The Epistemological, Experiential, and Existentialist Implications of Chanel Miller’s Know My Name.

A Review by Jocelyn Crawley

As male supremacist values continue to contribute to the proliferation of patriarchal cultures that make women vulnerable to multifarious forms of sexual abuse, female victim-survivors resurface from the horrors of bodily violation in diverse ways. While many victim-survivors adopt an attitude of self-suppression entailing sustained silence regarding the psychosomatic impact that rape has on an individual, others choose to painstakingly document and delineate the degradation they have experienced in the face of male depravity. Many of these victim-survivors also explore the depth and scope of emotive, energetic, and empathic states they have experienced as a result of sexual assault. 

This is the case for Chanel Miller, a rape victim who chose to explore the ramifications that being raped by Brock Turner had on her mind and body in her sobering memoir, Know My Name. In this text, Miller delineates the experiential process of realizing that she has been raped, working with the rape crisis and the judicial system to attain a resolution for the assault, dealing with the disappointment resulting from the paltry sentence given to Brock Turner, and grappling with a plethora of contentious and oftentimes convoluted emotive and psychic states resulting from the trauma induced by rape.

While a plethora of meaningful messages are disseminated in this text, the one I found most significant is the revelation that rape victims still receive poor treatment from the communities that should support them and the justice system continues to minimize the depth of depravity indigenous to sexual assault through its own lackluster treatment of victims and unwarranted sympathy towards rapists. In this book review, I briefly highlight and reference some significations of meaningful assessments that Chanel Miller makes regarding the reality of being raped, her multifarious responses to it and the responses of the authorities

For those unfamiliar with Chanel Miller, she is a talented artist who chose literature as her college major given her love for writing. Her Chinese name is Zhang Xiao Xia, which translates to Little Summer. In the book, Miller self-organizes her identity around the concept of shyness and says she has never asked a question in a lecture setting. During elementary school, Miller was chosen as a conflict manager. Jumping to the recent past, at the age of 22, Miller was sexually assaulted while unconscious by Brock Turner. He was found thrusting against the unconscious, partially unclothed Miller outside of a fraternity party and was pulled off of her by two men who passed by as the assault transpired. According to mainstream, malestream logic, the event is a rare and troubling divergence from the generally amenable, amicable relationships between men and women. To a radical feminist, this rape is a reflection of the fundamentally hierarchical system of patriarchal relations in which men operate as the ruling class while women are relegated to the sphere of subsidiary underclass such that sexual assault operates as a normative and acceptable way for males to subordinate females.

Miller’s memoir begins with assessments that are confluent with radical feminism in terms of the depiction of a microcosmic sector of society that reflects the principles confluent with and conducive to the macrocosmic system of male supremacy.  In her own terms, she describes the campus fraternity thus: “In college, a fraternity was an exclusive kingdom, throbbing with noise and energy, where the young ones heiled and the large males ruled” (4). Here, Miller’s language emphasizes her understanding of the fundamentally hierarchical nature of the fraternity environment, with terms like “exclusive kingdom” reemphasizing the lack of inclusivity that characterized the group’s values. Additionally, the author’s reference to the young males treating the large males deferentially to indicate the latter group’s superiority reemphasizes the patriarchal practice of viewing that which is bigger as better and thereby esteeming it as more valuable. Although Miller does not directly connect the hierarchical nature of the fraternity to the wider realm of male supremacy, the connection is clear. Like other adult men who cooperate with the institutionalized principles of patriarchy which ensure the ongoing degradation and dehumanization of women, the young males of the fraternity placed primacy on identifying those who had more and less power while also making their socialization process an exclusive one such that everyone could not coexist and commune with them in a meaningful, cooperative way. 

These principles are perpetually lived out in the world beyond fraternities as adult males organize their lives around participation in organizations and groups predicated on top-down hierarchical thinking rather than cooperative coexistence. This principle of a dominative organization exists in a confluent relationship with other aspects of their lives predicated on domination, control, and unequal allocation of power and signification. Specifically, many men gravitate towards working within corporations to attain more capital based on the perception that their value is predicated on their ability to wield authority over others, with their dexterity and efficacy in wielding power being contingent upon how much money they make. Within the world of the corporation where men attain this capital, they are continually inundated with and subsequently absorb the values of a system predicated on people with less power within the company making less money and being spoken to in demeaning, trivializing ways while the individuals who hold more powerful positions (made evident by a prestigious title and larger spaces in which to work) generate more wealth, are treated deferentially to the extent that individuals with less power are oftentimes afraid to challenge them when they misuse their authority and rule over these perceived “inferiors” in a manner which makes evident that the corporate sphere is essentially their kingdom. Each of these dynamics—and the concrete realities that parallel it—function as integral elements of patriarchal ideology and praxis, with the metaphysical and material dimensions of androcentrism being fundamentally predicated on the hierarchical ordering of the universe such that men, as the ruling class, have authority over the inferior class, women, as well as over other men who have not attained the level of stature and signification that they have within the system. As made evident by Chanel Miller’s depiction of fraternity life, the dynamics present amongst these young men mirror the misogynistic dynamics evident and operative in the patriarchal world that exists beyond the sphere of the university.

