.png)
Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
When Silence Breaks, Hope Emerges // Chanel Miller's "Know My Name"
What happens when a woman refuses to remain nameless?
Chanel Miller's extraordinary memoir "Know My Name" transforms her painful journey from sexual assault victim to powerful advocate with unflinching honesty and surprising grace.
In this deeply moving discussion, my friend, Becca, and I explore how Chanel reclaimed her identity after being known only as "Emily Doe" in the highly publicized Stanford sexual assault case. Beyond the headlines that focused on her attacker's swimming career, we discover the full impact of trauma on her life. Chanel takes us from the immediate aftermath in a hospital room to the years-long battle through a legal system that so often fails survivors.
The conversation delves into the impossible standards placed on victims: the expectation to be the "perfect victim," the scrutiny of every life choice, and the burden of proving their own worth against a society eager to protect perpetrators. We examine how Chanel's victim impact statement, which reached millions when published anonymously, created a watershed moment in how we discuss sexual assault.
We reflect on Chanel's ultimate message of hope and resilience. Despite the trauma she endured, she reminds us that "from grief, confidence has grown" and "from anger, stemmed purpose." Her story isn't simply about survival-– it's about transformation, both personal and societal.
For parents wondering how to protect their children in an often-dangerous world, for anyone who has experienced trauma, or for those seeking to understand the true cost of sexual violence, this episode offers a profound meditation on justice, healing, and the revolutionary power of speaking truth.
This week's episode is available for free in its entirety.
Have you read “Know My Name"? Share your thoughts with us! Connect with us @babesinbooklandpod or email babesinbooklandpodcast@gmail.com.
If you leave a kind review, I might read it at top of show!
Buy “Know My Name” by Chanel Miller
Other links:
"What Were You Wearing?" art installation
"What Was I Wearing?" Poem by Mary Simmerling
"The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything" by Rebecca Solnit
RAINN Sexual Violence Statistics
RAINN (National Sexual Assault Hotline) 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
Transcripts are available through Apple’s podcast app—they may not be perfect, but relying on them allows me to dedicate more time to the show! If you’re interested in being a transcript angel, let me know.
This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.
Technical editing by Brianna Picone
Theme song by Devin Kennedy
Special thanks to my dear friend, Becca!
Xx, Alex
Welcome to Babes in Bookland. I'm your host, alex Franca, and today my friend Becca is here to discuss Know my Name by Chanel Miller. But first here's a review from Miss Nikki that calls the show refreshing and insightful. It's like a conversation with your girlfriends versus an OG CliffsNotes discussion. Honestly, this has introduced me to books, female authors, that I probably would not have heard or sought out, as I tend to stick to my favorite genres, such as historical fiction, etc. Well, miss Nikki, I'm so glad that you sought us out, because Chanel Miller's Know my Name is a powerful and important memoir and we're going Hi.
Speaker 2:Becca. Hi Alex, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on and for our listeners. Becca and I go way back. We played softball together when we were eight, nine, 10. And then, as life happened, we went our separate ways and because of the podcast and social media, actually we've been brought back into each other's lives. And now she's here and I am so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 2:Yes, I have so many incredible memories of playing home run derby in your backyard, hitting the ball over the fence and having to go chase the ball, memorizing all of our favorite shows and movies, Parent Trap, all the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movies so full circle here. It's been so fun to reconnect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we were just talking before we started recording that this is a difficult memoir. It's hard, it's very powerful, and when I reached out to you about being on the show, you said you really wanted to do this memoir because it was one of your favorite nonfiction books. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started listening to nonfiction books on audio. I wasn't a big reader of nonfiction in terms of physical copies of the books, and this was one of the first books that I did actually a dual listen and read the physical copy because the author narrates the audio book, but I also felt like I really wanted to see the pages too. And yeah, this book, you know, I think we have all been many of us women have been in a situation where we have felt uncomfortable and it's a hard topic, like you mentioned, but it's an important one for women, for men, for everybody to know about and to learn about, and not oversee or overlook the importance of it. So, yeah, it's just one of those books that really hit me at the time that I read it and it's stuck with me ever since.
Speaker 1:And to your point. I think sometimes it's a lot easier to avoid stories like this because you know they are traumatic and they can trigger certain things in our own past and in our own lives. But also what they really have to do is trigger a difference, moving forward, and sometimes that can be really hard to do. Once you know better, you have to do better, and I know at the end of the episode we're going to get into you know what? Learning about Chanel's journey and just being a woman in the world and learning about other women's journeys through situations like this has made us feel as moms, especially moms of daughters and of sons. So we'll really get into that. But first let's get into Chanel's memoir.
