In a month that has heavily featured a theme of “boys will be boys” serving as justification (and reprieve) for Brett Kavanaugh’s allegedly chronic habit of sexually assaulting young women in the 1980s, a Tennessee athletic director and assistant principal took to his high school’s airwaves Wednesday morning to blame the girls for the institution’s dress code—which he himself helped create.
In a morning announcement video since removed from YouTube, Soddy-Daisy High School’s Jared Hensley used his “Helping of Hensley” segment to address students’ reluctance to comply with the “no athletic shorts” policy, reinforcing the fact that detentions would be issued and would have to be served unless teens wanted to find themselves in “Saturday school.” Hensley, who has worked at the school since at least 2008, clearly empathizes with the boys of Soddy-Daisy, and while he admits he’s partially responsible for the dress code, he’s quick to toss a specific group of students under the big yellow school bus: the girls.
"If you really want someone to blame, blame the girls. Because they pretty much ruin everything. They ruin the dress code, they ruin … well, ask Adam. Look at Eve. That's really all you really gotta get to, OK. You can really go back to the beginning of time. So, it'll be like that the rest of your life. Get used to it, keep your mouth shut, suck it up [and] follow the rules."
The video immediately sparked outrage in the Chattanooga suburb, and rightfully so.
Natalie Green, a mother of a daughter in Hamilton County Schools said Hensley's statements "disgust her."
"The fact that they're coming from an educator is bad enough, but the fact that they're coming from a man in a position of power is even worse. These remarks are blatantly sexist and misogynistic," Green said. "And do nothing but perpetuate victim-blaming and reinforce the rape culture that is so insidiously ingrained in our society."
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