In addition to describing the constitutively active dynamics of the fraternity men in a manner that makes the presence of patriarchal ideology and praxis evident, Miller’s text includes direct references to the role that being raped played in engendering her erasure, with this erasure constituting another key element of androcentric processes. Specifically, one of the most poignant representations in this text is the author’s delineation of the erasure of her sense of self following the sexual assault she sustained. In discussing her time in the SART (Sexual Assault Response Team) building after being raped, she states “I was nothing more than an observer, two eyes planted inside a beige cadaver with a nest of ratty brown hair” (8). Here, Miller’s use of the words “nothing more than” references her devaluation of herself, and the term “observer” indicates that her identity was reduced to the passive state of merely watching things being done to her rather than actively constructing her own world. Although it is not the rape itself which reduces Miller’s valuation of herself to that of a passive observer, it is the reality of sexual assault which engendered her transposition to the rape crisis facility where she was subjected to this self-alienatingly speculative sphere to complete examinations and interviews designed to determine the nature and scope of the trauma she’d endured.

While Miller’s self-awareness of her own erasure as a result of being raped is a poignant element of the text, what I found even more compelling was the author’s delineation of her lack of awareness regarding how cultural responses to rape perpetuate gender inequality which is reflected in the sexual assault itself. At one point in the text, Miller asserts “I didn’t know that if a woman was drunk when the violence occurred, she wouldn’t be taken seriously. I didn’t know that if he was drunk when the violence occurred, people would offer him sympathy. I didn’t know that my loss of memory would become his opportunity. I didn’t know that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed” (23). Here, Miller discusses a plethora of ongoing minimizations and trivializations that women are subjected to as a result of patriarchy creating conditions that are confluent with the production and perpetuation of rape cultures. It is still true that women are not taken seriously when coming forward about being raped if they were inebriated at the time, and this dismissal is a part of the ongoing trivialization of female beings which results from the systematic overvaluation of male existence and experience operating in conjunction with the perception that female ideas, emotive states, modes of understanding and means of acquiring knowledge are less meaningful than that of their superior male counterparts. Miller’s assessments of what she didn’t know regarding the gender-based implications of sexual assault also include her assertion that rapists receive sympathy from individuals within society if they were drunk during the time of the attack, with this reality reemphasizing the reader’s awareness that the same culturally depraved behavior is evaluated differently when the culprit is male versus female. Thus while women are dismissed and shamed for being drunk while raped, men who rape while drunk receive empathy, with this sympathy subtly or even saliently informing the male recipient that despite committing an act of utter inhumanity and depravity, his community will still support him under the premise that his lackluster behavior resulted primarily from inebriation rather than a profound character flaw.

In addition to depicting the expansive nature of her epistemological framework regarding the untenable ways that society responds to rape victims, Miller elucidates her attempt to construct a life that is not rooted and grounded in the reality that she exists as a victim-survivor. This existentialist elucidation reinforces an awareness that is immensely important to retain as a primary part of consciousness for those truly interested in understanding the importance of female liberation from men. That awareness pertains to the pernicious, palpable, and perpetual impact that rape has on female victims. The ideology of minimization perpetuated by patriarchy insists that rape is rare and that its effects on the victim are either minimal, easy to overcome, or simply a part of life that must be recognized and tolerated. 

Feminist ideology, however, painstakingly illuminates the profound and long-standing impact that patriarchal practices such as rape have on victims in an attempt to make plain the need for, the practicality of, and desirable nature of liberation from men. Although Miller is not explicitly espousing a commitment to feminist values in her discussion of how rape negatively impacted her vocational vitality, her discourse on the negative impact that sexual assault had on her attempts to be professional and productive makes the logic of separatist feminist ideology and praxis evident as the lack of independence and autonomy which results from male domination and its effects become plain. In describing the professional and personal challenges she experienced after being raped, Chanel Miller writes “I had no room for words such as rape, victim, trauma, abrasions, attorneys in the world I was trying to build. I had my own word bank: Prius, Fage yogurt, building credit, trips to Napa, improving posture spreadsheets” (29-30). Here, the reader learns that Miller was attempting to move beyond the abstract memories and concrete realities related to rape, including the metaphysical realm of cognition where trauma’s psychological effects unfold and the female body upon which signs of sexual trauma manifest. In conveying her attempt to focus on her future, Miller states that she attempts to redirect her energy toward financial health, vacations, and effective eating. Yet the reality of being raped remains resilient in her consciousness, for just as the terms “building credit” and “trips to Napa” suffuse her psyche, her linguistic world is still infused with language that describes the physical and mental impact that sexual assault has had on her.

