Episode 1: Know My Name Transcript

[intro music]

Kylie: Hi everyone and welcome to the first episode of Insomniac Librarians! I'm Kylie.

Sonya: And I'm Sonya.

Jenni: And I'm Jenni.

Sonya: Basically, this is the podcast where we talk about books, namely anti-capitalist, anti-carceral feminist books and relate our picks to what's going on in the news and in our lives. Sometimes, things will be more evergreen and personal, other times more specific to what's happening or what's trending on social media.

Kylie: But, uh, too long didn't read: welcome to your new favorite anti-capitalist and feminist book club! We’ll also like to talk about weird history or spice it up with some political KMFs or astrology, pop culture, all of that, and things might get a little bit chaotic, but we pretty much just have one rule, and that is no capitalists allowed so see yourself out Elon Musk. Any—Anyway,

[laughter]

Kylie: But yeah I mean this is our first episode so definitely bear with us, we are trying our best. Should we just introduce ourselves quickly?

Sonya: Yeah.

Kylie: Just so people—okay, great. Sonya do you wanna start us off?

Sonya: Yeah I guess. [laughs] Alright hi, I'm Sonya, I'm a lighting designer and actor. I haven't been doing much theatre since the pandemic started, but I've been using some of my free time to read and when Kylie proposed the idea of creating a book podcast,

Kylie: Oh my god, me?

Sonya: I was immediately on board.

Kylie: Oh my god, you’re talk—That's me! Okay. I'm Kylie, I've been writing and reporting on feminist issues for around five years, I've written a couple of feminist essay collections, and yeah we might talk about those books that I've written eventually—not to self plug. But yeah I also work in advocacy for reproductive justice and survivor justice so I love talking about these issues, especially with these two lovely women right here, so I'm very excited about this! But anyway, Jenni back to you.

Jenni: Hi, I'm Jenni, I'm a pre-medical student currently in my gap year and about to apply soon. I was formally introduced to the topic of social justice in my first year of college and women's issues particularly stood out to me. And since then, a lot of the work I've been doing involves community building and education in order to try to dismantle disparities, so when I was invited to join this podcast I was super excited to talk to Kylie and Sonya.

Kylie: Oh my god… You’re being- [laughs] This sounds like so formal from what you guys are saying, like being invited to this- but you know, we're just freestyling this and winging this, we'll see what happens. Okay, maybe we should talk about how we know each other. What a crazy story, just kidding, it's a very not crazy story, but I don't know. We- Did we all have English together in freshman year of high school?

Jenni: Did we all have-

Kylie: Or was that just you and me and Jenni?

Jenni: -LaRosa?

Kylie: Well we all had the same—yeah. We all had the same teacher.

Sonya: The same—Yeah the same teacher, but I think we all had different periods right?

Jenni: Oh.

Kylie: Well Jenni and I had the same period.

Sonya: Oh, okay.

Kylie: We also had math together, Jenni.

Jenni: Oh my god, you took math! [laughs]

Kylie: Yeah, right? You literally had just moved, that was like your first year there and I thought you were really cool, and I really wanted to be friends with you, and I didn't think that I was cool enough. But you know what? Here we are eight years later, so.

Jenni: You see, when I moved—

Kylie: You know?

Jenni: When I moved I was like I don't know anyone, I think everyone else is too cool for me, so it was the opposite, yeah. But to give everyone a background we all went to high school together. [laughs]

Sonya: Yeah.

Kylie: Yup!

Jenni: So we’ve known each other for, in my eyes at least, eight plus years, which is so long for me.

Kylie: Yeah. Wait, Sonya and I went to elementary school together. And then we—

Sonya: Yeah but we never talked.

Kylie: Yeah, not in elementary school.

Sonya: I don’t, I don’t think we said a single word.

Kylie: I don’t know about that, okay, wow.

Sonya: Okay well, maybe like in passing,

Kylie: Hurtful. [laughs]

Sonya: But. No I don’t mean it in a bad way! I just mean like—

Kylie: No I know, okay. But um, we knew each other pretty well by- in eighth grade. We- ‘Cause we did the National History Day competition together, remember?

Sonya: Yeah yeah yeah. We had the same history teacher. I remember you would write—

Kylie: That was when I wrote erotica! [laughs] Remember?

Sonya: [laughs] I was about to say!

Jenni: That is so cute. [laughs]

Sonya: Wasn’t it about Anne Boleyn?

Kylie: Um. But wow! Okay, so. Oh! Yeah. And we were also Tumblr buddies.

Sonya: Oh my god.

Jenni: Mmm.

Kylie: I think Tumblr is how a lot of like young women got into social justice and we were, we were like that. My fingers are crossed for those who can’t see. But yeah I feel like that paints a picture of this.. [laughs] of this dynamic.

Sonya: Oh yeah! Before we move on, I’d like to give a huge thank you to my friend Pan-Pan for composing our show music.

Kylie: We're really excited to just talk about books and talk about our lives and stuff. So yeah do we want to just dive in, introduce the book, offer a little content warning that yeah the first book that we are talking about definitely deals with some pretty heavy and consequential topics around sexual violence and around the legal system and criminal justice system, and so yeah we definitely just want to note that before diving in. I'm excited to talk about this book if you guys are ready.

Jenni: Yeah.

Sonya: Yeah let's get into it.

Kylie: Yes, okay. Well, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and so this episode's book is definitely my favorite book ever; it's Know My Name by Chanel Miller. First of all, I just want to say we all—in this conversation we all relate to her a lot, ‘cause we grew up in a pretty, in like, we grew up really close to where most of her story takes place here in the Bay Area and yeah. Would you guys like to summarize this with me? Just in case anyone listening hasn’t read it.

Jenni: I personally haven't read the book yet, but that's why I'm also here with Kylie and Sonya, so for those of you who haven't read the book, you can still tag along and listen to us too. And then, also for those of you who don't know who Chanel Miller is, she was initially best known as the victim of Brock Turner, and then since she was tired of her story being told over and over by other people, she felt empowered by deciding to write the book for herself.

Kylie: Actually I should also know that just yesterday we listened to her talk at “In Conversation with USC’s Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment.” I graduated from USC so I was really excited that she was speaking there and so… Some of our key takeaways from her really great conversation include that part of her inspiration to write this book, this memoir, of her experience as the person at the center of that really notorious Stanford rape trial in 2016, which just was a launching point for so many important conversations about rape culture—she was at the center of that, she wrote her book about her experience in that and it was just such a great conversation yesterday.

Kylie: One of the really cool points I think that she made was just about how, you know, just those awful men who protected and defended her rapist, her abuser… Powerful men who defend rapists and are rapists, they don't have to hide or be held down by shame. And I think it's so amazing that she points that out and like, in terms of emulating that confidence and being visible for as long as they're visible and taking up that space, which we traditionally see victims and survivors pushed out of any conversations about, you know, their experiences by the shame and the embarrassment that they're supposed to feel, and so I think it's really powerful that she talked about that. Sonya I know you listened to it too, so.

Sonya: Yeah I really liked how she brought up how the assault isn’t just the timeframe of the assault itself, but everything that comes after it, because that's something that gets lost in a lot of discussions, I feel like. Like getting a bit ahead of myself here, but in the book she compared the memories of her assault in the morning after to sealed jars in her mind that she tried to leave and forget about, but every time she thought about it a new jar would be born until they filled every inch of her mind and that's such a good way to put it, because speaking from my own experience, trying to suppress those memories can only get you so far.

Sonya: Trauma doesn't follow a schedule or a timeline, especially if you're not able to process it, and following her emotional journey when it came to healing was just as eye opening as reading about the court process.

Kylie: Yeah, no definitely. I think, you know, adding on to what you just said, I mean like just the way her story and like, the way she narrates it makes it so clear that healing from trauma is extremely nonlinear, extremely cyclical, I mean you're not just following this progression that's like this linear chart, it's just all over the place, and I think to that point she makes such a great point about how being deliberate about caring for yourself physically and mentally is so important. Because otherwise I mean your body is gonna choose when to take those breaks, unless you choose unless you're like, the one to choose. And so yeah I think that that's such a great point.

Kylie: I'm just so glad that we're talking about her book for our first episode just because in addition to the fact that we’re Asian American woman who grew up in the Bay Area, really similar to her family and where she grew up, yeah I also really relate to her in that, you know, sexual assault is a really important issue to me on a personal level, and I think I've written about it in some of my writing and some of my books, just about, you know, my own experiences with that and navigating rape culture, and like you said, Sonya, how Chanel Miller talks about how, you know the assault, it's about so much more than just the assault. It's about life after as well, life before.

Kylie: And I think that so many people talk about rape and sexual violence as something that happens in a vacuum, something that happens in like, a specific box on your calendar and it's just, it's not like that I just think that her story is so beautiful and humanizing because you see so clearly that it's a process, it's something that divides and like, I don't know if I’m being dramatic but recreates your life, recreates who you are and where you go from there, and I think that it's such a— the way she tells that story is so beautiful.

Kylie: I think that as bizarre as it may sound like it's an experience that changes you for worse and for better and all these different ways and I think that she doesn't try to simplify her story or her narrative to like, fit traditional traditional perfect victim narratives and stuff like that and I just love that.

