Student Shares Passionate Video Speaking Out Against School’s Sexist Dress Code

Last week, a high school in in Victoria, Australia, made headlines for clumsily reprimanding its female students and essentially blaming them for landing the school on a photo-sharing porn-ring website. In an attempt to “set their minds at rest,” officials at the school, Kambrya College, warned the young women to “protect their integrity” by lowering the hems of their skirts and swearing off makeup and “sexy selfies.”

Feeling victimized and targeted by the very people she trusted to protect her, one 15-year-old student was motivated to share a video on Facebook denouncing the school officials’ reaction and standing up for what self-esteem and integrity mean to her. “I’ll be honest, I’m pretty mad that she [assistant principal Jo Wastle] thinks that … she thinks I don’t respect myself for the way that I wear my skirt, or the way other girls wear their skirts,” said Faith Sobotker.

Sobotker continues: “We don’t live in the ’50s anymore. I’m looking for equality. I’m looking for being able to show off my body without being sexualized. I’m 15 years old. You do not get to sexualize me like that. You do not get to tell me that my body is sacred, ’cause it isn’t. Half the population is females, alright? We’re not sacred. We’re not a new discovery.” She goes on to call BS on boys who accuse her of having her period whenever she expresses anger.

According to Australia’s the Age, Sobotker and her friends are not alone. The school is now being accused of “slut-shaming” and of failing to hold the boys — and the online predators, the criminals themselves — responsible for their exploitative behavior. Even the students’ parents are voicing their outrage.

“As a parent, I am MORTIFIED that my daughter was subjected to such appalling messaging at the hands of those entrusted to care for her,” said Catherine Manning, a mother of one of the students. “Stop letting boys off the hook for their appalling behavior.” According to the Age, Manning happens to run self-esteem workshops for adolescent girls and boys. She told the Age that boys should be held accountable for their choices, instead of girls being blamed for being “who they are.” “They feel their school has sexualized and demonized them, and compounded the problem by sending a strong message that it is them, the girls, who are responsible for the boys’ behavior, and that the boys are the victims here,” Manning said, according to the Age.

Sobotker’s impassioned video now has almost 300,000 views and encouraging comments from friends — one whom jokingly asks the student to “sign my arm tomorrow at school,” now that she’s Internet-famous. One commenter, the one public voice of dissent in the controversy, has attempted “in all politeness” to school Sobotker on the ways of the male species (“The School is not objectifying you by telling you not to send nudes! They’re letting you know other boys/girls are a**holes who will share your ‘private’ photo around town.”) but is no match for the student’s vocal defenders.

After the offending assembly, school officials separated the boys and girls and grouped students according to their years to discuss “dress codes, sexting, social media, and respect” and to “encourage open dialogue,” Wastle said in a statement to the Sunday Morning Herald. She stood her ground about the school’s rules and “how seriously we take uniform policy here at Kambrya College.”

She also confirmed that as far as officials knew, none of the students specifically had been affected by the porn-site debacle.

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