“The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me: empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential.”
Chanel Miller, Know My Name
Let me tell you a story before I get into this review, and please be aware that this may be triggering if you’ve been the victim of a sexual assault. Honestly, this whole review may be triggering, so it may be better to skip this one if that’s something you’re sensitive about.
I had been married for a year, maybe two, when the women at my university started to be terrorized by a man we all called “The Groper.” It was a male student who would walk by, seemingly innocently, but then grab the body of a nearby woman, then take off running. We went to a pretty “safe” university, but there was a hill on the south of campus we all called “rape hill” because there had been a few assaults at night, and students were cautioned to avoid the area if they were walking alone. There were little signs and emergency telephones and everything. Even so, we felt pretty safe there. I’d never heard of anyone actually getting attacked until “The Groper” came on the scene. His assaults got bolder until he finally broke into some girls’ apartment. As far as I know, he didn’t harm them physically, but he robbed them of their feeling of safety.
At this time, my husband and I lived in a crappy little apartment near campus with a creepy parking garage, terrible lighting, and a few seedy neighbors. I was getting ready for work one morning and I asked my husband if he would walk me to my car since I was nervous about the parking garage with “The Groper” on the loose. He assured me that I’d be fine. He wasn’t dressed yet, it would be inconvenient, and there was really nothing to worry about after all. Now I don’t want you to hate on my husband, because he’s truly a caring and thoughtful partner, but in this situation he just didn’t understand how scary the situation was for me. I went to my car by myself clutching my keys between my fingers. I was fine. Nothing happened.
But that was the day that I realized just how different my experience of the world was from my husband’s. I lived in a world in which women carry pepper spray and hold their keys between their fingers like Wolverine. We avoid certain areas, especially at night, and try to never walk alone if we can avoid it. Meanwhile, my husband lived in a world in which he could pretty much go where he wanted without ever thinking about it. He’d never bought pepper spray. He’d never checked the backseat of his car for lurking danger. He could walk through a creepy parking garage and not give it a second thought. Since then, he’s learned about the sort of vigilance expected of women and why I act the way I do sometimes.
This sort of blindness is endemic to men in our society, I think. They tend not to see the ways in which women mold their lives around the possibility of sexual assault, and when they do see our precautions they mock us as being paranoid. That is, until a woman is assaulted, and then she was stupid for [fill in the blank.] She should have known better than to get drunk. She should have dressed more modestly. What was she doing walking alone at night? Why was she in such a rough part of town? What did she think was going to happen?
Chanel Miller’s incredible memoir, Know My Name, shines a glaring light on this type of attitude and shows us just how damaging it can be. For many years, I didn’t know Chanel’s name. I knew her as Emily Doe, Brock Turner’s victim. In this book, she courageously steps out, tells her story, and challenges the world to be better.
I can’t tell you how much I loved and hated this book. I hated the things that happened to her. I hated having to read about her assault and how the court system continually revictimized her over the course of years while Brock Turner fought his felony charges. I hated Chanel’s sleepless nights, her isolation, her pain. How her very hometown had been poisoned for her by Turner’s actions. I hated that the trial kept getting postponed, causing Chanel and her family to have to rearrange their schedules time and again to accommodate other people. I hated Stanford’s patronization of her, their too-late attempts to help her.
But I loved Chanel’s fighting spirit, how she was drowning but kept swimming toward the surface anyway. I loved her refusal to be silenced. How, when Stanford insisted she put a “hopeful, affirming” quote on the plaque in the memorial garden, she told them to just forget it. She’d rather say nothing at all than empty platitudes. I loved reading about the love of her family, the support of her friends, the steadiness of her boyfriend. There was beauty in the ugliness, and we’re privileged that she let us see it.
Chanel Miller is a talented writer. Period. She’s not a talented writer “for a rape victim,” or a talented writer “for someone so young.” She’s just good. Her voice is fresh and powerful, her words impactful. I listened to this on audiobook (which she narrated herself! Seriously, I don’t know how she got through it.) and I found myself whispering her words to myself to try to remember them.
Can I share some of my favorite quotes with you? I know I’m gushing, but I just want everyone to read at least some of her words.
“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”
“I did not come into existence when he harmed me. She found her voice! I had a voice, he stripped it, left me groping around blind for a bit, but I always had it. I just used it like I never had to use it before. I do not owe him my success, becoming, he did not create me. The only credit Brock can take is for assaulting me, and he could never even admit to that.”
“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying.”
This book isn’t an easy read. If you don’t have the mental or emotional space to read it right now, that’s okay. But someday, if you’re feeling up to it, I really want you to pick this one up. Especially if you’re a man. Not so you can feel guilty, but so you can understand. So you can see the importance of being one of the Swedish bicyclists who saved Chanel, not the gross Freshman taking advantage of her behind a dumpster. So you can be the elderly man manning the booth to get signatures for the judge’s recall, not the judge who gave a young man six months (actually three, because of good behavior) for sexually assaulting a woman because he was more worried about the cost of accountability for the rapist than about the damage to the victim.
Be better.