Sonya: Yeah and just adding on to that, she isn’t afraid to show us the moments when the healing is messy either, like the moments of her lashing out at her partner Lucas or being testy with her family. These are moments that we usually don't get to see with victims, like especially ones who are going through a very public court trial, because then they're not seen anymore as like, you know, the “perfect victim.”

Sonya: And she says in the book, “I don't believe there is such a thing as an immaculate past or a perfect victim. Yet now I felt I was being upheld to an impossible standard of purity, worried that failing to meet it would justify Brock raping me. His attorney would simplify, generalize, and mislabel my history.” But then she takes control of the narrative and includes these moments in the book, because in her own words, “To deny my messiness would be to deny my humanity.” And I just love that.

Kylie: I freaking love that.

Kylie: I'm down to summarize the book a little quickly, or we can all do that just for anyone who hasn't read it but still wants to be able to know what we're talking about.

Kylie: Well, as Jenni already noted, Chanel Miller is the woman behind the notorious Stanford rape case from 2016, which drew huge backlash just because of the really gross victim blaming that was employed by Brock Turner’s defense team, and of course, how he only served three months in county jail as a result of raping her. In 2016 Chanel’s letter addressing Brock Turner went viral because it just spoke to this overarching rape culture in our society, and it spoke to just endemic victim blaming and how our justice system retraumatizes and punishes victims.

Kylie: It's overall just such a shining beacon of survivor resilience, which I think you've already gleaned from what we talked about from her panel yesterday and so that devastatingly resonant letter, I feel, it really marked a cultural reset for the conversation around sexual violence, just because it just beautifully laid bare the retraumatizing, victim-blaming, and interrogation that victims of abuse so often face. I think it's just, it's candid, it’s devastatingly honest, it's always relatable and it's just so inspiring.

Sonya: She shows us not only how the assault affected her, like I mentioned before with her and Lucas, but also her loved ones. Like when it comes to these rape cases the media puts so much focus on how the assailant’s life is ruined, particularly when they're white and male, with barely a thought for how the victim’s life is ruined and even less on the toll it takes on those close to the victim.

Sonya: Chanel’s sister Tiffany had to rearrange her entire schedule every time the hearing was rescheduled, juggling classes and finals and jobs, and her friend Julia had panic attacks from walking past the fraternity house for the next two years. How many of these stories go unheard? What does justice look like for them?

Jenni: It seems like, in her own words, her healing, her growth into a critically acclaimed writer, artist, and activist didn't come from this punishing justice system, but from time. From the love and support in her life, her own resilience, and it highlighted how healing for survivors is nonlinear. So again, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but specifically right now, at a time of increased violence targeting Asian American women, Chanel is an Asian American survivor.

Kylie: Yeah and you know, I've written and reported a bit on the cultural erasure, specifically of Asian survivors, and how, you know, a lot of cultural phenomena, like the model minority and white supremacist narratives really contribute to this, and so I think it's just such a great time to talk about this book. I'm really excited to just dig in now that we're all on the same page.

Sonya: Wanna share some of your favorite quotes?

Kylie: Yes! It is excerpt time, Sonya, so yeah I mean, oh my god I'm sure you can relate to me, but it was so freaking hard to choose favorite quotes and passages because not only is her story so inspiring but just the way she writes, the way she writes is like beautiful and like adorable and funny and also devastating. It's like the entire spectrum of emotions-

Sonya: I love it.

Kylie: -and it's so freaking relatable and like, I hope I picked quotes that decently reflect how amazing this book is. Yeah I'll just dig in and share mine and then we'll pass it around.

Kylie: So, the first quote I really want to share really speaks for itself. It's: “Do you understand, when you ask a victim to report, what you’re telling her to walk into? Why didn’t she go to the police? I had deputies, a detective, paramedics, I had squad cars, an ambulance. I had them… recording witness accounts, jotting down every detail of my body. You were just physically attacked? Here’s some information on how you can enter a multiyear process of verbal abuse.”

Kylie: So yeah I just—okay, quote ended there. But, one of the reasons I love and hate this quote is just that, and you know she talks about this herself, but even the quote “best case scenario” for a survivor, the criminal justice system is still built to screw you and to retraumatize you and gaslight you.

Kylie: She even talks about, in about another quote, how it really felt like she was like at the top of that mountain almost and like, there were so many survivors that she talked to who literally weren't able to report or do anything about because like, there just was no evidence, and I mean I mean, the nature of sexual violence is that it's inherently private, it's inherently… It's inherently something where like, there isn't really quote “evidence” unquote unless you're like, wearing a body camera and most of us are not. And it's just… A lot of it comes down to really the gendered nature of credibility and that, you know, that’s really what decides it.

Kylie: And so I feel like, it's so bizarre to say it, but like, her experience reflects the best case scenario of if you've experienced sexual violence, because there's so much tangible evidence there and witnesses and all of that, and even still just the way our legal system treats survivors… It's just as she says, it's literally a multiyear process of verbal abuse.

Kylie: Moving on to the next quote that I have… Well at this point Chanel talks about her boyfriend telling her that he didn't want her to send him more videos of some of the street harassment she experienced because it was too upsetting for him and he told her to kind of just try to stop walking, rent a car if she could, and she then reminds him that she's the one who actually has to go through this harassment and she can't just look away. And she also notes that she hasn't done anything wrong. Like why shouldn't she be able to walk wherever she wants?

Kylie: So basically she recounts it as: “I felt like I’d done something wrong, upsetting him by sending the videos. It also seemed like he’d said, If they’re bothering you while walking, why are you still walking? It didn’t feel like a solution at all; they’d forced me to seal myself off in a car. I didn’t want to give up my sidewalks. I called Lucas back. 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. I was crying.”

Kylie: I don't even know where to start with that quote. It's just like, if you think something's hard to hear, it's even harder to experience and like, privileged people can't be ignorant and complicit on the violence of rape culture and like, basically our ability to choose ignorance versus how victims can't choose what happens to us—it’s privilege. And it perpetuates complicity and violence and, you know, I always think that like bad—for lack of better words—like, bad shit happens for two reasons, and it's because a perpetrator chooses to harm and also because people with privilege choose to look away or not do anything.

Kylie: And I just think a lot of how—the story of Kitty Genovese. Her story isn't just about bystander apathy, it's about the normalization of rape culture and gender violence, because one of her neighbors said he didn't intervene when she was attacked because he thought it was just a quote “lovers’ quarrel” when she was being attacked and raped by a man who killed her while she yelled for help and so… I relate to Chanel here because I love to walk and like, it doesn't matter what you wear it doesn't matter what you do I mean like, the harassment is constant, as she says.

Kylie: I have one more other quote but definitely want to invite you guys to like, reflect on it with me if you want because I know it's like so relatable, right? Like there's no way to avoid street harassment and like

Sonya: One of my quotes actually is very closely related to yours.

Kylie: Oh wow.

Sonya: And it's like, walking is something… I feel like it's not a lot to ask for?

Kylie: Yeah!

Sonya: Just to be able to walk in peace? By yourself?

Kylie: Fuck yeah.

Sonya: And yet we treat—like, society treats street harassment and getting catcalled as just this constant, like you can't stop it, there's nothing to be done on the catcalling side, you just have to learn to deal with it or to avoid it.

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah.

Sonya: And it's like, why is everything on us to avoid it?

Kylie: Mhm! And like, oh my freaking god I mean like to your point it's like, people treat street harassment as either unavoidable or like we should be taking it as a compliment or praise, which is fucking disgusting. It's objectifying, it's gross, it's about ownership, it’s about who owns public spaces and who is walking through public spaces just for, you know, to...

Kylie: Ugh it's so gross. Also, that reminds me of a study I know that we've all talked about at one point, it's like a study of how people—or like women specifically—who are less quote “conventionally attractive”—a study found that they're less likely to be believed, because we associate things like street harassment and sexual violence with attraction and with sex and desire and stuff, but it's not! It's about power, it's about control, it's about demeaning someone. It's not about attractiveness, so I mean I'm just so angry about that right now.

Sonya: No yeah. A few months ago I was at—you know how because of the pandemic, you have to wait outside-

Kylie: Yup!

Sonya: -stores? So I was waiting outside of Trader Joe's with my mom.

Kylie: Oh I love your mom!

Sonya: My hair was braided ‘cause I need— [laughs] oh thanks. My hair was braided because I needed to wash it.

Kylie: Mhm.

Sonya: I had a mask on because pandemic, I was wearing like… just jeans, a T-shirt, and a jacket, like nothing that looked… I wasn't I wasn't dressing to impress you know? And yet some guy still catcalled me from his car right in front of me in the parking lot.

Kylie: Eww.

Sonya: I'm like dude. Are you kidding me?

Kylie: Oh my freaking god it's fucking disgusting. I literally love how Chanel—like, I love that she like, confronted some of the people who were harassing her ‘cause her anger was just so visceral and relatable. But then she also talks about her immediate fear after doing that ‘cause I mean like, that's literally what it's like to be a woman—it’s having so much anger and fear at the same time, because like, a man could literally just fucking kill you. Like. That’s—

Sonya: Yeah oh my god wait, if I can—if I can cut in real quick because-

Kylie: Go ahead.