Speaker 1:I think that this book is just so powerful, like you said, and I really, really implore everyone to read it. It's a very emotional read. I wanted to throw my book across the room, sometimes I sobbed and I did laugh. I mean, she's a beautiful writer. It felt poetic at times and at the end, even though this is a very difficult story, she reminds us about hope and she leaves us feeling hopeful and I just thank her for that, because she chose to go through this battle that not many women get the opportunity to go through, because it's already difficult enough to prosecute rapists for a variety of reasons, and she took this weight on and this burden on and it hurt her and it was a painful experience, but in the end we are a better world because of women like Chanel Miller, and so we know her name and we say her name.
Speaker 2:Definitely. You bring up a good point about putting herself out there in the public eye for everybody to not only hear and see her story, but to ridicule and pull apart and say she could have done things differently or she should have acted differently, or whatever it may be. I can't even imagine how hard that was and because of her bravery, you know we have this story to, like you said, learn from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that. She does as good a job as she can putting us in her shoes, which is the really important part, because I think it's so easy to ridicule people until you understand what it's like to experience the life that they're experiencing life that they're experiencing. Okay, so first, we start off all episodes with quick topics, and these typically, I try to make them a little bit lighter, and we have a couple of light ones, but we get heavy pretty quickly here. So I do just want to let the listeners know real fast I guess we probably should, in case you, as a listener, aren't quite making the connection but Chanel Miller is the woman who was sexually assaulted by the swimmer from Stanford in 2015, and this memoir is her truth. It wasn't an easy read. Like we said, it's probably not going to be the easiest discussion to hear right now If you're not in a place to hear it. Becca and I are going to do our best to handle the topic with care, but we're not going to shy away from the truth and we're not going to shy away from the ugliness. So if this isn't the right thing for you to listen to today, I fully support that, but I hope that you return to this episode when you can because, like we've already said a million times, her story is very important. Okay, quick topics. So, becca, you did have the physical book.
Speaker 1:Like you said, the cover is a nod to the Japanese art Kintsuji. Have you ever heard of Kintsuji? I actually have not. No, okay so it means join with gold and Okay so it means join with gold. And it's the Japanese art of repairing broken objects, often ceramic, pottery or glass. Gold liqueur, lacquer oh my god, liqueur. Traditionally, gold lacquer is used to piece shards together again, creating a more beautiful object through the acts of breaking and repair. Kintsugi doesn't pretend that the brokenness isn't there. It demonstrates that brokenness can become beautiful. Once again, kintsugi represents the idea that brokenness can be a source of beauty and strength, like I said and I found that information on Google, but isn't that perfect it is.
Speaker 2:You know that is a miss on my end, having never looked into the cover, because yeah, it is just. You know the plain teal color, but it obviously means so much more after you went through all of that. That's really inspiring and such a great way for her to showcase the meaning behind her book through the cover. And again, it shows you there's so much that goes into covers and we shouldn't look past that. That's really insightful.
Speaker 1:I do kind of wish that they had made that note on the cover, though, because if you weren't familiar with that, oh, you know what it is on the jacket, it's on the back. It says the gold veins on the cover represent the Japanese art of Kintsugi golden repair oh my gosh, let's just read this In which pieces of broken pottery are mended with powdered gold and lacquer, rather than treating the breaks as blemishes to conceal. This technique shows us that, although an object cannot be returned to its original state, fragments can be made whole again.
Speaker 2:Oh well, in my defense. That's not on my paperback.
Speaker 1:Oh, there you go. Okay, we got to find a way to get that information on the paperbacks, because that's important, okay, next quick topic. Obviously, her memoir is titled Know my Name and she talks us through the origin of her name. Her name is Chanel. She is half Chinese, and her Chinese name is Zhang Xiaoxia, which translates to little summer, and her Chinese name is Zhang Xiaoxia, which translates to little summer, so it's Z-H-A-N-G, x-i-a-o, x-i-a. She was named Summer because she was born in June, and X-I-A-Xia was China's first dynasty. She is the first child. Xia, like I've already said, sounds like Chanel, so that's how she became Chanel. Becca, do you know what your name means? I?
Speaker 2:used. I feel like I've looked this up multiple times and I always forget it, but I do know that my mom named me after soap actress from the eighties. So I don't know what my name means, but I know where my parents got the idea for Rebecca from. But no, I don't know. And now I feel like I need to look it up again and promptly forget, as I usually do.
