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 stood in a circle around them. Another student practiced rolling them over, one hand cradling the neck, the other pulling them over as dead weight. Two men practiced on each other, and the requisite homophobic jokes were made. At some point the tension was broken with a joke about date rape. The woman next to me was staring at the floor. Her legs were crossed, the foot that was in the air was shaking uncontrollably.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be lying on the floor while my colleagues stood in a circle looking at my ass, and I wasn’t going to pretend to be unconscious as a coworker manhandled me into the proper face-up position and then bent over me, my stomach (or worse) exposed as my too-short baggy sweater crept upwards toward my extended arms, while my fellow staff members gathered above me making jokes about rape.

I was the third person to leave; by the end of the morning, a quarter of the class had walked out. The woman next to me left shortly before I did – the last time I looked over at her, she was covered in hives.

A few weeks ago I saw the Dolce and Gabbana ad that’s been banned in Spain – the one where a scantily clad woman is on her back, wrists restrained by a man bending over her, while 4 other men stand above her, watching. The firm that produced the ad pretended not to understand the controversy it generated. They asked: “What does an artistic photo have to do with real acts?” It’s not an actual gang rape in their ad; it’s a still photo. (And Magritte’s painting of a pipe is not a pipe.) Nevertheless, the image evokes the reality.

I could answer their question by quoting studies that show the connections between eroticized rape in porn and men’s attitudes toward rape after that exposure. But I don’t need studies to understand the connections between culture and reality, or what we view as normal. I could see it first-hand when, even within the context of a CPR course, a person lying on the ground was immediately evocative not of an accident victim, but of a potential victim of sexual assault.

I also saw that connection two weeks ago in my classroom. Our dance department is performing a section of Donald McKayle’s “Rainbow ‘Round my Shoulder” – a protest/dance about Southern chain gangs. My students were asked to put together something for a showcase. I brought in props – some pipe clamps from my attic that could be used as ankle shackles, and a thick chain. I explained to my students what it was for, and told them if they wanted to take photos with the chains, they could. I wasn’t prepared for the response. The only students who volunteered to be restrained in shackles and chains were black males, and white females. Some people envision themselves wearing chains; other entire groups of people apparently do not.

“What does an artistic photo have to do with real acts?” Sometimes the photos create the reality; sometimes the reality creates the photos. Dolce and Gabbana’s ad encompassed a little of both. The ad wasn’t created out of thin air. It was inspired by the reality that women are raped, and that a portion of our society finds this erotic. This was something the company was willing to exploit.

It’s “backwards,” according to Dolce and Gabbana, that their ad isn’t wanted in Spain, where two million women say they are victims of abuse. Dolce and Gabbana, both men, wanted to profit off the pain of those women. It’s “backwards,” in their opinion, to put the hive-erupting reactions of traumatized women above their own income, just as it’s “backwards” that Spain’s Socialist government enacted new laws in 2005 addressing gendered violence as a systemic cultural problem rather than the crimes of a few individuals. Their government addresses sexism in advertising as if advertising is part of the rape culture, as if ending the rape culture is as important as corporate profits.

I suppose that is backwards. Progress depends on exploiting anonymous women, and it doesn’t matter whether the industry is fashion, or medicine, or anything else. Not even Resusci Anne managed to escaped that reality. Anne’s face is modeled after an unidentified woman who was found in the River Seine. She retails for a few hundred dollars. Limbs cost extra.

Posted by stan in Analysis