Sonya: -a part of my second quote has—is like—anyway!

Kylie: [laughs]

Sonya: So. The part of my quote that I'm going to share: after she yelled at that man who invited her to get into his car for a ride at night-

Kylie: So gross.

Sonya: -and then how this wouldn't be considered brave, but rather crazy, provoking, or asking for trouble?

Kylie: Yes.

Sonya: She says, “Always she, always she. I never heard the voice asking why he pulled over, why he believed I’d get in, what he might do if I did. How much was I expected to take, to absorb and ignore, while they yelled and clicked their tongues so freely, with no fear of being confronted. Was I stubborn for wanting to walk, was I asking too much?”

Kylie: Ugh. Well, that was a bit of a detour, but I loved it. I'm now going to read the last little excerpt I have.

Jenni: Can I actually cut in?

Kylie: Oh no, go ahead.

Jenni: I was gonna say that it seems like there's kind of like, a no-win situation for women, because in a lot of these scenarios, all you can do is either accept it, or if you try to go against it, like Sonya if you spoke out against that harasser-

Kylie: You could get killed!

Jenni: Yeah exactly. You could get attacked, you don't know what's going to be out there, but at the same time, if you don't speak out, you just have to take it, internalize it, there's just so much that goes on, where it just feels like there's a no-win situation for women in these scenarios.

Kylie: Yeah, oh my god.

Jenni: So I think it feels like the only real change that can happen is if men themselves, you know...

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah, it should not be on us. Exactly.

Jenni: Yeah.

Sonya: You would think that's not such a hard thing to do, and yet they're treated as some like… They’re literally treated as like a natural disaster like, the things that happen?

Kylie: [laughs] Oh my god.

Sonya: Like dude no, it's a—it's a person, I'm pretty sure they can think for themselves.

Kylie: I know. Okay, this is like getting a bit off topic, but oh my god, no. What you just said reminded me of like, you know how like, when Me Too first kind of took off in like the mainstream consciousness? It's crazy that like so many men were like, oh my god, this is terrifying, this is going to change my life, I'm so scared! So I can't hug you anymore?

Kylie: And it's like wow. What they're just having this huge existential crisis about is that they now henceforth have to actually maybe, just maybe, think a little bit about whether they're making a woman feel uncomfortable. And it's like, oh my god, that's like what they're panicking about: the fact that they now have to like maybe, just maybe, think a little.

Kylie: Like, expend like an ounce of like, mental energy to think about whether you're saying or doing something that's making another human being feel violated or uncomfortable. And like, they're acting like they're the ones being victimized. You know what I mean? There's no equation between like, that feeling of discomfort, or violation, or literal fear that someone—a man—is going to try to kill you.

Kylie: There's no equation between that, and like, I don't even know! Like, the fear of like, being quote “Me Too’d.” It's like, it's so… Like like you said, Sonya, I mean like it's just like you're asking for so little, but to them any kind of vague infringement on their hegemony—oh, SAT word there—but any vague infriction? Infraction? I don’t even know. Any vague quote “attack” on that is just seen as the end of everything.

Jenni: I think that just speaks to the amount of privilege, status, and power that men hold, if they feel so threatened just by the Me Too movement.

Kylie: Right? I mean like, there's so many valid conversations like we talked about, pretty recently, about male victims of sexual violence, who are more likely to be LGBTQ or people of color and like, you know, there are very important conversations to be had around that, but then when we center male victimhood around like, this false notion of like… Of like, quote “false accusations” and such we're just erasing all of that, and like, no one wins from this kind of conversation.

Sonya: Wasn't the statistic one in six men? Like that's a huge percentage!

Kylie: Yeah. Literally one in six. Huge. Yeah. Fucking huge.

Sonya: And that's not something that we hear about that much, we only—like you said, we only hear about men being assailants.

Jenni: Sorry, one in six men… Finish that statistic. One in six men—

Kylie: Yeah, one in six men has experienced some form of sexual abuse. Which is insane and we don't talk about that, ‘cause all we talk about is how men are victimized by quote “false accusations” unquote.

Kylie: Okay, sorry, anyway I'll go to my last excerpt before handing it off.

Kylie: Okay, so the last excerpt I chose is the final paragraph of the book because it's freaking beautiful and it's: “I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.”

Kylie: Oh my god, I just love this passage. Agh, she just reflects on her resilience and her triumph and it's just a reminder, again, of how nonlinear the paths to healing and justice are and, you know, the most sustainable fighting is always done out of love.

Kylie: And, you know, I think anger is so empowering especially when that anger is rooted in, you know, a sense of injustice toward yourself or toward loved ones and it's just like, being able to stay in fights for just social change and especially when you've had such a deep personal experience with that, I mean like, it's always hard. There's so much burnout, there's so much exhaustion, there's so much… retraumatization, but you know, it's so beautiful that she talks about how the way that she was able to stay in this is through love, and agh! I love that so much.

Kylie: Yeah. Okay, those are my experts. I’m handing it off to you, Sonya.

Sonya: It was so hard for me to pick my favorite quotes to share here, I wrote down quotes that I loved while reading the book and literally ended up with ten pages.

Kylie: Oh my god.

Sonya: No lie. I wish I could share them all, but then this episode might as well be an audiobook, so we're thinking of sharing a post or two on our Instagram with some more quotes that we love, so keep an eye out for that! Anyway, here's a few of my favorites.

Sonya: In the first chapter she says, “Horror was present, I could feel it moving, shifting my insides, wet and murky and weighted, but on the surface, I saw only a ripple. Panic would arrive like a fish, briefly breaking the surface, flicking into the air, then slipping back in, returning everything to stillness.”

Sonya: And then two pages later, there's a brief callback when she hesitates on signing off on the sheet with “rape victim” at the top: “A fish leapt out of the water. I paused.”

Sonya: And I just—I love this quote and the callback because it—this is really how the trauma comes back, isn't it? It's often stillness or just a ripple, but then suddenly the fish leaps out and everything comes back to the surface at once. I never reported my assault, suppressed it as best I could, but when it comes back every so often it's just like this.

Kylie: Agh. That was so beautiful. Um.

Sonya: Thanks.

Kylie: [laughs]

Sonya: Alright, onto the next quote: “I was thankful to have Lucas. But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I, alone, was not enough. At the hospital it had never occurred to me that it was important I was dating someone; I had only been thinking of me and my body. It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body. It felt strange to say, I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body. Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected? Later I’d read suggestions that I cried rape because I was ashamed I had cheated on my boyfriend. Somehow the victim never wins.”

Sonya: And then, when she was talking about her walks in Philadelphia, and the catcalls, and how the catcalls and street harassment stopped when Lucas was with her, she said: “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?”

Kylie: Oh my god, I’m so sorry Sonya, can I like cut in and just say some stuff? ‘Cause-

Sonya: No please, please do. Please do.

Kylie: -oh my fucking god, no those quotes are like, ugh! I just have some—sorry. Okay I'm gonna reign it in Kylie, but I'm just so upset and also so, ugh I'm just so happy she put that to words because, you know, these are feelings I'm sure we've all had.

Kylie: What I just really want to say is, I feel like so much of sexual violence, which is this personal lived experience, it's reduced to narrative instead of the fact that, you know, survivors are human beings, we're not fucking narratives. And it's so upsetting to me because it's like, she talks about how the fact that she had a boyfriend and was in this serious committed relationship made her a more quote “conventional” quote “good” victim because it's like, if she didn't have a boyfriend, let's say she'd been like, you know, she had just been a single promiscuous gal and—which is-

Sonya: And she talked about that too, like a few months ago.

Kylie: -entirely within her right—yeah she talked about it. Exactly, yeah. I mean like, she talked about it so often in her book how she like hates, you know, that narrative of the good, the perfect victim.

Kylie: It's so upsetting ‘cause it's all about reducing a real human being who has like, many conflicting and contrasting experiences that shouldn't have to line up to be believed. Like, it's about reducing you to a narrative and if you aren't the perfect narrative you're just not going to be believed.

Kylie: And I mean like, it’s so upsetting because I mean like, there are a lot of reasons I never did anything about like, the experience that I had with sexual violence and it’s because like, what could I have done? Like I had let this person into my home and like, you know what I mean? It’s just like, it’s just—there's so many things that like, if it doesn't fit this very like, narrow narrative of believability and like, even if you do fit it, they're always going to find some kind of reason and like, she encounters that too!

Kylie: I mean like, it's just—it's so upsetting, and I mean, yeah I mean I also really relate to what she said about how like, that harassment stopped when she was with her boyfriend ‘cause it's like, even when I—when I'm walking and like, I'm alone and I'm just a woman alone, like she said before, the harassment is constant.

