With my spring semester ending last month I have the much anticipated space to read the books that have been piling up on my shelf over the last semester. I recently finished Know My Name, by Chanel Miller. It took me a couple weeks to read, as each time I dove back in I found myself crying with and for Chanel, for myself, and for all women, really.
In January of 2015 (on my birthday, actually), Chanel was sexually assaulted on the Stanford campus. This book is her account of what happened to her, what she went through in the court system, how this violation impacted her and her family, and how she found her power again and a connection to others through her experience and her words. So often while reading I cried for her pain, the desire she had to protect her younger sister from all of the trauma and damage, the women and care teams around her after the assault and during her court proceedings. Chanel powerfully called out the disconnect between how victims are treated and alleged perpetrators are treated. And the way women are judged and told to change to avoid sexual assault and predatory behavior from men.
What I love about this, and what I’ve also felt for so long, is that she is pointing out how fucked up that is. Her experience in a small town on the east coast particularly struck me. She was going to art school for a time and was without a car in a small town. She recalled walking everywhere and not a single day going by that she wasn’t harassed by men calling to her from their cars or walking straight up to her and invading her physical, mental, and emotional space, already so tender and disjointed from her assault. Her boyfriend, living in another city at the time, was concerned and told her he would pay for her to get a rental car to drive back and for to classes in. After initially agreeing, Chanel then realized, why should I give up my walks, this time to think and potentially heal and explore this new living space, when I’m not doing wrong?
We tell girls and women to cover up, to act a certain way, to never go somewhere alone, carry keys as if they were a knife, have a rape whistle or other alert system at the ready on your phone. We are always on the defensive.
In the world of online dating I have felt an increasing amount of anxiety. One of the main reasons I download then delete it so often is a fear of the men on it being able to see my photos and neighborhood and then potentially stalk me, or even just approach me when I don’t want them to. I recently matched with a guy and we had been messaging in the app for a couple days when he asked me about my film photography work and if I had an Instagram. Before really thinking about it I gave him my handle. The rest of the day went by without him replying and I started getting anxious. My last name isn’t listed when I match with someone, and I don’t have any other specific information about where I live or work, so it would have been hard to find me on social media just based on my first name. But now he had my Instagram handle, which was public, and shared a whole lot more of my life than those six pictures and two dumb prompts on the dating app. I unmatched with him and switched my accounts to private. And what a shame that is, to have to change something about myself out of fear of what another might do. He could be a perfectly normal man who would never harm another. But I have been trained to be weary of men and conscious of how I present myself 24/7. I wouldn’t even think twice about giving a woman my Instagram handle, whether it was a romantic interest or platonic. It doesn’t matter. There isn’t an inherent danger from other women. We know the danger we constantly feel around us and would never subject another to it.
Things need to change. Our society needs to change. We cannot question victims of assault or abuse to see if they did something to deserve the violence or encourage the pass. We need to raise our boys (and girls and every gender) to respect boundaries and ask for consent. We need to teach our girls not to apologize for saying no, or for drinking and getting drunk, or for enjoying themselves. Our existence is not an open invitation for others to do what they please with our bodies and our souls.
