‘Girls Ruin Everything,’ Tennessee Athletic Director Says: Video

CHATTANOOGA, TN — Yes, a Tennessee athletic director said this in a remarkable video announcement explaining to students why athletic shorts had been banned at their high school: Girls ruined it, just like they do almost everything they touch. And it didn’t end there. Soddy-Daisy High School AD Jared Hensley also brought Eve into Wednesday's announcement, telling the boys to just “ask Adam.”

Yes — incongruous as it is with the #MeToo national reckoning on the treatment of women in society and against the backdrop of an extraordinary national showdown over a Supreme Court nominee recently publicly accused of sexual assault decades ago — he said:

“If you want to blame someone, blame the girls, because they pretty much ruin everything. They ruin the dress code, well — ask Adam. Look at Eve. That's really all you got to get to. You can go back to the beginning of time. So, it'll be like that for the rest of your life; get used to it, keep your mouth shut, suck it up and follow the rules.”

Hensley's statement, a display of old-fashioned, out-of-touch chauvinism even by the most generous of standards, was quickly condemned by Hamilton County school Superintendent Brian Johnson and by parents.

“We find the comments about young women in this video inexcusable, as the sentiments expressed do not align with the values of Hamilton County Schools,” Johnson told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “The situation is under investigation, and this employee has been placed on administrative leave effective immediately.”

Johnson said Hensley’s comments “do not match the high expectations we have for our employees,” who are expected to “provide an atmosphere that will empower all children to reach their full potential” and succeed after high school.

Taylor Lyons, one of the co-founders of the local activist group Chattanooga Moms for Social Justice, said Hensley reinforced stereotypes women have been fighting for decades, and called his comments “insensitive at best and wildly inappropriate at worst,” particularly in the current social climate.

“To suggest that ‘girls are responsible for ruining everything since the beginning of time and will continue to do so’ is completely unacceptable, and he needs to apologize,” she told the Times Free Press.

Hensley’s casual dismissal of what would statistically be at least half of the student body was especially jarring in the days leading up to Thursday’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high school party 36 years ago, some parents said.

“This is how Kavanaugh is getting so much support from the GOP,” Alicia Whitley, a mom of four students in the district, told the Chattanooga newspaper. “This nation has made sexism normal and acceptable. People feel like they can say things like this with no repercussions.”

Natalie Green, whose daughter attends Hamilton County Schools, said Hensley’s comments “perpetuate victim-blaming and reinforce the rape culture that is so insidiously ingrained in our society.”

“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,” she told the Chattanooga newspaper. “These remarks are blatantly sexist and misogynistic.”

Dawn Sloan Downes agrees.

“It mirrors the message society sends when it says a rape victim has ruined a boy's life because she came forward,” she told the newspaper. “All of these messages tell girls that the only thing that matters is what men or boys want and that girls themselves, only matter as obstacles preventing boys and men from having what they want.”

Hensley faced a maelstrom of criticism on social media.

“So, after this educator goes off about how the “girls ruin everything” since the beginning of time to the entire student body, y’all expect your sons to then respect the girls?” one person said, emphasizing the post with bold face.

Another person, prefacing a post with social media shorthand for an expletive, wondered: “How am I not dead from 52 billion rage strokes?”

And an alumnus of the high school said this: “I hated my high school tbh (to be honest). So glad I’m out of there. (Yes, this was my high school).”

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