It feels absolutely absurd to have to address any prudish or hesitant (because of worry of sexual abuse accusations or otherwise) behavior to save the life of a person, just because they have breasts. That said, I get it and I'm also glad that if this was a problem before, that it's getting corrected now. This is your sign to get CPR/AED certified now! Link for those in the USA: https://www.redcross.org/take-a-class/aed/aed-training/aed-certification
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
27 points (100.0% liked)
Feminism
3125 readers
1 users here now
Feminism, women's rights, bodily autonomy, and other issues of this nature. Trans and sex worker inclusive.
See also this community's sister subs LGBTQ+, Neurodivergence, Disability, and POC
Also check out our sister community on lemmy:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
On the other hand, we once responded to a woman passed out in a car. A bystander was doing "movie CPR": reaching through the window, one hand between her breasts, very lightly pushing.
She was alert and talking, so I start assessing her figuring this guy would get out of the way since she obviously doesn't need CPR. About 30 seconds latet I had to tell the guy he could stop.
Was she alert and talking, or passed out? Did she regain consciousness?
Dispatched as "unconscious" (and probably was when it was called in: took too many benzos). Alert and talking by the time we got there.
I'm extremely confident she had a pulse the whole time.
I genuinely have a hard time believing that someone trained to do CPR would refuse to do so because touching the boob of a stranger is too scary.
At least in Germany every driver has to get certified once before they get their driving license. So not everybody who is licensed is a professional, rather the opposite here. Its everyday common folk.
I think I may be too autistic to fully understand this; even as everyday common folk, they're more scared of touching a boob than letting someone die an entirely preventable death? That's bananas.
Panic can turn off the rational part of someone's brain. Plus freshly pulseless people don't look all that different than they did a minute ago.
Add in some agonal breathing and some people don't grasp how serious the situation is.
You're error in logic is in thinking that it is a conscious decision between "not letting them die" and "not touching their boobs". In reality those who are too scared to touch are those that don't have a good analysis of the situation in the first place.
For those people it's a "probably it's not as bad as I think, because nobody else is doing anything either" thing. The problem is exactly that they don't know how bad it really is. If they knew, most would not actively pet people die. It's exactly the ambiguity and inability to correctly assess the situation that hurts the person who needs help.
Adding to your points, the other thing is that people default to what they've been trained to do. Especially in emergencies which can be sressful and confusing. The best thing to do is to do something, and once you start to help, you will fall back on your training.
We typically train on vaguely male, shirtless manikins, or infant manikins. So any situation different than that is going to take slightly more time for the human being to assess the situation, recall their training, and make the connections to how to act "in real life" vs the training.
E.g., in my training, we did compressions on an inanimate bare chest manikin on the floor until the AED arrives. In a real life scenario, the person may be clothed, "gasping" for breath, maybe on a bed or sofa, so we'll have to adapt to real life -- move them to a solid surface, recognize that this is not true breathing, do cpr on them immediately with their shirt on, and deal with clothes if we get an AED later.
If the person had breasts, that is just one more way the real scenario is different from the training scenario. Or if you are about to apply AED pads, but there's a bra in the way. That's not in the training scenario, so people will have to think what to do. Ideally we should make training as close as possible to what people will experience
They make manikins now that come in a little sweater where you have to unzip it in order to apply the AED pads to the chest, i think those are great.
Unfortunately re: male, female, or enby manikins, most of the people i would be teaching would probably absolutely lose their minds if they saw a manikin with fake bare breasts, but I'm hoping to someday live in a society where this is not the case.
My training....
Tap the shoulders..."Hey buddy, are you okay?!!! - no response, order someone to call 911!, get IDE! proceede to CPR. Pump the chest then fill their lungs and do it again and again until paramedics arrive. If the IDE is available you turn it on and follow the instructions.
The instructions tell you to place one electrode on the side or back of the heart area and the other towards the front. Then you clear and allow it to discharge.
It's super simple stuff but under pressure things can get messy. Just ignore the boob and compress their chest to save their life.
You remember a lot!
One great thing now is that 911 operators will actually walk you through CPR if you have them on the phone on speaker! So if you call them, they will direct you and put that cpr training to best use. The AED pads also have pictures showing exactly where to put them.
You do not have to wait for the AED charge to leave the body -- immediately after you press the shock button, the electricity instantly leaves the body and they are safe to touch again -- you can go right back to compressions.