Anonymous Women
BY Audrey Mantey
The last time I attended CPR training, I walked out partway through the session and didn’t return.
We were told ahead of time that we’d be training on Resusci Anne, the type of CPR dummy that is wiped down with alcohol between uses, and whose chest, the instructor said, makes a loud popping noise to signify a breaking rib if we use too much pressure in our compressions. As one person practiced, the rest of the class stood in a circle, watching. I watched as the first man enthusiastically practiced his compressions, oblivious to the pop pop pop of the ribs he was breaking with each thrust of his hands on her chest.
I realized I wouldn’t be completing the training when the instructor asked one of the participants to lie down on the floor face down, arms stretched above their head, while everyone else FULL
DeAnander:
I don’t think CPR instructors would get away with that kind of s**t in “politically correct” California, at least I never saw any such stuff when I took CPR here, taught by firefighters. sounds awful.
what strikes me is that the women in the class — Audrey and at least one other woman — clearly felt intimidated enough that they were unable to speak up and say how unacceptable, stupid, etc. all this nasty patriarchal posturing was. it sounds as though an atmosphere of threat was established, the kind of dynamic that triggers women’s survival instincts and tells us to keep our heads down and walk away quietly before the boy-pack mood gets any uglier.
the thinness of the line that separates men joking and laughing together about rape from men deciding to commit a rape is constantly denied. yet I think women instinctively recognise the dangerous thinness of that line and the possibility that apparently civil guys, whether singly or in a group, will suddenly flip into predator mode and become a serious danger. I have to admit that when in public spaces, especially on warm weekend evenings downtown where there are crowds and drinking, or in isolated places like county parks or large parking lots, the sound of male voices laughing together in that loud, “boys having a hoot” way — if I don’t hear women’s voices in the mix anyhwere — lights up little warning indicators for me. I start to prepare for some kind of trouble.
and all of this is what makes it so maddeningly stupid when men confronted about this kind of intimidating behaviour in the workplace or classroom insist that they are “just joking around.” as if gang rapists didn’t also laugh and joke while they abuse their prey… as if there wasn’t a continuum between the jokes that dehumanise the prey, and the actual act of predation. as if the rattle of the snake was detached from the fangs.
19 March 2007, 7:53 pmDeAnander:
I neglected to say, great piece of writing Audrey…
19 March 2007, 7:55 pmaudrey:
Continuum is a good word, it addresses why we initially respond to violence, but then we learn to respond to the situations we’ve learned lead up to violence. That continuum is why, when I’m working in a classroom, and another teacher unlocks my door without knocking and lets himself in to talk, boxing me into the back corner of my room behind my desk, I react by tensing up. I make small talk and smile, but also I remember to breathe.
I’m uneasy characterizing the CPR class as an atmosphere of threat, because so much depends on a person’s standpoint. I know they were trying to break what they felt was sexual tension by making the jokes – and that’s not a statement about any inherent evilness on their part so much as about our culture in general; physical contact is overwhelmingly seen in a sexual context, and they were trying to acknowledge that they were uncomfortable. I understand how it happens.
I don’t know if they see the other standpoint – if they see how being on the floor with a circle of people standing above us making jokes will provoke a conditioned response – regardless of their intentions. That conditioned response is the sum of past experiences (real or absorbed through our culture), not an accusation that they will personally behave a certain way in the future. All the same, their response to that scenario – their subtle reminder that we are always viewed in a sexual context – provides part of the conditioning for the next time we are in that same situation.
I could probably give a hundred reasons why I didn’t speak out, or why I apologized to my boss instead of complaining, or why I volunteered to get certified someplace else at my own expense.
Mostly, I was just preoccupied with plotting my escape. I realized if I was taking myself out, I could take someone else with me. I refused my turn on the floor and suggested that I and the woman next to me could pair up and do that portion once everyone left, so I wouldn’t expose myself to the whole class with the shirt I was wearing. Neither of us stayed that long anyway, so it was a pointless gesture in the end, but when I sat back down, she reached over, grabbed my hand, and didn’t let go. Afterwards, she said it was the first time anyone had ever stepped in to protect her.
I am always forgetting how big small things are.
20 March 2007, 12:41 pmDeAnander:
Audrey you describe the reality more accurately — with more attention to nuance — than I did. the seamless circularity of that conditioning to sexualise women and subordination, whether in earnest or in jest. I think the hard part for “decent” men to understand is that rapists are also apparently decent men. i.e. it’s not as if women expect every man at any moment to suddenly morph into a slavering rapist (as some antifeminist men sulkily insist), but that it’s literally impossible to tell by surface appearances whether men can be trusted or not. situations that appear “normal” can get weird fast; and then situations that are unlikely to get seriously weird, if they get even *slightly* weird, trigger the self-protection reflexes that we learned the hard way…
I am very touched by the other female trainee’s reaction. and impressed by A’s levelheadedness in suggesting that the women practise on each other, thus defusing both social embarrassment and potential prurience in the situation. and that sense of “plotting my escape” from a situation is very familiar. I think most women know it. how far is it to the door? how far is it to the next house with lights on? how far is it to that group of people up ahead with women and kids in the party? are these shoes I can run in? and so on.
20 March 2007, 1:29 pm