Know My Name

by Chanel Miller

And that is where my memory goes black, where the reel cuts off.

I stopped when I saw the words Rape Victim in bold at the top of one sheet. A fish leapt out of the water. I paused. No, I do not consent to being a rape victim. If I signed on the line, would I become one? If I refused to sign, could I remain my regular self?

looked down at my body, a thick, discolored bag, and thought, Somebody take this away too, I can’t be left alone with this.

I wanted the water to seep through my pores, to burn every cell and regenerate. I wanted to inhale all the steam, to suffocate, go blind, evaporate.

My home is a place where everything grows and all spills are forgiven, where anyone is welcome at any time of day.

I didn’t know that money could make the cell doors swing open. I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.

Google finally sat me down and broke the news.

had been told I was found passed out with a man around me. No one had ever said, The man was found inside you.

I, Chanel, was sitting at the office, and the body being publicly taken apart did not belong to me.

They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability.

Drinking is not inherently immoral: a night of heavy drinking calls for Advil and water. But being drunk and raped seemed to call for condemnation.

In rape cases it’s strange to me when people say, Well why didn’t you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn’t ask, Well why didn’t you fight him? Why didn’t you tell him no?

They were not asked to adhere to the same rules, yet there were countless guidelines women had to follow: cover your drink, stick close to others, don’t wear short skirts. Their behavior was the constant, while we were the variable expected to change.

They counted my drinks and counted the seconds Brock could swim two hundred yards, topped the article with a picture of Brock wearing a tie;

What if you’re assaulted and you didn’t already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected?

That’s not fair, I said. I just want to walk home from school, I’m not doing anything wrong. I should be able to. You can walk anywhere you want. It’s not fair you get to unsubscribe from the videos. You get to turn off the feed, you get to see it selectively, I don’t have that option, to decide not to live it. I’m trying to show you what it’s like for me. It doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter what I wear, how I act, it’s constant, the harassment is constant. I have no money for a car, and even if I did, I enjoy walking, I want to keep walking.

Men had lines other men didn’t cross, an unspoken respected space. I imagined a thick line drawn like a perimeter around Lucas. Men would speak to me as if no line existed, every day I was forced to redraw it as quickly as I could. Why weren’t my boundaries inherent?

In Elliot’s world, the unspoken law was that women owed him sex, we existed only to receive him. Those were the rules, that was our purpose. Sex was his right and our responsibility.

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.

If our bodies were literally painted red, we’d have red bodies all over this quad.

This was no longer a fight against my rapist, it was a fight to be humanized.

women aren’t preferred on juries of rape cases because they’re likely to resist empathizing with the victim,

I’d be asleep again in the bumpy vehicle, delivered by paramedics back onto the ground. Brock’s hand would slide out of me, my underwear shimmying back up my legs, my bra tucking over my breast, my hair smoothing out, the pine needles swimming back into the ground. I’d walk backward into the party, standing alone, my sister returning to find me. Outside the Swedes would bike past to wherever they were going. The world would continue, another Saturday evening.

She asked if my previous blackouts had been different than my one on January 15. I said that in previous blackouts, I’ve never been half naked outside. I wanted to curtsy.

it didn’t matter how many times I’d blacked out before. This blackout remained different. I was not here to lie about who I was or to apologize for my past.

You want to know why my whole goddamn family was hurting, why I lost my job, why I had four digits in my bank account, why my sister was missing school? It was because on a cool January evening, I went out, while that guy, that guy there, had decided that yes or no, moving or motionless, he wanted to fuck someone, intended to fuck someone, and it happened to be me.

The friendly guy who helps you move and assists senior citizens in the pool is the same guy who assaulted me. One person can be capable of both. Society often fails to wrap its head around the fact that these truths often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That’s the terrifying part.

Yes. She goes on to juror number two. Yes. Three. Yes. Four. Yes. Five. Yes. I watch a man subtly smile as he states his vote, like this is his victory too.

It is a pure and constant rhythm, beating into me. A recitation of truth. The yesses go on unbroken, like steps taking us somewhere. As my eyes follow them one by one, I feel anger draining out of me, making space for something else.

I thought of Emily that morning, standing in the shower, struggling to stand up straight, surrounded by steam. Somewhere along the way I’d become the voices that told her she was a humiliation, should learn to think realistically. I told her she deserved the damage, questioning her instincts. How badly I’d wanted to abandon her. How little I’d thought of her life.

Some red-eyed family members glare at me like I am the enemy. I stare back through my own red eyes, unyieldingly. You are looking at the wrong person.

What I meant was take note of his mental health, because in my experience, when men were upset, lonely, or neglected, we were killed.

Under victim’s race, she had checked White. Never in my life have I checked only White. You cannot note my whiteness without acknowledging I am equal parts Chinese. This single check mark was a testament to how little time she’d taken to know me, making the assumption I was white over the phone without bothering to ask.

Alcohol freed Brock of moral culpability.

How did we find ourselves in the position of begging for one year? When did the power shift?

The punishment does not fit the crime. The sentence does not factor in the true seriousness of this sexual assault, or the victim’s ongoing trauma. Campus rape is no different than off-campus rape. Rape is rape.

They tell you that if you’re assaulted, there’s a kingdom, a courthouse, high up on a mountain where justice can be found. Most victims are turned away at the base of the mountain, told they don’t have enough evidence to make the journey. Some victims sacrifice everything to make the climb, but are slain along the way, the burden of proof impossibly high. I set off, accompanied by a strong team, who helped carry the weight, until I made it, the summit, the place few victims reached, the promised land. We’d gotten an arrest, a guilty verdict, the small percentage that gets the conviction.

When society questions a victim’s reluctance to report, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down. Victims do not have the time for this. Victims are also students, teachers, parents, who can’t give up work or education. The average adult can barely find time to renew their license at the DMV. It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place.

This is not about the victims’ lack of effort. This is about society’s failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there’s a probable chance of achieving safety, justice, and restoration rather than being retraumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented, and verbally mauled.

Victims receive heat when given any sum. Few acknowledge that healing is costly.

Preventing assault is so much cheaper than trying to address it after the fact.

2001, a sixteen-year-old girl named Lindsay Armstrong was raped in Scotland. During trial, the defense attorney asked her to hold up the undies she’d been wearing at the time of the attack and to read aloud what was written on them: LITTLE DEVIL. The rapist was convicted, but guilty convictions don’t undo damage. Three weeks later, she killed herself.