Kylie: But then like, if you're just with a male friend, or like any male figure, and stuff like that, it's like—because that's what men respond to. It's like, respecting another man, but not respecting you, a woman, as a human being and it's just like, I have lots of friends who it's like, when someone harasses them or won't stop asking them out, like, they can just say no, but then that man won't stop, but then if you say you have a boyfriend, they’ll stop ‘cause they respect a man, they don't respect you. And it's just—she puts it to words so well, but I… I just fucking hate it. But yeah. I’m sorry, rant over.

Sonya: No yeah no, you put it to words so well Kylie.

Kylie: [laughs] Okay, go—go on queen, let's hear those next excerpts girlboss.

Jenni: [laughs] Kylie!

Sonya: Alright alright.

Kylie: [laughs] Sorry.

Sonya: [laughs] Alright, and the final quote that I picked for this section—I kind of cheated, I…. There are a lot of quotes in a later section, you will see.

Kylie: There are.

Sonya: Anyway, the final quote for this section is regarding how Brock had several character witnesses testify for him, and about like, how they all said that you know, he was a great person, they couldn't see him doing something like this, he helped them with this and that.

Sonya: So this is a quote. “I was ready to dismiss their insignificant stories, deeming them unworthy of energy or attention, but reading them now I pause. During trial, the jury was forced to pick; is he wholesome or monstrous. But I never questioned that any of what they said about him was true. In fact I need you to know it was all true. The friendly guy who helps you move and assist 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 can often coexist, they are not mutually exclusive. Bad qualities can hide inside a good person. That’s the terrifying part.”

Kylie: I’m sorry, okay, I’m so sorry, can I speak?

Sonya: No no, go for it, go for it.

Kylie: Ugh! I fucking love this freaking—ugh, I'm so excited about this quote because it's like, okay. This reminds me so much of—do you remember when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated and then like, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford shared her story and then shortly after that a bunch of women from Brett Kavanaugh’s high school wrote this letter and they were like, you know, he was wonderful to us, so we do not believe—

Kylie: It's like, when you share these selective good stories about a rapist or abuser it's not that's not true. It’s the fact that you're universalizing your positive experience with that person. And it's like, you could have had a positive experience with them, someone else could have had a very negative one. I mean like, just because someone didn't rape one person, doesn't mean they didn't rape anyone.

Kylie: But it's insane how we let that logic work with abusers, where we, where so many people will universalize their experience to erase someone else's, to gaslight someone else, and it's also like, you know how like, people always act like rapists and abusers are like those boogeyman in the dark alleyway?

Kylie: No I mean like, it's exactly what Chanel says, it’s that they're the people you know. They're the people who might be kind to your face. They’re the people who might help you move or like, do this or that but like, it's not people you don't know usually. I love that quote because it's too real.

Sonya: Yeah and I feel like people know not to universalize their experiences with like, teachers, you know? Kylie: Yeah.

Sonya: If one person says they have a bad teacher and another person says, “oh I like them” like, they both understand that they had different experiences usually with that teacher, so it’s like why can't you do the same when it comes to a rapist.

Sonya: And it's like, yeah you touched on this, but we've been conditioned to see rapists through movies and TV shows, and like they always depict rapists as like, some creepy man in an alley, there's a creepy shot on him, then a close-up shot on the soon-to-be victim’s boobs or their ass or something.

Kylie: Yup!

Sonya: And then it like, cuts to the rape. Or it's a creepy co-worker at a function that everyone like, knows is creepy? So when the sexual assault happens then it’s like, you know, it’s a matter of time, everyone's expecting it. But most rapes don't happen from creepy strangers in the alleys, it's by people you know.

Kylie: Yup. Again it's like, all about narrative. It's all about reducing these human experiences that are so contrasting and conflicting into like, this narrative that's digestible and simple enough for other people to understand.

Kylie: Well, I'm ready to get into our little “why does this book matter” section, if you, my fellow girlbosses, are.

Sonya: [laughs] Is that your transition?

Kylie: Sorry, we dislike… [laughs] I am so sorry. But yeah I think that is my little transition. But yeah I mean like, why does this matter? Oh my god, like Sonya said, we could make that a freaking audiobook but you know what? Shoot, I'm just gonna try my best.

Kylie: I think that one thing I really wanted to talk about and have down in my notes here is just that, I think it's so important how her book shines a light on the prevalence of rape culture, especially from her perspective as a nonwhite woman, and I mean.

Kylie: Well, first let's just make this stat clear that one in five women, according to—I think it’s the CDC or the Department of Justice but—[laughs] like a very credible government source, it's “one in five women experience rape and sexual assault”—oh, it's the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Yeah and one in six men experience some form of sexual abuse. And let's also be really clear here that this rate is even higher for LGBTQ people and for people of color.

Kylie: And you know what I think? It’s just like, many people, myself included actually, were genuinely really surprised when Chanel Miller came forward in the fall of 2019 and she was an Asian American woman, not a white woman.

Kylie: And she speaks to this erasure in her memoir, where she says that a woman who spoke with her about her case on the phone had just assumed that she was white and recorded her identity is white when she was filling out a form.

Sonya: Yeah. And I just want to add that it didn't cross my mind at all that she wasn't white. Even the anonymous default names that we use—Jane Doe, Emily Doe—they’re perceived as white because—well, one, Doe is a real surname that's English in origin—but also because the US’ default is white.

Kylie: Yup. But yeah I mean like, the most visible faces of sexual assault survivors are usually white despite how the people who are more likely to experience it are people of color like Chanel Miller, and you know it just reminds me of in 2014 there was Emma Sulkowicz’s famous 2014 mattress performance, and you know, the most visible actors who came forward against Harvey Weinstein back in 2017 and so mainstream cultural recognition of victims and activists, it's often focused on white woman, despite, you know, who is disproportionately affected by sexual violence.

Kylie: I think we talked about this a bit earlier but it's also like, you're also less likely to be believed if you don't fit—you know—mainstream, aka white supremacist, beauty standards and so thanks to skewed mainstream representation, racial perceptions of victims, and perceptions of the survivor survivor justice movement as a whole, have long been really whitewashed.

Kylie: Also I think what's really relevant to the conversations we've been having since last month, there was that white man who in Atlanta shot and killed six Asian woman, and he killed them—let's be really clear—specifically because he identified them as sexual temptations, and he said that very clearly.

Kylie: And so I think that's something we also have to talk about and is inseparable from this conversation we're having is that racist stereotypes about Asian American feminine identity to discredit Asian American victims and survivors, that's something that happens and I think that that's something that, as we talk about the role of white supremacy in building the rape culture that we live in, it's just, you have to talk about all of these different ways that in the American cultural consciousness there's so many different racist stereotypes that, whether you're conscious of it or not, affect how you see victims of color, how you see their credibility, how you see them as, it's terrible to say but like, quote “rapeable” or not, unquote and it's like very much rooted in historical white supremacy.

Kylie: You know, as we talk about survivor justice, it's an issue of gender justice, it's an issue of racial justice, and those are all inseparable from each other.

Kylie: You know, continuing that conversation of how racial justice and gender justice are inseparable from survivor justice—[laughs] lots of justice—um, but yeah I mean, you just have to talk about that long history of imperialism and rape and trafficking of Asian women as a result of, you know, American military conquest of the Pacific, and years later, as a result of that, Asian women are still eroticized, hypersexualized, and that isn't innocent, that isn't harmless, that very much harms Asian American survivors.

Kylie: There’s this quote I mean like—agh, this is such a self plug, but—I wrote an article about the implications of Chanel Miller being a very visible Asian American woman survivor and I was able to interview this really cool professor of Asian American studies at UCSB, and her name is erin Khue Ninh, and the quote was: “You see the mobilization around ‘protecting’ the sexual purity of the white woman; along with it, the purity of the white race and home and man’s honor. The sexuality of women of color is not valued in the same way.”

Kylie: And she also talks about how historically, “an enslaved Black woman could not, by law, be raped,” and then she says, while the rape and trafficking of Asian women have been normalized throughout U.S. military occupation in Asian countries, “These legacies continue to classify women of color, including Indigenous and Latinx women… in the Western cultural unconscious as unrapeable, and so offenses against their sexuality are not [seen as] crises or even mainstream news.”

Kylie: I love how she says “cultural unconscious” because I think that sums it up. But yeah I think it's just so important to talk about Chanel Miller's identity as an Asian American woman and I’m just really, really glad that she—that her book allows us to have this really important conversation about how survivor justice isn't just gender justice, it's also racial justice, which I think is a good segue into the next thing we want to talk about, which is just putting Chanel Miller's experience with the court system, with the legal system, in the context of this greater conversation we're seeing now about defunding the police, about abolition, about what that all means and why her story is very much related to all of that in that it's an indictment of how this carceral system does not help survivors, it very much retraumatizes them and punishes them.

Kylie: And I think that… yeah it's just so upsetting that frequently survivors are used as this—this talking point, this prop almost, when people are trying to defend institutions like policing and prisons when in fact, I mean, the existence of the system—it does not help us, it does not, and I think her story, just so powerfully, shows why.

Kylie: I mean like, again Chanel Miller really emphasizes that the case that she had is very much the best— in quotes, like, “best case scenario” for someone who's experienced sexual violence, and still you see how retraumatizing and just, ugh, just so upsetting and awful it was. And I think that, you know, she doesn't explicitly talk about abolition in her book but yeah I think her lived experience with the criminal justice justice system shows a very personal glimpse of how it just reproduces violence by further harming victims.