Speaker 1:Well, your name means to bind or to tie. It's a symbol of strength and bonding oh, look at that, I love it. I know I love it too. I'll try to not forget it. So you were named after a Rebecca. Were you ever called Rebecca? I mean, ever since I've known you, you've always been Becca.
Speaker 2:No, I think the only person who ever called me Rebecca was my grandmother. When I was little she even didn't call me Rebecca. As I got older and then actually funny story about that I tried to legally change my name to Becca. When I got married I was already there changing my last name. I was like look, nobody calls me Rebecca. It would make paperwork so much easier. Email addresses when I start new jobs they always put Rebecca.
Speaker 1:That's always confusing to people. So I tried, and my mom did not want me to do that and I was like, well, okay, I'm a married woman now, but I'm still doing as my mom wishes. So look at that. Obviously, alex is short for Alexandra, but Alex is the beginning of my name. Anyways, I never thought about all of you out there whose nicknames derive from a longer name, where you're actually not using the beginning letters of your original name?
Speaker 2:I guess yes definitely, and so whenever I had kids, I was adamant that we wouldn't shorten their names or anything like that or go by a different name. If they end up changing that, that's on them, but I wasn't going to put that on them.
Speaker 1:That's really sweet. Alexandra means protector of mankind, which is kind of like pretty hardcore.
Speaker 2:That is, that's a lot to live up to.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I was also named after an 80s icon, an 80s movie. If you know the movie Flashdance, the main character is Alexandra and they called her Alex and that's where I got my name.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, look at that. Our parents just being, you know, pop culture icons for us, exactly.
Speaker 1:If I was born a few years later, I probably would have been named Demi after Demi Moore, so I'll take Alexandra for now. I don't think I'm quite a Demi, though I love that name. Okay, here's where we start getting a little heavier. Next quick topic Throughout her memoir, Chanel writes about moments where she is more alert because she is a woman.
Speaker 1:And yes, these moments happen after she's assaulted. In her memoir, and while maybe that did play into how she felt in certain situations, I think she demonstrates how all women are constantly on guard, or feel like we need to be. Women have been trained to notice micro movements, to scan and anticipate all subsequent action, constantly measuring how far threatening words are from realities. We are tasked with defending ourselves in every imaginable scenario planning escape routes, walking with keys between knuckles and natural instinct in our day-to-day routine. She writes this towards the end of her memoir when she wrote walking with keys between knuckles. Becca, I have done that. I don't do that anymore because now I have the keyless car and I'm like oh my God, I don't have a key, but like I have done that.
Speaker 2:Have you ever done that? I have done that and I'm the same now. I don't. I don't carry keys at all because I have a keyless car and then I have a keypad for my home, so we don't even have a key for our home. But yeah, I remember just early 20s, living in Dallas uptown, just that being the reality and yeah, it's just such a norm for so many of us.
Speaker 1:It is, and it's so strange. She also writes this. She writes about buying a desk on Craigslist. A nice couple arrived to deliver it. The she also writes this. She writes about buying a desk on Craigslist. A nice couple arrived to deliver it. The woman called me, said they were outside. We can help carry it in, but I understand if you don't want us in your home because you know Craigslist people. I just don't want to. The man said well, how else is she going to carry the desk?
Speaker 1:I understood what the woman meant, that a transaction as simple as receiving a piece of furniture from a inherent threat that anytime we met someone online we must scan for signs of assault, rape, death, et cetera. We knew this, but the guy did not speak this language, he just saw the desk. I remember I started, I was walking somewhere and I was meeting my husband and as I was walking towards him, somebody kind of came up to me or motioned to me, looked at me that he clocked, that I didn't really clock. And then I arrived with my husband and this person kind of floated away and my husband was like, oh wow, I for a moment got to actually witness how you, as a woman, have to move through the world with this sort of unwanted attention which Chanel talks about. She gives so many examples of that or this way that she's been writing about. We just have to be on guard. We have to move differently through the world as women.
Speaker 2:How do to move differently through the world as women? How do you move differently through the world as a woman, do you think? Yeah, definitely so I. As you know, I'm a runner and the majority of my runs just given the fact that I have a full-time corporate job, three days in the office, two days at home and three kids the only time on weekdays that I can run is at five o'clock in the morning. That's just it. If I don't do it at that time, I'm not getting my runs in. And so you know I'm lucky to feel very safe where we live, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't let my guard down. So I run with pepper spray, I run with one air pod and I keep the music very low and I keep it on in the ear that you know the people would be on the other side of me. I'm very, very, very cognizant of all of those things, and you know I can't just enjoy my run and just be in it, because I'm constantly thinking about where a threat might be coming from.
