Chanel Miller

Sorry?

I think that everyone who listens to true crime or indulges in this sort of entertainment kind of has an obligation to read Know My Name by Chanel Miller.

Oh, yeah.

I've literally brought this book up, like-

Outside New York, the case became a cause celeb on both the left and the right, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, then gearing up to run for president, raised more than $3 million from his social media followers for Penny's defense.

Now comes Anand Giridharadas, a former New York Times journalist, cable news pundit, and author of four previous books, two of them bestsellers, notably his 2018 breakout Winners Take All, the elite charade of changing the world, with a new book, Man in the Mirror, Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in American City, about the Neely Penny incident and its legal aftermath.

and it's an extraordinarily rich and insightful tour de force that, although it is about that incident and that case, it's even more interested in the broader social and political forces that the story laid bare, and with what Gurriarda sees as the defining emotion of our time, a sense of profound abandonment shared by all the tribes of citizens across the spectrum, a belief that our institutions have become so dysfunctional that they no longer protect us, care for us, or deliver justice.

that regular order no longer works, and that our only recourse is to stop expecting or asking for help, but to step up and protect ourselves and our own.

I don't, we don't know.

Oh, there's somebody bragging about that on your behalf somewhere.

I'd like bestseller, but maybe it's all the other bestsellers that they're talking about when they say bestselling author.

Um, um, first of all, congratulations on the book.

So basically we feel bad for him who did the thing that is awful over someone who is the victim of that harmful behavior.

And so we see this, I actually coined the term in relation to Brock Turner, who was found g- guilty, convicted of sexually assaulting Chanel Miller behind a dumpster at Stanford's campus after a fraternity party.

And yet, so many people worried about him missing out on his bright future rather than the fact that what about her bright future? What about the way she was shattered? What about the ways that this, as we now know, brilliant writer and creator and artist had her life derailed for years by what he did to her? And so our sympathy flows up the social hierarchy.

Instead of going to the people who deserve it, the people who should be centered and honored in this process, the victims of sexual assault, we worry so much about him.

... we do this? Why do, why does society provide such himpathy for men who are engaging and accused of sexual violence?

So this is how the wheels of patriarchy turn.

It is the system whereby if you do something as a man and there is really strong evidence or even, in the case of a Brock Turner, full knowledge that he did what he did because he was apprehended in the act of sexually assaulting Chanel Miller by two Swedish graduate students who caught him in the act and performed a citizen's arrest.

So we knew what he'd done, and yet the sense is We cannot possibly hold him accountable because he is too important.

There were a number of really high profile campus assaults that made national news.

There was Brock Turner and that infamous Jane Doe story, who later revealed herself and her identity to be Chanel Miller and, and spoke very openly, and I would say really eloquently about her experience.

There was the Columbia University student, Emma Sulkowicz, who alleged she was raped by a fellow student on campus, and who did a performance art piece to protest against the university's response in not finding him responsible, and she carried her mattress everywhere with her on campus until she graduated.

That all feels like so long ago.

That doesn't mean that it was lessened or that, you know, women weren't being sexually assaulted on campus.

It just, it means that it was less a national priority because so many other things were happening.

But, I mean, God, those women were so brave, Chanel Miller, Emma Sulkowicz, and I do think what they did was make it easier when Me Too happened.

I think there was so much discourse in the twenty tens.

But the true power of this era came from the survivors who figured out how to reclaim their narratives.

Chanel Miller's Know My Name is a triumph of this

For years, the world only knew her as Emily Doe, the anonymous survivor who was sexually assaulted in the Stanford case

She published this memoir to reclaim her identity.

There were a number of really high-profile campus assaults that made national news.

There was Brock Turner and th- that infamous Jane Doe story, who later revealed herself and her identity to be Chanel Miller and, and spoke very openly, and I would say really eloquently, about her experience.

There was the Columbia University student, Emma Sulkowicz, who alleged she was raped by a fellow student on campus and who did a performance art piece to protest against the university's response in not finding him responsible, and she carried her mattress everywhere with her on campus until she graduated.

That all feels like so long ago.

That doesn't mean that it was lessened or that, you know, women weren't being sexually assaulted on campus.

It just, it means that it was less a national priority because so many other things were happening.

But, I mean, God, those women were so brave, Chanel Miller, Emma Sulkowicz, and I do think what they did was make it easier when Me Too happened.

I think there was so much discourse in the twenty tens.