Sonya: Chanel’s case is some—like, she thought that her case would be open-and-shut, you know? There were witnesses, there was evidence, he was caught in the act… And it still took like what, four years? For the case to be closed?

Kylie: Mhm.

Sonya: Chanel does such a great job at taking us with her, not just through the legal journey itself, but the emotional journey that accompanied it. And it was really eye-opening for me because court proceedings are something that I usually only see on TV, and I know that's not how they play out in real life, but knowing that and experiencing that through Chanel’s eyes and through her writing is so different.

Sonya: First, I just want to mention that for Chanel's jury, if the prospective juror had been sexually assaulted they were immediately eliminated. “There would be no survivors on the jury.” When I read this, immediately I thought of how… was it Washington Post? How—

Kylie: Yeah, Felicia Somnez.

Sonya: Yeah she was barred from writing about sexual assault, because that would be biased right?

Kylie: Yeah. Oh my god, I was able to write a piece on that, actually—I'm so sorry, I literally keep self plugging, but—that frustrated me so much just because, you know, it ignores the fact that journalists are human beings who have a whole wide range of lived experiences, and if anything, having those lived experiences, it improves journalism it improves—ugh. I'm so frustrated by that.

Sonya: And like, in the case of the jury it's like, I don't have a perfect answer for this because on one hand, I understand, like yes, you want an impartial jury, but why does the bias only go one way? Like obviously you’re not gonna ask, like, “Have you ever downplayed sexual assault on someone”-

Kylie: Yup! Oh, my god.

Sonya: -but it's like, what if they have? Like, that's not an eliminating factor in the jury and you just don't know.

Kylie: Yup! Dude I'm so fucking angry from—ugh! I don't even have words right now, I'm so angry, but exactly how you put it is how I feel. I mean like, it only goes one way. And that in itself perpetuates the quote “bias” unquote that you're trying—that you're supposedly trying to weed out by barring survivors. I mean like, what is construed as bias only ever goes in the way of anyone who would challenge white supremacy or patriarchy in some way, it never goes the other way.

Sonya: I also had so much frustration when I read about how many times the court dates were rescheduled.

Kylie: Right? Oh my god.

Sonya: I mentioned earlier how Tiffany—Chanel's sister—had to rearrange her schedule every time, but there was one point in the book when Chanel was still in Philadelphia, and her DA called her the night before she was supposed to fly back to the bay, and she said the hearing had been rescheduled again, so don't get on the plane.

Sonya: But then Chanel did, because if she hadn't then she wouldn't have been compensated for a future fight back to the bay, but then, when she was back in the bay, she was told that the hearing was back on! So like, what if she hadn't gotten on the plane? Like, so many people literally wouldn't be able to do this, which is another barrier to taking your assault to the legal system.

Jenni: Yeah this just seems like another way that the legal system tries to, like Kylie says, if you're challenging the white supremacy and everything that's going on, you can't.

Sonya: And it's another, like, when people are like, “Oh, why didn’t you report your assault, why didn’t you take it to trial” and it's like, there's so, like, even besides just the cost of getting a lawyer there's all this stuff about time too that you—

Kylie: Right? Oh my fucking god.

Jenni: I think there are just so many barriers that none of us really realize.

Kylie: And it's intentional!

Jenni: ‘Cause I know—yeah.

Kylie: Yeah. It’s fucking intentional.

Jenni: Yeah, exactly.

Kylie: It's about exhausting you so that you give up because like, people who experience sexual violence, they have jobs, they have relationships, they have like, all of these fucking things in their lives.

Jenni: Mhm.

Kylie: And it’s like, so all-consuming to have to navigate this system, and it's just—how is that justice, how is that healing? How does that do anything for you, except further harm and retraumatize you, and it’s 100% intentional.

Jenni: Mhm.

Sonya: And Chanel brings this up too, like, she brings up how she is very privileged to have savings, she had parents, supportive friends and family. She was able to live with their parents, she was able to live with her boyfriend and her sister, she had this whole support network.

Kylie: Yeah.

Sonya: And not to say that like, it makes the actual assault good, but like we brought up before, it's like—

Kylie: No she says that herself, yeah.

Sonya: Out of out of the possible sexual assault scenarios, she did have a more fortunate one, and she still had so much trouble.

Kylie: Yup, it was—oh my god. Again, like I've said this so many times ‘cause she says this in her book, but she notes repeatedly the quote “privileges” that she had which is just so bizarre and twisted to say, because what she experienced is horrible but like, in so many ways she did have like, the quote “best case scenario” unquote that someone who survived something so awful could have, and it was still awful. It was still dehumanizing, it was still so retraumatizing, and I mean like, again if this is the best case scenario, just, ugh, just, that says it all. Anyway sorry, I will let you…

Sonya: Yeah alright, moving on, so, reading about the hearing and the trial and what testimony was allowed to go through and what was struck out—that was just so wild to me. Like, Brock was able to have people testify on behalf of his character, and yet so much so much of Chanel's testimony was deemed “irrelevant” or “personal knowledge” and thus eliminated.

Sonya: So now, I have a bunch of quotes ‘cause I couldn't pick just one: “I was attempting to tell the same story through two different filters; through the questions of my DA and the questions of the defense. Their questions created the narrative, building the framework that shaped what I said.”

Sonya: I included this quote because what we hear from court hearings, I think it's important to know that it's not the untouched truth, it's still a filtered version that we hear through the DA and the defense, and then filtered once again through the media.

Kylie: Yeah. I'm so sorry for cutting it again, but I just need to say, I mean like fuck objectivity because objectivity is always defined in a way that upholds the power and the privilege of whiteness, of maleness, of abusers, of corporations, of the people with power. And like, we're supposed to just see objectivity as like… we're supposed to think objectively exists, but it does not and like, ugh, it's so upsetting.

Jenni: I think it's so upsetting just hearing about like, all the intricacies and barriers that she faced trying to get legal justice and we're still not even at the court case itself.

Kylie: Yeah, oh my god.

Sonya: Chanel also brought up how the defense attorney structured his questions to include a lot of, “Right? Is that correct?” which made her disagree with him repeatedly in front of the jury, and she says, “Would they believe the suited man who seemed to have everything in order rather than the woman with [the] fragmented memory?”

Sonya: Again, like, what we see as who inherently has more, like you said, objectivity to them? And then moving on, another quote: the defense said, “That’s not the answer I need for my question.” And then Chanel: “I felt naive as it dawned on me he was never interested in my responses. He already knew the answers he wanted; he just wanted me to say them. I had also heard an underlying pattern: That’s what you decided to do at that time, right? That was an intentional thing. And that was a decision you made. He littered my night with intentions and poor decisions, suggesting they had everything to do with the final act. If you decided to go to this party, intentionally got wasted, is it really that hard to believe you intended to get handsy, fool around?”

Kylie: So fucking gross, I… ugh. I'm so mad, sorry, but like oh my god. And this man feels no shame or embarrassment. Imagine being this disgusting and not being embarrassed about it. I would never show my face again. Ugh.

Sonya: I get that it’s “just his job,” quote unquote, but it's like, I think she also says like, it takes a certain kind of person to be able to do that-

Kylie: Yeah! It takes fucking slime to be able to do that.

Sonya: -and just not care.

Kylie: And like imagine that she had—for her safety and stuff she had to like, hide who she was and like, all of that, and like she was the one who had to carry the shame and embarrassment, and someone that fucking disgusting could like, walk about in his life, feel no shame or guilt or fear or embarrassment, and I… That makes me almost homicidal. Sorry, FBI, I'm not serious.

Jenni: I think this is a really good example of like, how what we perceive to be objective just isn't-

Kylie: Right?

Jenni: -and these are people that like, we can go to for help. We think that they’re objective—police officers, I don't know other people too—but like, if this is the same mindset that those people have, we're not having any objectivity, any empathy here at all.

Sonya: Mhm.

Kylie: Yeah it's fucking disgusting. Also I'm sorry to interject one more time, but I mean like, I literally have like a similar experience, where I had this horrible experience where like, personal photos of mine were like taken without my consent, shared online and stuff and like,I was just looking for any kind of help that I could get and like, I was told by like, law enforcement that I mean like, in so many words it was like, there was nothing they could do and to literally just be more careful with my photos and it was like, what the fuck.

Kylie: It's like again, like, it's similar to what Chanel was [talking about], that she was asked all these questions about okay, well you chose to do this, you chose to do that, and it—it's just—it's all about punishment and like, frankly I think it's about embarrassing you. It's about characterizing you in a certain way.

Kylie: That's why I think it's so powerful that Chanel, at some point in her book she says, how people treat you, it's not a reflection on your character, it's a—I don't remember if she says this part, but what I think is, it's a fucking reflection on them. And like, it's so easy to internalize when you're treated horribly or dehumanized or demeaned, you know what I mean? I mean like, who doesn't take that personally? Who doesn't internalize that? But just the way she named it and she stated that it is not a reflection on you, augh that was so… I really needed to read that so I'm so glad she wrote that, but anyway back to you Sonya.