In addition to depicting the role that being raped plays in altering her subjectivity and volitional will through interference with her personal and professional life, Chanel Miller’s memoir represents the communal impact that sexual assault has with a formidable, breathtaking lucidity that makes the ubiquity of patriarchy’s effects plain. Rather than only adversely impacting the individual at whom male violence is directed, patriarchy enacts a ripple effect that forces everyone to feel its malevolent virulence in a manner that results in significant shifts. These shifts include but are not limited to affected, inauthentic behavior to individuals sharing polemical perspectives which reflect awareness of the intersections between oppressive ideological systems such as homophobia and sexism. For example, when Miller describes her process of interacting with the DA who sought to discredit her account of being subjected to sexual assault during the rape trial, she states that he smiled at her in a manner she deemed inauthentic. Specifically, Miller states that “He smiled, but I believe a smile has to appear for more than a beat to be considered a real smile, and his dropped too quickly” (117). The fictive, scripted nature of their interaction is further enunciated when Miller notes that “He had a light air about him, as if this were just friendly talk, we were going on a stroll together. This bothered me, this feigned politeness, a baseless cordiality” (117). Here, the reader learns that one of the outcomes of patriarchy and its byproducts (in this case, rape) is immersion in a world of dissociated, dissonant interactions reflecting internal and external incongruities engendered by the individual’s need to process the reality of profound dehumanization and subsequently continue interacting with other people in a tranquil, cordial manner which minimizes the magnitude of both abuse and one’s awareness of it. The “feigned politeness” and “cordiality” evinced by the defense attorney, an individual who was likely infinitely aware of the details pertaining to Miller’s rape, reflect an inauthentic incongruity which is such because it indicates the individual’s direction of his volitional will towards maintaining a disposition of professional detachment and dissociation from the victim and her experience despite deep awareness of the details of the rape case evincing the depth and scope of her degradation and dehumanization.

Just as the author’s depiction of the defense attorney’s inauthentic disposition and decorum during the rape trial reveal the role that rape plays in significantly altering the way human interactions unfold, the responses from the public to the author’s victim impact statement regarding her experience also reflects the impact that sexual assault has on how individuals think and respond as members of community living under patriarchy. In response to Miller’s statement, an individual named AJ who had known Brock Turner in high school posted “Over 8 years ago, you called me a fag and formulated opinions about me before knowing who I was. Look where we are now. The “fag” I am knows how to treat humans, wherever they may fall on the gender spectrum, with dignity and respect, and you are the face of sexual assault in the United States of America” (249).

Here, the reader learns of the role that ruminations upon Miller’s rape play in enabling an individual to grasp the intersections of homophobia and sexism such that Brock Turner is understood as a person who views both women and homosexuals as fundamentally inferior to him. Similarly, the commencement speaker at Stanford’s graduation ceremony noted the intersections between multiple forms of oppression stating, “If someone tells you they have been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously and listen to them. Maybe someday we’ll make the survivor’s eloquent statement as important as Dr. King’s letter from the Birmingham jail” (254). This elocution reveals commencement speaker Ken Burns’s awareness that misogyny which entails male violence against women bears resemblance to racism which entails male violence against black people, with the latter arm of patriarchy precipitating Dr. King’s need to pen a letter enumerating the role that white supremacy played in systematically degrading and dehumanizing people of color. Thus just as Miller’s rape precipitates AJ’s awareness of sexism and homophobia converging in the ideology and praxis of Brock Turner, the woman’s sexual assault causes Burns to reflect on the connections between misogyny and racism. Perhaps these reflections can help individuals who are resistant to feminist thought on grounds that it is too insular in the sense of “revolving around women” understand that the ongoing degradation of women is intricately linked to a plethora of other dehumanizing, discriminatory practices, with all of the oppressions resulting from a patriarchal praxis which, amongst other things, values heteronormative masculinity as the ideal and only acceptable way for men to be men such that any other mode of being (such as female, homosexual, and black) constitutes automatic inferiority and subordination.

Viewed as a composite whole, Chanel Miller’s Know My Name functions as a narrative through which the writer explains the newfound knowledge she attained through the process of moving in a patriarchal world that is, for the most part, incapable of responding effectively and appropriately to the reality of female beings being subjected to male violence. Despite the support and positive attention Miller garners as a result of surviving sexual assault, the legal system and many members of the local and national community fail her through actions such as offering support and sympathy towards Brock Turner or, as is oftentimes the case with the general public, paying little to no attention to the author’s rape and the polemical controversy it entailed. Ultimately, Miller’s text reminds radical feminists that men are still able to rape women with impunity while attaining empathy and encouragement from members of the community that exist beyond the legal system which treats their crimes with a lighthearted slap on the wrist. However, the text also informs us that women are not always and only occupying the sphere of silence and submission as a response to rape, but are oftentimes willing to go through the awkward, uncomfortable process of public disclosure, deep rumination, resistance to patriarchal logic, and personal growth which mark a commitment to sustain a stance of sentient dissidence towards the patriarchy which would prefer that women maintain the business-as-usual stance of docile obedience towards the androcentric order.