Speaker 2:And you know I see a lot of men out on runs at the same time, and I know I run on very, even at five o'clock in the morning, very heavily trafficked area. So I'm very, very, like I said, aware. But I see men just with these, like noise canceling, big headphones on and no lights on them. I also I miss that. I run with lights on, like clip on my shorts. So I'm seen no lights on and, you know, big headphones, their hands are free, no pepper spray, and I'm like, wow, what that must be like, because I can't even be out here and with I have all my things right. And it's just the reality and I'm not going to let that fear keep me from doing what I want to do. I'm not going to let that fear stop me from running. But I'm just going to be one more alert. And two, you know safer about my choices of my routes. I'm not going to go run on the trails that I want to run on. I'm going to run on the same well-lit path every single time.
Speaker 2:And it's just the reality that we live in. And this isn't an exact apples to apples comparison. But also, as a woman in the workforce, I remember very early in my career being kind of targeted by a male colleague at one of my companies, with unwanted advances in terms of the way he was speaking to me through our instant messenger platform where it was private and being very unsure about how I handled that situation. And he actually reached out to me years later to apologize, because he finally, I guess, had a reckoning and realized what he did was wrong. But it's just one of those things where we have to be aware of our surroundings, both physically and then in this virtual world in which we're operating too, and it's just so unfair and I keep thinking okay, it's 2025. When is this going to be different for us? And I just don't know. I don't have that answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I remember my girlfriend gifted me one of those key chain alarms a couple years ago and she was like, you know, just in case? And I was like, yeah, but we always have to have a just in case. As women, we just do, okay. One thing that always really frustrates me when women talk about surviving sexual assault, surviving rape, narrowly avoiding situations, are the assumptions that she could have, should have done something different to avoid it, right? And I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention a couple of things, and I'm going to link them in the show notes.
Speaker 1:The first is the what Were you Wearing? Survivor Art installation that originated at the University of Arkansas in 2013. This was created by Jen Brockman and Dr Mary Windet-Hybert. The project was inspired by Dr Mary Simmerling's poem what I Was Wearing, and this poem is available for viewing online, but here are the two ending stanzas If only it were so simple. If only we could end rape by simply changing clothes. I remember also what he was wearing that night, even though it's true that no one has ever asked Did you get a chance to look at this online?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, this is a tale as old as time that it's our fault for what we're wearing.
Speaker 2:And you know, that line about nobody ever asked what he was wearing is just the proof in the pudding that it doesn't matter. It's going to be the woman's fault, it's going to be the victim's fault and not the perpetrator's fault. And you know, I think a lot about how, if we have society putting that on the victim like you could have done different, that differently, you could have, you know, worn something different we're never giving her space to be able to heal in a way that she could come out and say that wasn't my fault, Because you have all these voices, all of these especially voices that don't matter, right, Like society, like whatever everybody else thinks about. You know, a sexual assault, it doesn't matter. But in the grand scheme of things, the victim has to live with those voices and with that noise, and it's just become the norm to blame the woman for her short skirt or her high heels or her low cut top. And that point about not asking about what he was wearing again just puts the onus on the victim and that's the most unfair thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And you know, this installation does get graphic. It shows a diaper and like it shows a sundress that a six-year-old was wearing. We have to do better. And to your point that, yes, it doesn't matter what they're saying better. And to your point that, yes, it doesn't matter what they're saying, I agree with you, but it does because it keeps the victim living in the shame cycle, and that's what we have to change. You should not feel any ounce of shame at all If you have unwanted advances upon you verbally, physically, any type of thing, and I don't know.
Speaker 1:I feel like it's just so systemic in our society. I think it has its roots in religion. I think it has its roots in misogyny. Women used to be property and really, until we have our reckoning with all of that stuff, this is all just a symptom of a way deeper wound that is festering in our culture. But we can do better. We can, and as women we have to allow that space. There's nothing that irks me more than when a woman fucking says it. It's like how dare you? You know how dare you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. And to go back to your point about the installation and the diaper and the dress and everything, obviously child's dress, you know, okay, let's blame. You know I'm using air quotes. Blame a woman for what she's wearing, but how do you blame a child? Yeah, how do you do that? How?
Speaker 1:do you?
