; it is this mindset that is harmful to the women in our schools.