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When a middle-school teacher was called to her principal’s office in January over a seminude photo that a student had obtained, she was confident the picture could not be of her.

The teacher, Lauren Miranda, 25, said she had never sent a picture like that to a student, and a teachers union representative who had seen the photograph said it was unclear if it was her.

What happened next speaks to the debate over workplace rights and gender equality, as well as growing concerns about digital privacy in the era of sexting.

In a meeting with mostly men, including colleagues from Bellport Middle School on Long Island, a school administrator turned a computer monitor around to show a topless selfie of Ms. Miranda. She recognized it as a photo that, she said, she had sent only to a colleague she had dated.