Sonya: Alright. It made me so mad that—I mentioned this earlier, but like—multiple instances of her testimony were struck out due to “relevance” and “personal knowledge,” and so much focus was placed on the minute details that, dare I say, most people would not remember at all if you're not looking to remember them in advance.

Kylie: Yeah.

Sonya: She says on the very first page of the book that she thinks none of what she did that evening was important, but they would be relentlessly raked over just because Brock had been at that party too, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Sonya: None of what you did should matter. I mean, I've had many a night where friends couldn't remember much the next day, but it was totally fine and just became something to laugh about the next day. The blame should be solely on the rapist.

Kylie: Yeah! I mean like, she literally had to know what she ate for dinner that night, like what the fuck, I don't know what I ate for dinner yesterday, I don't even know what I just ate! Like what? No, it was really good actually.

Jenni: They thought that was relevant?

Kylie: I know right? Jesus.

Sonya: Yeah there was some gotcha moment with like, rice and quinoa or something?

Kylie: Yeah, oh my god!

Sonya: Like she said she ate rice instead of quinoa and it's like… And then later she—

Kylie: Gotcha!

Sonya: She was freaking out about it.

Kylie: What the fuck, yeah.

Jenni: So… so they were asking about what she ate for dinner, not to make it relevant but to show that she was someone who was forgetful?

Kylie: A liar. Unreliable memory. It’s—ugh.

Jenni: Ah. Oh my god.

Sonya: Yeah, unreliable and also about how much she drank, and like the exact intervals between—and it's like dude.

Jenni: No one’s gonna remember.

Kylie: No one.

Sonya: I don't know if you’ve ever been to a party, no one… I've never seen anyone with a, with a beaker, you know, like pouring out shots. You just kinda, you just kinda eyeball it.

Kylie: Jesus.

Jenni: So they're asking all these questions, just to make her unreliable and unstable.

Kylie: So fucking stupid.

Sonya: Yeah, and then whenever she tried to elaborate there would be an objection, because you know, “personal knowledge,” “not relevant”…

Kylie: Ugh, god.

Jenni: I see.

Kylie: It's all intentional.

Jenni: That also makes me think about how Brock went through this entire process, what his experience was like.

Sonya: Oh boy alright, this also made me so angry because Brock admitted that he lied. His story changed drastically between the night he was arrested (after the assault) and the hearing, which I think—there was fifteen months between those.

Sonya: And when talking about how Brock admitted that he lied to Detective Kim, Chanel said, “Victims are often, automatically, accused of lying. But when a perpetrator is exposed for lying, the stigma doesn’t stick. Why is it that we’re wary of victims making false accusations, but rarely consider how many men have blatantly lied about, downplayed, or manipulated others to cover their own actions?”

Sonya: And then, “To explain Brock’s inconsistencies, [his attorney] said, So it’s not uncommon for people to not remember details of incidents, especially things that happened so fast and with emotional tension. Brock was allowed a messy mind. Victims often have inconsistencies due to traumatic blockage, alcoholic gaps. His inconsistencies came from what he said before he had a lawyer versus what he said after he hired one. When Brock was arrested and questioned by the detective, all the supposed dialogue between us that he failed to mention was not due to a lack of memory. It was due to the fact that he did not have an attorney to help him construct a narrative, feed him words, brush the clouds from his mind, and figure out which story might get him off scot-free.”

Kylie: Ugh, god. Hate it.

Jenni: I think this just makes me think about how we care about the reputation of the perpetrator, the man, how like you know, if his story doesn't get him off scot-free then like, his reputation is ruined. But I think like with that, that people forget about the trauma that the victim goes through, and how that's also important too.

Kylie: Yeah I mean, ugh, I mean like, one of the most I think famous things from before we knew anything about Chanel Miller with this case it was like, Judge Aaron Persky—is that his name?—yeah I'm like thank God he's not a judge anymore, but the reason he gave such a short sentence to Brock Turner was because he said, you know, I think a longer sentence might have severe impact on Brock Turner and it's like oh my god, think about—like severe impact? You want to talk about severe impact? Look what you did to the person that he victimized.

Kylie: And you know, this isn't me saying that incarceration and all that is a solution, but what I'm saying is that wow I mean, that totally devalued and erased and dismissed all of that horrible severe impact that Chanel was subjected to and it's all about, again, centering the experience of the white male.

Kylie: And like, to your point about like, just how much the credibility of the perpetrator is never dissected and torn apart, I mean like, even just last year I mean, think about when Joe Biden was running for president and like, you know, people had all of these reasons to not believe a woman who accused him of sexual violence, and then no one ever talked about how—well I mean like yeah, it isn't relevant, but if it—okay.

Kylie: So basically you know, like, he had faced consequences for committing plagiarism and stuff in college and for that kind of academic dishonesty and stuff and no one talked about that, but I read this amazing professor at Stanford, Michele Dauber, she wrote about how like if the roles were reversed, oh my god, no one would shut up about how his victim who was speaking out, how she had a record of dishonesty and point to that academic thing that just was deemed entirely irrelevant, because it was him, and no one questions the alleged or the perpetrator’s like, credibility but anyway, that is quite tangential so back to you.

Sonya: Yeah and speaking of impact, I brought up earlier, but what about the people close to Chanel? Like Tiffany, like when she had to reschedule her finals, call out of work, stuff like that, like was she ever compensated? I know that Chanel ended up paying for some of her therapy because of the money that she got from Stanford, but before that she was really on her own.

Kylie: Yeah.

Sonya: And she also wasn't afforded the same privacy that Chanel was. Like the media was allowed to approach her and ask her questions and publish her name.

Kylie: Yeah. Oh I mean like, while we're talking about her sister, oh my god. That was like one of the parts of the book that I loved so much, was her relationship with her sister because it just really made me relate a lot to like… I don't know, all three of us have sisters right? And like, oh my god, I know that if anything ever happened to me, oh my god, like my sister—like, her relationship with her sister is just so cute and beautiful because, like I related to it so much and augh.

Kylie: And like yeah I mean like, it definitely took such a toll on Tiffany and like, you never hear about that, you never hear about… You always hear about how like, oh my god when this perpetrator is accused it's like—his family is always like—this accusation is ruining our lives, and everyone is always paying attention to that, but like you said Sonya, I mean like, we never get to hear or see how devastating and like difficult it is for the people who love the victim and so I'm really glad that Chanel wrote so much about that in her memoir.

Jenni: Wait what was Tiffany's role in all of this?

Kylie: I mean Tiffany and her went to the party together it happened so Tiffany-

Jenni: Oh.

Kylie: -also was treated as a very important witness, but I mean like, outside of that entire court process, she’s Chanel’s sister, she's watching her go through all of this. She's also being, as Sonya said, wildly inconvenienced because the court dates are constantly changing, the—you know what I mean? Like it really uprooted her life as well.

Sonya: Yeah and also Brock tried to kiss her that night.

Kylie: Ew! I remember that part now oh my god!

Jenni: Oh my god.

Kylie: Geez I'm gonna fucking—ugh!—oh my god, ew ew ew. [laughs] Sorry. Okay, that is not—my reaction was disproportionate, I apologize. [laughs] Okay, but ew! Oh my god. Ugh! I’m so angry. Sorry.

Jenni: Yeah no sorry, I—I just didn't know. ‘Cause we talked about her but I didn’t know what her role was. Yeah.

Kylie: I know—I remember that! Yeah I read this book like, a couple years ago now, but oh my god, now that you're saying that it's bringing it all back, and I am as disgusted now as when I first read that, but anyway.

Sonya: Another quote that I really liked from the chapters talking about the trial was: “What I wondered was, in a trial meant to examine facts, why hours were set aside to shower him in accolades.”—talking about the character witnesses, and then she goes on to say—”His history included his childhood, education, summer jobs, sweet relationships. My history was blackouts one through five. My character was just as much on trial as his character; my behavior, my composure, my likability, were also being evaluated. But there was nothing to suggest that I was a person extracted from a full life, surrounded by people who cared about me.”

Jenni: That is so sad!

Kylie: Yeah.

Sonya: Right?

Kylie: Again it’s like—yeah. Sorry.

Jenni: That’s all I got, it’s just so sad.

Kylie: I mean it’s like, yeah. I think— we talked about this, but it's like, when you're a survivor it's all about reducing you to a narrative, and to fit that narrative, I mean like, it's so dehumanizing, it takes away—ugh!—it's all about—it’s dehumanizing and she puts that to words so perfectly.

Sonya: All right, and I just have one more quote for this section where she talks about—the day of the sentencing, she read her victim impact statement and then he also reads like… an apology? I think it was supposed to be an apology?

Sonya: So, Brock wrote: “I just existed in a reality where nothing can go wrong or nobody could think of what I was doing as wrong.” And then Chanel goes on to say: “Privilege accompanies the light skinned, helped maintain his belief that consequences did not apply to him. In this system, who is untouchable? Who is disposable? Whose lives are we intent on preserving? Who goes unaccounted for Who is the true disrupter, the one firing, the one fingering, who created a problem where there never was one? Brock said he’d failed to tell the detective so many crucial details upon his initial arrest because… my mind was going a million miles an hour, and it was impossible for me to think clearly about what happened. Meanwhile victims are always expected to think clearly, we don’t get to use fear as an excuse. Senseless violence continues to play out, while you ask for more and more evidence, telling us it’s not enough, try again.”

