MANCHESTER, U.K. — A student group at a private Manchester secondary school for girls launched a petition demanding government censorship of school uniform costumes in “sex shops and pornography.”
An online petition by students involved in the “Feminism Group” study club at single-gender, high-tuition Sandbach High School, near Manchester, “has now gained more than 13,400 signatures, meaning it has surpassed the requirement to receive a government response,” Victoria Mann of Canada’s public broadcaster CBC News reported Monday.
However, “amid the chaos of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s resignation and a total reshuffle of the Conservative Party, no response has come within the usual 14 days,” the CBC News report continued.
The Feminism Group was set up by Sarah Maile, one of Sandbach High School teachers, in 2012.
According to CBC News, “each year, Maile encourages her students to select a women’s rights issue to focus on, ranging from human trafficking to female genital mutilation.”
Mann interviewed uniform history researcher Kate Stephenson, who noted that enforced sartorial rules are actually “about making sure everybody looks the same and removing those items that indicate that some children have more money than others.”
The Sandbach High School’s petition writers told CBC News that “they have been repeatedly asked whether removing uniforms from schools altogether might improve the situation,” but they claim “that line of thinking is victim-blaming.”
Maile, the adult behind the campaign, added that “the intent behind targeting sex shops is not to tell consenting adults what they can and cannot do in the bedroom, but to highlight the inappropriate way the costumes are marketed.”
Maile said she would like the government to target for censorship “the very specific language that is applied to these costumes, [such as] ‘sexy schoolgirl lingerie.'”