As a kid, I was torn on the subject of school uniforms. On the one hand, I recognized how it prevented self-expression; on the other hand, I felt the goal of preventing classism was laudable.

At the time, I couldn't draw a conclusion; there didn't seem to be a right answer, it seemed like something that was just fundamentally a conflict of interests, and there was no right answer.

With what I've learned since about oppression, I've also started to realize that I was wrong; it *wasn't* some fundamental unresolvable tension between interests, but rather I just wasn't given all the available options.

School uniforms don't *actually* prevent classism, of course, despite what is claimed; they just *obscure* class differences. They try to hide the problem. They don't address the underlying dynamics, or the oppressive/bullying behaviour involved in them.

The class differences are still there, the bullying is still there, and the systemic classism in society is also still there. It just takes on different forms.

In other words: the school uniforms are taking away self-expression and promoting homogeneity, without any actual positive tradeoffs to show for it.

The *real* solution is to address class differences materially. To not only make sure that everybody has their needs met, but also to dismantle the oppressive systems that have produced this inequality in the first place.

To make it so that self-expression is available to all, without needing to have class connotations to begin with.

That, of course, would be considered "too radical" for a school; calling for dismantling those systems would *also* call into question the position of power of those schools themselves, as well as the systems of government and capitalism above them.

Those same oppressive systems which stand to benefit from reducing self-expression and bodily autonomy... through, for example, school uniforms.

And so instead, what a lot of people got was a "solution" that never really solved the problem, but certainly pretended to, all the while strengthening existing inequalities under the guise of "progress". School uniforms.

And I think a very useful lesson can be drawn from this, because this is what happens for a *lot* of supposedly progressive policy.

So many of these supposed "conflicting needs" in society could be resolved by rejecting such false progress, and asking the hard questions about what the root cause of the problem *really* is - and then solving all of those supposedly-conflicting needs together, by addressing the true root cause.

This is part of what 'solidarity' is about; recognizing that everybody's struggles often have a shared cause, and that they are not in competition at all. That they all have the same solution.