We don’t have school uniforms where I live; pupils generally wear formal-ish streetwear to school (often jeans and a pullover/t-shirt). When I was in sixth grade, a teacher used to ‘pun’ on my then-favourite pullover by calling out “I spot a hot chick” every time I so much as passed him by in the corridor. I eventually stopped wearing that pullover to school.
A 14 year old girl at my school was told by a teacher that they could “see her ass” when she was wearing a skort. This is school uniform, so there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and the male teacher had clearly been looking at her body in a sexual way. It’s extremely disturbing, especially in an all girls school, when someone is sexualised in this way by an adult. She should be able to wear what she wants without being stared at like that. The girl was crying after this. Their class defended her but another male teacher was on the side of the teacher. Then, the school uniform policy was changed so that all of the us have to wear leggings under our skorts. It’s nearly summer, so not only is this extremely sexist, but very hot too. I cannot imagine boys being treated in this way. The teacher in question later said to his class – “If you skorts are that short, what else am I supposed to look at?” [redacted by administrator]
At school, we have PE together with the boys. And every time we have a male PE teacher, when we have to set up the equipment he always asks the boys to do it. And if girls do it he asks boys to help them because we are “too weak” to do it. We are only 14, this shouldn’t be happening.
I was groomed by my teacher (31) at college when I was 17. He would purposefully email me and ask personal questions, about me, my hobbies, my family. One day he came to meet me at my local pub after I had a row with my mum. He lived a good hour away from my house so he knew what he was doing. He bought me drinks all evening, got me drunk and kissed me. That begun a 7-month affair. He kept telling me he loved me, but all the time I heard rumours he was also grooming other girls in my class, making them mixed tapes and staying behind after class. We parted ways when I went to university, and have not spoken since. His manipulation of me has left me mistrusting of men, and affected every relationship I’ve had since. I’ve never said anything as what he did was not technically illegal at the time (late 90s). I’ve no proof either. But he’s now married with kids and working in a school in Malaysia and I worry what he’s doing with other girls there.
In maths class today, my teacher asked us to put up our hands if we were done and he would give us more work. I am quite smart, and was first done in the class. I put up my hand, just as another (male) teacher walked into the class. “It’ll need help.” He said. IT! I AM 12! “Go check her out,” he continued. I couldn’t say anything; he was a teacher, but I sat fuming in my seat. Thank you for reading my story.
I was bullied a lot all throughout secondary school by my peers because I was ‘weird’ (now I realise I was just being read as queer long before I ever consciously felt like I was). We had a young male teacher for Design and Technology and we had class with him once a week. One of the boys favourite ways to bully me was to pretend ‘flirt’ with me and then laugh about it, the joke being I was of course too disgusting and weird to ever be flirted with for real. My male DT teacher used to do the same thing – jokingly flirt with me, and then laugh about it with the rest of the class. This started when I was in year seven, eleven years old. He did it nearly every lesson, and it was humiliating and scary. The worst was at the end of year seven, I had won a trip to a theme park for running a stall at the school fete. The DT teacher was supervising this trip, and he came up behind me in class and leaned over me and joked that I could sit next to him on the rides if I wanted – the idea of ‘throwing a bone’ to the ‘ugly’ girl. It made my skin crawl. I only had to have lessons with him for two more years, and every wednesday (the day of our class with him) I’d pretend to be sick and go home early so I didnt have to go to his class. I dropped his class in year ten, soon as I was allowed. I used to get physically sick the days before his classes. I didnt feel like I could report his behavior because I felt like other people would laugh at me for thinking that a young ‘attractive’ teacher would even think about flirting with someone as ‘weird’ as me. I hated his guts for the rest of the time I went to that school, and had to watch all three of my younger sisters go on to have classes with him (luckily he didnt do this to any of them far as I know – I was very tomboyish and so singled out as visibly ‘weird’ where my sisters werent).
The headteacher of my school wanted me to complete work ‘before I went on holiday’. He was referring to my maternity leave. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t allowed to return to my post, despite nobody even checking the timetable to see if flexible working hours were possible. I’m now into my second year of pursuing my sex discrimination claim and am unable to say anything to anyone. The school gave the message to staff that I’d chosen not to return to work. I expect to lose on some sort of technicality but would rather risk the thousands of pounds this is costing me than let a school continue to treat another woman this way.
Im 15 and live in Greece. My PE teacher is extremely sexist, but not the aggressive type. That is, he says things like “women talk a lot and only care about nails and clothes” but doesn’t openly treat girls differently. He does however separate the two genders while we play volleyball. One time, i, a girl, happened to be in a team full of boys, while the other team was all girls and one boy. He then told me to go to the other team, while I was playing, “because the other boy felt lonely”. He had never done that before. Never changed us like that before.
My PE teacher refers to me directly as “Princess” everyday. He calls my friend “Sweetheart” and singles her out for demonstration constantly. I don’t think he even knows our real names.
After I did my short teacher training course I stayed in touch with several people. One guy I met up with on an irregular basis, purely as a friend. He was pretty geeky, but then so am I, so that was all fine. Then I found out from a mutual friend that he takes regular trips to the far East for sex tourism. The guy is in a wheelchair, so at first, even though the whole idea of exploiting impoverished women who have gone into prostitution in developing countries was obviously upsetting, I found myself making excuses for him to some extent. I know that this is not an excuse, however, plenty of people in wheelchairs have relationships, it is this man’s odious attitude to women that was the problem. Perhaps even worse, I found out that he upskirts women, and has probably done this in my presence when we went out, or has even done it to me. I cut off contact with him eventually, but it makes me sick to think that this man is teaching young women. I hope he has stopped paying to rape women and illegally violating their privacy with upskirting, which is thankfully now an offence in the UK.