Speaker 2:justify that in your mind yeah, and so that just goes to show that there's no justification across the victim, whomever they are. And it's just yeah. And again, just to underscore your point now, what you just said about other women doing it it's just, I can't, I don't think I'll ever be able to wrap my brain around how a woman could say those things as well. It's just, I don't even have words for it. It's so unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Also, I'm going to share this essay by Rebecca Solnit called she Made Him Do it Theory of Everything. It kind of ties in exactly what we've been talking about here. That that's kind of the vibe that our culture just like jumps to really quickly. Did you get a chance to read that at all? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Wasn't that also so powerful and like disgusting and like, yeah, thank you for saying it. But again, how do we change it? What do we do? We have these conversations. You know we share these articles. We teach our children to be and do better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to your point earlier, you know we don't shy away from the topic. We recognize when somebody like you did at the beginning when somebody may not be ready for this conversation and we accept that and we applaud them for being honest about where they are in that moment. But for those of us who are ready in that moment to have these conversations, we don't shy away from it because that's not how we bring about change and that's not how we bring light to these really hard topics.
Speaker 2:So I think that's another way we just because it used to be like oh, we just don't, we just don't talk about it, even in one on one conversations. That's just not appropriate. We don't talk about it. But there's nothing inappropriate about bringing to light just the disgusting ways victims are treated and the acts themselves. It's just being truthful in hopes of bringing change. Yeah, totally agree.
Speaker 1:And before we dive a little bit deeper, I just want to bring up the statistics from RAINN R-A-I-N-N, the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. I'm going to link this as well in the show notes so just to also emphasize why these conversations are so important and that we cannot continue to ignore that this is happening because every 68 seconds 68 seconds an American is sexually assaulted. Becca, we've been talking for roughly 20 minutes. That's an uncomfortable amount of people. And even today, only 25 out of 1,000 rapists will end up in prison 25 out of 1,000. 13% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation. Among all graduate and undergraduate students these are college statistics and among graduate and professional students, 9.7% of females and 2.5% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation. Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females one out of every four women. On a college campus, 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence or incapacitation. And again, I'll link that so you can check out those statistics yourself. And I do just want to say we acknowledge that men are also survivors of sexual assault, violence, rape.
Speaker 1:Chanel is a woman, we are women. We're going to speak from the female experience today, but like by no means are we disregarding the male experience. About this, too, let's dive deeper. Chanel writes this. My name is Chanel. I am a victim. I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that that is all I am. However, I am not Brock Turner's victim. I am not his anything. I don't belong to him. And this is the story of her rape by Brock Turner In January of 2015,. She is 22 and living and working in Palo Alto, california. She calls herself shy. It tells all these really endearing character traits and quirks about herself. She's working at a startup for a children's educational app. She's working on using less exclamation points on her work emails, which I totally resonate with Relatable.
Speaker 1:Chanel, I see you, I always delete a couple. I'm like, oh, they're going to think I'm just this.
Speaker 2:I don't know cheerleader valley girl being like hey y'all. Oh my gosh, the number of times I look at an email and think you could probably reduce the exclamations by like half. It's a little embarrassing.
Speaker 1:She writes that it's not in her nature to lean on others. And she writes that she wants to introduce herself to us because in the story she's about to tell, she begins with no name or identity. On January 17th 2015, she goes to a Kappa Alpha frat party at Stanford with her sister Tiffany, even though she's no longer a co-ed. She tags along with her sister and her sister's friends. She dances. There's this creepy guy there that's trying to kiss Tiffany. They get away from him. Chanel drinks she's 21.
Speaker 1:Her tolerance isn't what it used to be. And she writes I was bored at ease, drunk and extremely tired, less than 10 minutes away from home, I had outgrown everything around me, and this is where my memory goes black. She gives us a detailed account of her actions at this party, down to every last detail she can remember. She writes I, to this day, believe none of what I did that evening is important. A handful of disposable memories, but these events will be relentlessly raked over again and again and again.