Kylie: Can I just say Jesus fucking Christ, I mean like, oh my god like, I can't even believe he said—well, I can believe it ‘cause he’s a white man, but like—to say “where nothing can go wrong” or “nobody could think what I was doing was wrong”?

Kylie: Oh my god, I mean like, I can't even conceive of or imagine that because like, I go through life thinking every single thing I do is wrong, like I apologize to chairs that I walk into, like all I can do is apologize, and like, I'm just—my entire mind is always thinking everything’s gonna go wrong, I'm going to do everything wrong, I'm just like, shook by that because it's just like… Jesus like I don't even have anything coherent to say, just the fact that that is his worldview, that is what he's lived? Oh my god, like, I cannot even.

Jenni: I think him saying that also shows that he knows that what he did was wrong. It's just that he knows that he doesn't have to face any consequences, which is why he just keeps going.

Sonya: And even until the end, he never admitted to the assault.

Kylie: Yup!

Sonya: He only admitted to like, drinking too much and being exposed to like, the “college sexual promiscuity life.” Also—

Kylie: Yeah oh my god I remember that part! Oh my god, fuck that.

Sonya: Yeah wait! He also said—I’m remembering now—how he said that he had never really been in a place where partying and drugs were a thing, so like it caught by surprise at Stanford and then like, later on, a bunch of people came out to say like, oh there were screenshots of his texts talking about drinking at parties and doing drugs. And like—

Kylie: Oh yeah. And no one talks about that, ‘cause—

Sonya: No one talks about that, because—yeah.

Kylie: All we talk about is the victim’s credibility. Jesus no but can I just like, holy shit no, I'm remembering that part where his defense was like obsessed with like, obsessed with blaming this on like a culture thing of like, oh my god there's so much peer pressure to like drink and have a lot of sex and all of that in college and it's like—it's an excuse I mean like, it's just like how—I think Stanford adopted this policy in 2016 that a lot of people were angry about where it was a restriction on like, drinking and stuff like that and it's as if to say that drinking is the reason why that assault happened, no.

Kylie: I mean like, it’s—like obviously we could—I don't know. We could talk about—there are a lot of things that we could talk about to help keep people safe and stuff right, but like the bottom line is, you know what causes rape? Rapists! And it's like… It's just so upset—like I don't even know. His Defense—like you said, it's like they were trying to make this about him being—him!—being a victim of this culture that puts a lot of pressure on him. No, I mean, you fucking chose to assault someone, it's not that deep dude, and—I mean yeah it is that deep—but I mean like, it—ugh! You get what I'm saying, right? Like, oh my god. Jesus.

Jenni: Yes, peer pressure and culture are not an excuse to rape someone.

Kylie: Oh my god there is no excuse, right? Like Jesus, okay. Sorry, I'm so angry. Like again, like, I read this book awhile ago so Sonya everything you're bringing up is bringing me back to all that intense visceral—is visceral how you pronounce it? I don't even know. But—visceral rage I felt when I was reading this the first time because Jesus Christ, it was just shameless as fuck, his like, defense and like, the way that his defense and him fucking suck and then you realize that this legal system and the way court procedures work and all of that—it's constructed in this way that like, empowers that, you know?

Kylie: It's always those two things, like the people who choose to be shitty and horrible and then the systems that enable and empower that, and I think this is a perfect example of that, and I am so angry.

Jenni: This also makes me really grateful that she wrote this book and is even willing to share about her personal experience.

Kylie: Right? So brave.

Jenni: Otherwise I—it's hard. Yeah.

Kylie: Yeah I mean, to your point, I mean like, her book like made so many people feel seen and like—at least I can only speak for myself I guess—but like wow I read that and I was just like, augh she's just—it's an amazing book and she's an amazing person.

Kylie: But there are a few other things I did want to talk about if you ladies are okay with moving forward.

Sonya: Take it away Kylie.

Kylie: Yes! I mean, as we talked a bit about at the beginning of this conversation, I mean like we really envisioned this podcast talking about books and like concepts rooted in anti-capitalism, anti-carceral states, feminism, and like, what I really kind of want to segue into with this book is, ever since last summer we've just been having really important conversations about abolition and about imagining a society without prisons and policing and also dramatically reinventing like the way the legal system works in general.

Kylie: And I think that, you know, her book—like obviously she doesn't explicitly necessarily talk about these themes, but her story is just such, I feel like, an indictment of how this legal system that's often upheld as like, seen as this protector of victims of sexual violence, how… Like no! What it really does, is it really retraumatizes them, It empowers abusers through the guise, again like we talked about, of objectivity and objectivity always being defined in a way that erases and devalues the lived experiences of marginalized people.

Kylie: I think just to kind of introduce what abolition is, abolitionist thought—I think it really requires imagination that I think many of us were discouraged from developing in a state that maintains its power through exploiting racist definitions of what is criminality, what is violence.

Kylie: You know, I think when many people hear about a society without police, their minds really immediately go to stereotypical violent crimes, which by the way, I think it's an extreme narrow minority of what police deal with is violent crime right? There's a statistic about that I do not have, but I know it exists. [laughs] Um.

Kylie: But basically again, people when they hear about a society without police and prisons, immediately their brains will go to like, associating that with individual, interpersonal acts of violence, like murder, armed robbery, or specific to this book, rape and sexual assault.

Kylie: And meanwhile, we ignore like the institutionalized kind of state violence that's led to more than around like, two and a half million people in prisons in the US or we forget about how, you know, often the crime of being unable to afford to live in a society where we spend like 25 times on police than on housing, and so…

Kylie: You know, a lot of what I'm saying I feel like seems like it's disconnected to this book, but again, like, I really just think that it's so important to draw these connections between how her story is really an indictment of a greater system that harms victims of violence, while also using victims of violence as like a prop to uphold the system.

Kylie: You know, if you talk about “let’s defund the police” people will be like “okay, what about rape victims?” and it's like holy shit, like, read Chanel Miller's book and like you will see that you do not get help from these institutions. Again, like, it's that one crime that immediately comes to mind when people talk about defunding police, even though I mean like with that funding, we could invest resources into therapy for victims, into like actual resources and supports that would actually help someone who experienced sexual violence. Because this court system, this entire system we live in, it does not.

Kylie: And like, 40% of police officers are known domestic abusers. 60% of prison rapes are committed by guards and staff. 90% of incarcerated women are survivors and are mostly—let's be clear—women of color. And then around 65-85% of sexual assaults are unreported, for obvious reasons. Definitely obvious reasons that I feel like Chanel Miller goes into a lot but it's, you know, stemming from this hostile and punitive criminal justice system, and you know all of that… All of these stats exist at the same time that hundreds of thousands of rape kits are sitting untested across the country, and you know, we know that just 5 out of 1000 rapists will ever be in prison so.

Kylie: You know what? I am just trying to say is that the criminal justice system either neglects or actively harms victims and survivors, and I think it's so important to name that and, you know, we have all of these stats right, but then like, her book is just like this living, breathing example of like… It's just again, I feel, an indictment of the system.

Jenni: This is not on the script at all, but just as someone who's kind of out in the field and like sees all of this in action, clearly the criminal justice system doesn’t help survivors, so what are some resources that you would suggest for sexual assault victims and survivors instead of you know, reporting to the police? Or how should we be approaching this to achieve justice for survivors?

Kylie: Yeah I mean you know, I'm just a gal who drinks some Capri Sun and stuff, like I don't have… I think the only answer I can give you is that there is no one answer because healing and justice and accountability and what you need as a human being to move forward after being violated in such… after being violated in that way, like I mean, that is all about you, and that is all specific to you and I think the problem here is when you are made to enter this system, this criminal justice system, often it's reduced to this zero sum game of prosecution versus defense but that's not what you need as a human being who experienced trauma, to move forward.

Kylie: I mean like, I'm so glad that as of last year there have been a lot of really powerful conversations about restorative justice and transformative justice in that restorative justice is all about taking the person who was harmed and, um, them in their community, and I think just centering their needs to heal their needs to experience justice and really centering their experience whereas like, when we enter the criminal justice system, the way it's framed it's just very much there is a winner and there's a loser, but I mean like, as you see with Chanel’s story I mean like, she did get that guilty verdict and all that.

Kylie: But did that help her heal? Did that restore her humanity? Did that—you know what, no, and it's just like, it just really speaks to how there is no one specific answer or solution and just that we—I mean all I can really say is, we need to be investing more in like those resources and supports that help people who have experienced violence, and that guzzling all of that funding into policing, that is not helping survivors, that is not helping victims. Yeah, that’s really the only answer that I can give. I don’t know. What do you think. Sonya?

Sonya: No thoughts head empty that was great!

Jenni: [laughs]

Kylie: Me too, oh my god.

