My Industrial Arts Teacher Sexually Harrassed Me and I Didn't Know Because it Was the 90's
In 1992 I was a strange, oddly shaped 7th grader still wearing biking pants and high top tennis shoes with brightly colored sweatshirts. I had braces, loved to ride my bike, and wanted to be interested in boys but didn't really know how or why. I hadn't started my period and didn't want to on any level.
Nothing about Jr. High was safe. It was new territory. We were going to a different class every hour. We had lockers. We ate lunch with four times as many people as we did in grade school. And cliques were forming like wildfire. Half of us were starting to have sex and the other half were still breastfeeding.
And since it was the 90's we had entered the new world of musical freedom and expression, but still obeyed all of the gender roles that continued to permeate small town America. But I didn't know what sexism was at all. I just knew that I was a girl and there were boys and there were male teachers and female teachers. The subtle cues of boys dominating gym class or girls being told they needed to wear dresses for formal dances was nothing new to me or my friends.
My industrial arts teacher was a short, small, balding man in his 40's with two children in our school system. He ran a wood shop on the basement level of the Jr. High School. He wore brown polyester pants, button up shirts, and neutral cardigans. He wore thick brown glasses. He was kind of a dick. Every day we worked on sketching and eventually carving or chiseling some sort of object like a key holder shelf. I couldn't sew and during home economics I sewed a duffle bag around my body and my sewing machine came off the shelf when I stood up, sparking my home EC teacher to tell me "this might not be for you". So I guess industrial arts was less intimidating to me for some reason. Until the incident.
I remember that the teacher would often compliment me or use me as an example, even though my work was horrific. And it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that. My key holder shelf ended up looking like a lumpy outline of a shark with very dull teeth. My parents had no intention of hanging such a hideous object in our house. But regardless, he would pay special attention to me, making jokes with me, and sparking conversation here and there. Everyone thought he was a dick and I was starting to think differently.
One day in February, just before the school Valentines Dance that night, the teacher followed our class up the stairs as we exited. I was the last one out and he called out my name. I turned around to see him standing in the stairwell below me, looking up at me smiling. I remember that no one else was around to hear us or see us. And I remember feeling nervous. "Jessica! are you going to the Valentines Dance tonight?" I was. In fact I had a special dress and there was a boy I was hoping to dance with, even though later I would discover during an excruciatingly long rendition of Love of a Lifetime by Firehouse, that boy had plans to have vertical dry sex with someone else on the dance floor.
"I am!" I said. "Great," he said. Then he semi whispered: "are you going to dirty dance?"
Honestly, I don't even know what I said. I might have said no. I might have laughed and walked away. He might have said "see you there." The rest of that moment was lost on me because what I now know is that it was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE and probably caused me a certain amount of shock and trauma.
I told my friend. And then I told my parents. And my parents told the school. And the school said "he was just joking probably." The school wouldn't do anything and I had to continue to go to his class.
I remember feeling mortified. That I had caused a problem. That I overreacted. That I made his life difficult by crying to the school about it. I felt guilty for that shit. Crazy town. But it was the 90's.
Nothing about Jr. High was safe. It was new territory. We were going to a different class every hour. We had lockers. We ate lunch with four times as many people as we did in grade school. And cliques were forming like wildfire. Half of us were starting to have sex and the other half were still breastfeeding.
And since it was the 90's we had entered the new world of musical freedom and expression, but still obeyed all of the gender roles that continued to permeate small town America. But I didn't know what sexism was at all. I just knew that I was a girl and there were boys and there were male teachers and female teachers. The subtle cues of boys dominating gym class or girls being told they needed to wear dresses for formal dances was nothing new to me or my friends.
My industrial arts teacher was a short, small, balding man in his 40's with two children in our school system. He ran a wood shop on the basement level of the Jr. High School. He wore brown polyester pants, button up shirts, and neutral cardigans. He wore thick brown glasses. He was kind of a dick. Every day we worked on sketching and eventually carving or chiseling some sort of object like a key holder shelf. I couldn't sew and during home economics I sewed a duffle bag around my body and my sewing machine came off the shelf when I stood up, sparking my home EC teacher to tell me "this might not be for you". So I guess industrial arts was less intimidating to me for some reason. Until the incident.
I remember that the teacher would often compliment me or use me as an example, even though my work was horrific. And it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that. My key holder shelf ended up looking like a lumpy outline of a shark with very dull teeth. My parents had no intention of hanging such a hideous object in our house. But regardless, he would pay special attention to me, making jokes with me, and sparking conversation here and there. Everyone thought he was a dick and I was starting to think differently.
One day in February, just before the school Valentines Dance that night, the teacher followed our class up the stairs as we exited. I was the last one out and he called out my name. I turned around to see him standing in the stairwell below me, looking up at me smiling. I remember that no one else was around to hear us or see us. And I remember feeling nervous. "Jessica! are you going to the Valentines Dance tonight?" I was. In fact I had a special dress and there was a boy I was hoping to dance with, even though later I would discover during an excruciatingly long rendition of Love of a Lifetime by Firehouse, that boy had plans to have vertical dry sex with someone else on the dance floor.
"I am!" I said. "Great," he said. Then he semi whispered: "are you going to dirty dance?"
Honestly, I don't even know what I said. I might have said no. I might have laughed and walked away. He might have said "see you there." The rest of that moment was lost on me because what I now know is that it was COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE and probably caused me a certain amount of shock and trauma.
I told my friend. And then I told my parents. And my parents told the school. And the school said "he was just joking probably." The school wouldn't do anything and I had to continue to go to his class.
I remember feeling mortified. That I had caused a problem. That I overreacted. That I made his life difficult by crying to the school about it. I felt guilty for that shit. Crazy town. But it was the 90's.
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