Speaker 1:What I said, what I did will all be sliced, measured, calculated, presented to the public for evaluation, all because somewhere at this party is him. That is one thing that I really I kept coming back to in my own head. As I read through it I was like I would not have been able to remember. Would I have been able to remember anything? I mean the way that she really does give a lot of details and she and there's such a long timeline between the initial, you know, talking to the detective when they suspect that something has happened to her because of the way she is found, then the hearing, then the trial, and she has to keep telling the same story pretty perfectly, or else, you know, the other side comes in and is like, oh well, you said this happened then and I was just like, oh my God, the pressure, the pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's all the defense has to do. That's all they have to do is put some sort of flaw in the story. They just have to sow a seed of doubt, and that's really easy to do when you, like you said, there's so much time between the night and then where they were with the, if we just get all the way to the trial, the actual trial, it was so much time, and so, yeah, I can't even imagine what that pressure must have been like to get it right, when you're just trying to defend your own dignity and your own, your victimhood and, like she said, she's not afraid of that word, but it's not who she is, and it was just something that she had to continuously do over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine how difficult that was yeah, plus, like when you don't think that you have to recount how an evening goes, how much are you like paying attention, and you're drinking, you're having fun. It just feels like such a frustrating experience when you are the person that this happened to, and that's also what I kept coming back to. I was just like this, felt this whole thing just felt so unfair because it was all on her. It was all on her when she did nothing wrong. She did nothing, okay. So after this night she wakes up in a hospital bed and she comes to and she's really confused and a deputy tells her you're in a hospital and there is a reason to believe that you've been sexually assaulted, but she's in a daze. She goes to the bathroom and she realizes that her underwear is gone. She writes I always wondered why survivors understood each other so well, why, even if the details of our attacks vary, survivors can lock eyes and get it without having to explain.
Speaker 1:Perhaps it is not the particulars of assault itself that we have in common, but the moment after the first time you are left alone, something slipping out of you. Where did I go? What was taken? It is terror swallowed in silence, an unclipping from the world where up was up and down was down. This moment is not pain, not hysteria, not crying. It's your insides turning to cold stones. It is utter confusion, paired with knowing. Gone is the luxury of growing up slowly. So begins the brutal awakening Again. She's just such a beautiful writer.
Speaker 1:I had no idea going into this. What to expect?
Speaker 2:I didn't either. I didn't either, and I remember going in and expecting, obviously, that it would be really tough, but, to your point, I didn't expect to be so moved by the beauty of the way she strung words together. And I think what that does, is it just, you know, instead of just rehashing what happened that night and then all the time leading up to the hearing and the trial, what she does is she just humanizes not only herself but her story and the story of so many victims like her. And you know, I think, when you can do that so flawlessly, you just set the reader up for not only a poignant experience, but just I mean, how can you not walk away from this, having felt so moved to tears from what she had to endure, but also, like we mentioned at the top, just to hope in the way that she delivers everything? So I agree that the writing was just very beautiful.
Speaker 1:Did she ever get emotional in her audio book? I know that you kind of jumped back and forth, but yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:I mean her voice is so I don't know how to explain it. It's definitely she should be an audio book narrator, because you can just listen to her speak and you're just at ease. So I think that's probably. What was so profound to me about listening to the audio was that, you know, like we've said ad nauseum over and over, it's very tough to read and listen to, but her narration definitely kind of like tones down not I don't want to say tones down the message, but tones down kind of like the bubble in your stomach over what you're having to listen to, and she does get emotional.
Speaker 2:There are moments where she kind of just crescendos a little bit on some of the tougher pieces when she's talking about, you know, I just remember her being frustrated with either what, how the defense was, you know, portraying something, or having to see him or what have you like those moments you can definitely feel an emotional response from her, but for the most part she just narrates it in a very I don't know what the right word is, but it's just, you know, very. I just felt at ease listening. It shouldn't quite feel right because I shouldn't have been at ease, I should have been uncomfortable, but she just does a very great job narrating the story for sure, which I can only imagine, like how difficult that must have been.
Speaker 1:I know, first off to rewrite it the first time, but then, yeah, to re-experience it again, writing it. But I think a lot of this were her steps of like taking the story back and owning it, like it is her story and it was taken away from her and this is her owning it again and like finding that power in it. And you know, the word digestible kind of came up when you were talking and it's weird. Weird because like that also feels wrong. Yet it does feel right because you have to be able to sit through the uncomfortable parts. She does a really good job of, like you said, humanizing herself in the story and really just eliciting compassion from you in a way where you like her immediately and so you want to be there for her, you want to support her through this. You know?
Speaker 2:Yep, totally, and that's what I love about audiobooks. I'll never stop reading my physical books. It's just my favorite way to consume a story. But, you know, especially for nonfiction and I think that's why I liked listening to nonfiction so much and I still do especially memoirs, and especially when the author reads and narrates their memoir, because it just makes you feel like that much more connected to the story, especially, you know, when it's something you know all memoirs are going to be super personal, but something like this, where you may not have gone through you know what she's experiencing, but the way she tells a story and the way she narrates it kind of transports you to standing just right there with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she takes you with her, for sure. She takes us all through this excruciating hell that she has now put through. She hasn't even given a blanket at the hospital until the nurse realizes she doesn't have one. I just I can't. I'm just like thinking about this deputy being like, hey, you know, and she describes him as being kind, but it doesn't even occur to him. Oh, maybe she needs a blanket to like cover herself. You know again, just the different ways that men and women view the world.