Jenni: I was gonna—yeah, just emphasize again that justice for survivors depends on each survivor because justice is different for each person.

Kylie: Speaking of the criminal justice system, speaking of abolition and policing, I really want to talk about white supremacy and early versions of the anti-rape movement, and I think that you know, again, these are things that Chanel didn't talk about explicitly in her book, but I think that, again, her story just lays out such important examples and such important concepts that I feel like can be connected to these really huge and really relevant issues that we're seeing and talking about right now, and so.

Kylie: I want to go back to how we talked about at the beginning how survivor justice isn't just gender justice, it's also racial justice, and as we talk about white supremacy and the anit-rape movement, a really insightful and amazing book that I read with a lot of insights on this was Women Race & Class by Angela Davis, and so going back to how we talked a lot about the implications of Chanel Miller being, you know, a very visible survivor and being an Asian American woman.

Kylie: Well I think it's so important to talk about how early anti-rape movements were actually deeply rooted in white supremacy, because it was all about enacting violent acts of racial terror really, because it was like… I think that while we continue to see Black women be deemed as quote “unrapeable” because of their former status as slaves, people started to care, or quote “care,” about rape and sexual violence as a means to dehumanize Black men and as a means to enact acts of racial terror and violence through the widespread and prevalent lynchings of Black men who would often be falsely accused of rape and sexual violence against white women, so it was all about upholding white supremacy in that like, the protection of white feminine purity and, you know, the white man's household and all of that.

Kylie: And so I think that that tradition, unfortunately we really saw that continue well into the 1970s with kind of the early anti-rape movements where the most visible and the most… Again, like that construction of the perfect victim, like that was always white women and they were really the faces of the first anti-rape movements and the first anti-rape activism, and so that was what kind of led to the construction of the first major legislation to address sexual violence and violence against women, which was aptly named the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s.

Kylie: And you see this first major piece of legislation, very much centered around white middle class feminine identity, around this concept of stranger danger and again, like, acting as if the perpetrators of violence aren't people that we know, people that we know intimately, all of that.

Kylie: I think this concept that is really important to talk about in this context is, sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein defined the term “carceral feminism” as “the commitment of feminist activists to a law and order agenda and a drift from the welfare state to the carceral state as the enforcement apparatus for feminist goals.”

Kylie: So that was a lot of words, but essentially it’s—basically what she’s saying is the problematic nature of a quote “feminism” that relies on the carceral state for solutions when we know that the carceral state is more likely to criminalize and harm women of color, poor people, sex workers, migrants. The only people who can reliably kind of look at it as a solution are often wealthier middle class white women.

Kylie: And we very much see that in the Violence Against Women Act because, you know, it's known as the foremost piece of legislation to protect victims, but it allocates two thirds of its funding to law enforcement and just one third to victim services, and I think that that says it all.

Kylie: And I think again, historically, the push for legislation like the Violence Against Women Act really emerged from definitely benevolent intentions with, you know, in the 1970s women from all walks of life really began organizing to raise consciousness around the conditions that they faced in reporting and seeking justice and resources for sexual violence.

Kylie: In specifically a book I read that was really insightful called The Feminist and the Sex Offender, the authors of that book really showed how some of these barriers included the requirement of burdensome and dangerous medical verification of rapes and Chanel Miller talked about that a lot in her book, of experiencing that firsthand with a really invasive medical collection of evidence.

Kylie: And you know, victims were also required to have witnesses, despite how sexual violence is an inherently private act so like, it's just—yeah I mean like, how do you even have witnesses for that often but yeah it was very common for defense in court to weaponize victims’ sexual histories against them because following their logic, you know, any women who had consented to sex once before, therefore consented to all other sexual encounters the rest of her life and so yeah I think that that's why you know Miller—Chanel—talks about her experience with this firsthand of just how her identity and her story and her past were all just so brutally picked apart, and you know, there's a very long history of that.

Kylie: All her story is just very much inseparable from this overarching system of white supremacy and the carceral state and just the fact that the few supports that victims have within this state are more likely to retraumatize or even criminalize them.

Kylie: But yeah I mean like, the Violence Against Women Act, I mean I'm not devaluing it because it played such a critical role and acknowledging the gravity of domestic and sexual violence on a cultural level, because before that I mean a lot of people kind of just accepted that domestic violence is happening, but no one talked about it, no one cared.

Kylie: And then you have this major piece of legislation, which was a huge cultural victory for sure, and it provided some funding for key resources like victim hotlines, shelters, community education, all of that. But it also had several mandates that really placed nonwhite and queer and trans victims and, let's be clear, like victims of abuse who are sex workers, who are migrants. It put them at a lot of risk of facing criminalization and other threats, because it required them to enter the criminal justice system when, again like we talked about, for victims of violence, in many cases what they really need is not to enter this retraumatizing and punishing system.

Kylie: There's so many reasons that someone who's a victim of violence could be criminalized themselves, whether that's criminalized for self defense against their abuser and we've seen that with cases like Cyntoia Brown, who was a young Black woman who was being trafficked, and she killed one of her abusers and she was the one who ended up in prison for—I don't even know how long, but a really long time.

Kylie: And then there's also if you're a victim of sexual—of domestic violence or sexual violence and you're pregnant and you experience that physical violence, you could be criminalized for fetal endangerment if let's say you miscarry because you—of physical violence by your abuser. I mean, there's just so many different avenues in the legal system, the criminal justice system, to punish victims of violence and it especially looks to do that and targets nonwhite victims and people who aren't that middle class wealthy white woman ideal of you know, the quote “perfect victim” unquote.

Kylie: I mean, there's also the fact that the Violence Against Women Act literally requires arrests in reported domestic violence cases, including if there's any ambiguity in who the victim is and who the abuser is, then there's duel arrest so both of the people in that case would be arrested, but you know, according to experts on abuse this is like a really common dynamic in abusive relationships, where both partners hurt each other in some way, and this is also especially true outside of heteronormative contexts and so it's another example of how the Violence Against Women Act can be dangerous or punishing for LGBTQ people.

Kylie: And like one more thing, the Violence Against Women Act also prohibits victims from dropping charges, and so there have also been cases in which—in the 1990s and like, that “tough on crime” era and stuff, we've seen district attorneys and some jurisdictions literally subpoena and even jail victims to coerce them to testify against their abusers and so.

Kylie: All of this is to say, in context with Chanel Miller's book, we have seen just over and over again that the criminal justice system, the legal system, law enforcement—it's just more likely to hurt and even endanger victims, and yet it's somehow being upheld as like, this protector of victims and survivors, and why? Because like, we really envision victims and survivors as white, and we really center that experience.

Kylie: And it’s just like, it's so upsetting to read her book, read Chanel Miller’s book, and then hear people say “we can't defend the police, what about victims of rape?” God, I don't know, I'm just so upset about that all the time, whenever I hear victims and survivors used as like that prop to like, defend against tearing this horrible system down and it's just like, you do not care about victims or survivors if you are using them to defend this system, because they are some of the people who are most fucking harmed by the system so.

Sonya: Yeah and you never hear them talk about it until defunding the police is brought up.

Kylie: Right? Oh my fucking god. But wow. What a conversation we just had. It's just so hard to sum up all our thoughts and really deep personal feelings that this book kind of evokes in you, but you know what? We're gonna try our best.

Jenni: Justice means different things for survivors, and survivors seek justice in so many different ways. People's traumas manifest in so many different ways as well, and we can only begin to understand through listening to these stories that center survivors.

Sonya: Again, sexual assault isn't just the assault itself, but everything that comes after. The process of healing is tumultuous, messy, and nonlinear, and it's not something that follows a set schedule.

Kylie: Chanel's story just captures all of that intensity and raw feeling, and like just the simultaneous isolation and solidarity of being a survivor. It's all about how the systems in place punish and do not serve us, and it's also, I think, a deep reflection of how white supremacy shapes what we see as a quote “perfect” unquote victim. And her story, it's just so intensely real, I think, especially as a survivor myself, as an Asian American woman, as someone who grew up with a family like Chanel's here in the Bay Area, and just wow, I mean wow.

Kylie: I also think what I really take away from this book is just—again, it's just yet another horrible example of how credibility is just so deeply gendered and also affected by race, and I just really think about this book called Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. I think one really important piece of that book is how, you know, the really common stat of 2-10% of reports of sexual assault are false reports, but then in her book she finds that, at least on campuses, all of these reports involved an agreement that a sexual encounter happened, it's just a disagreement on whether there was a violation, which isn’t something that can be quantified, and sexual violence is very private and very personal, and it's always about who we center, who we privilege, who we believe, who matters, and whose story is told. Who is allowed to tell their own story.

Kylie: And I just think Know My Name is so powerful because it inverts that, because it is Chanel Miller’s story, by her, and not by Brock Turner’s defense team, not by the media, but by her. And I just think that's what makes that book so, so powerful.

Kylie: Well, um, thanks for listening to our inaugural episode, and we're super excited to keep the conversation going in our future episodes and hope you will join us.

Sonya: Follow us on Instagram @insomniaclibrarians for more resources and updates on the pod.

Jenni: We’ll see you next time, bye!

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