Speaker 1:She spends hours alone waiting. She's been told this thing. We think you might've been sexually assaulted. She doesn't remember and now she's just in this painstaking limbo. She meets with a sexual assault response team. She's given paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, consent to be examined and other things like that. And she writes no one explained why my underwear was gone, why my hands were bleeding, why my hair was dirty. She's going through this paperwork and she pauses at the words rape victim. She writes no, I do not consent to being a rape victim. If I signed on the line, would I become one? If I refused to sign, could I remain my regular self? She's given a packet with papers about PTSD brochures, pamphlets breaking down the way that she might feel at any various times during the duration, after the assaults Because, as we all know, grief is not linear.
Speaker 1:She writes what was I supposed to do with this timeline of some broken stranger? Nurses photograph her naked body up close, invasively. They use rulers to measure abrasions. Her legs are up in stirrups. They take pictures of her vagina and inside it. And this goes on again for hours.
Speaker 1:She writes they could not undo what was done, but they could record it, photograph every millimeter of it, seal it into bags, force someone to look. Not once did they sigh or pity or. Poor thing me. They did not mistake my submission for weakness, so I did not feel a need to prove myself, to show them I was more than this. They knew she takes the morning after pill. Of course other sexually transmitted diseases are on her mind and she just wishes she could remember what happened.
Speaker 1:And I so appreciated that she did not shy away from how invasive this procedure felt. And again, my first reaction was she is the victim here. I just felt like it was so unfair that she had to now become this subject to be scrutinized and it's like well, on one hand I get it forensically right, on the other hand, you're just like where's the dignity? And these nurses did give her dignity. I love that she had these nurses as her nurses because, like every profession, there are good nurses and bad nurses, but it's just like when was this woman going to be able to breathe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it kind of goes back to this whole believe women thing, right?
Speaker 2:Because the reason we have to be so thorough in our forensics and we have to be so thorough in examinations is because there are so many stories out there of women not being believed.
Speaker 2:And you know, if we could, if it could just be a simpler process, like just think of how much trauma that could save victims, right. But it just comes down to this we have to have literally every drop of evidence possible because if we don't, we run the risk of this victim not being bullied, their story being swept under the rug. And you know, like the reviewer who you read at the beginning, I read a lot of historical fiction and you know there's so much that dates back to, you know, centuries upon centuries ago, where it didn't like so what a woman was raped, so what a woman was sexually assaulted. That's life and because of stigmas we've had to overcome slowly but surely, it's just we will put continuously. Victims will just have to be subjected to this in addition to the act itself, because that's just the way it is and it's horrific, yeah, and it feels like there's just not enough regard for what that person has been through.
Speaker 1:And you know we'll get into this in a little bit. But Chanel, at one point, writes about how there are so many rape test kits that get thrown out because they grow moldy, because there just wasn't time to get to them or they weren't refrigerated properly. And you're just like, that is a person, that is a woman, that is an experience. How fucking dare you allow that to get thrown away so that the perpetrator doesn't have to face consequences? You know, and I agree, I think it's just a systemic thing, this stigma that's rooted in so many things. That way, smarter people than I, you know, have written many things about. And it starts with us. It starts with us believing women. Believe the women, believe the women. You know Such a good point. She writes about grateful garments. These are the clothes that she has given to Jin Jin too, once she's finished. And this is a local organization in the Palo Alto area and had it not existed, she would have had to leave the hospital wearing nothing but the flimsy hospital gown and her shoes, because her clothing was taken into evidence and it was really cool. It was like such a weird moment because she actually had a connection with this company, because her grandma, anne, would sell homemade hats and donate the proceeds to this organization. So I will also link this organization in our website, their website and the show notes, in case anybody feels like you know, making a donation or just wants to learn more.
Speaker 1:Okay, so next Chanel meets with detective Kim. He has her go through all the details, all the tiny, seemingly unimportant details she can remember about the evening leading up to and, of course, the party, and the words that she hangs on to are hopefully, nothing happened, because it's all still really unclear. Was she raped? Was it nothing? What happened? Though there is a sense that something happened, because Detective Kim tells her she was found outside in the area behind a dumpster and some people were passing by and they saw something that they didn't think looked right, and then they stopped someone from doing something and then they called the police.
Speaker 1:But you know, again, it's just this like a lot of supposedly is a lot of maybes, right, and Chanel just wants nothing to have happened, like she just wants this entire thing to go away. She wants to like return to the before Chanel, right, like she wrote about earlier. And she writes I have a foothold in two different worlds one where nothing happened and one where I may have been raped. I mean two completely different worlds, one where your entire life has changed.
Speaker 2:It's. I can't imagine being in that mindset right Of like. Which world is it? Like we said before, because you know she writes the beginning of her book, and that's where my memory blacks out. You know, and you know you have to trust that you're going to be in the care of people who are going to care for you in that moment. And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know what their motives are, you don't know what they're going to believe or not believe, you don't know what's coming next and, yeah, that moment of not having that clarity is just mind blowing to me.
Speaker 1:Doesn't that suck, though, that we can't just expect humans to be good people? I know you talked about earlier how people were like well, shouldn't you have known better? What did you do? Why did you, you know, go to this party, whatever, why?
Speaker 2:are we expecting frat boys to be rapists? Why is that okay? And if that's the expectation, there should not be a single woman at any fraternity party moving forward.
Speaker 1:There should not be a fraternity. If you're okay with getting a group of guys together and being like, but they may rape you, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and again, it's just boys will be boys and just kind of accepting that this is the way things have always been. And you know, I'm hopeful that we're starting to flip that script a little bit, but there's still so much to be done in that regard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Chanel is told that the person who did this to her or might have done something to her has been arrested. So she's like, okay, great, she feels as peaceful, I guess, as she can say. I mean, I personally hate to be in limbo, I hate it. Give me the bad news, I don't care, because then at least I can move forward the way that I feel I need to move forward. But this would absolutely be destroying me, eating me up inside. But Chanel has to be strong. She has to be strong for her sister, me eating me up inside. But Chanel has to be strong, she has to be strong for her sister. She reconnects with Tiffany. They're piecing together what has happened and Tiffany is extremely upset. She feels horribly guilty and she tries to tell Chanel what's happened from her perspective. Basically, they got separated and then she couldn't find her anywhere.
Speaker 1:Chanel writes holding it together for her was what I'd been trained for. All their lives Chanel had been the protective older sister. And now Becca, I know you're one of many. How many siblings do you have? Again, there's five of us total. So, yeah, we're siblings and you are pretty in the middle, right, I seem to remember. Yeah, mac Dab, okay, okay. So what role did you find yourself playing in your family? What was your dynamic? Were you the protector? Were you the protected?
Speaker 2:I was definitely both. So I was protected by my older sister and still am. You know, I don't think we ever outgrow. You know, the oldest sister, especially daughter, never outgrows that eldest daughter, you know. So you're like yes, so you know, she definitely played that role for me and, like I said, to this day still does. But I also served as a protector to especially my younger brother right below me. We were really said, to this day still does, but I also served as a protector to especially my younger brother right below me. We were really close in high school and it's just one of those things where I just played that role for him.
Speaker 2:So I think that's the interesting part about not only being a middle child, but being a middle child of such a big family is, I don't have, you know, a cut and dry place in the dynamic.
Speaker 2:It's kind of fluid for me, but I can definitely, you know, not firsthand because I don't have a younger sister, but I could see my sister if she was ever going through something, and you know there are things that she has gone through that I know she's had to feel like she has to kind of shield from me, specifically as her younger sister.
Speaker 2:I can see her in that same dynamic that I see. Chanel, you know, molding herself into this is my problem and this is a very big problem. But I can't bring my sister into this, especially because, you know, if I'm remembering correctly, it's been years like I think I read this like right when it came. But I feel like I remember Chanel not wanting to go to this party or saying that she wasn't exactly excited to go, you know, kind of going back to the whole, she kind of felt like she had outgrown that vibe and that mindset of going to a fraternity party. Yes, you're right, yeah, I can see her not wanting to make her sister feel bad that she went with her, you know, and I can totally understand where she's coming from there.
Speaker 1:Throughout this memoir you just see Chanel's strength and the way that she takes this on herself because she doesn't want other people around her to hurt. And while it is a strength, I think sometimes it is also a weakness, because, especially when the people around you want to try to support you as much as possible, it can be really hard to let those people in. And she does it for all the right reasons, but you could see the other people around her wanting her to just lean on them a little bit more, you know, and it just it sucks. Like she shouldn't have had to take this on and she did. And then, on top of it, there were so many people that she was also trying to protect along the way and to protect herself as much as possible. Yeah, definitely, speaking to all, that she doesn't want to tell her parents, because at this point she feels like telling her parents would make it a big fuss, and she also just like really doesn't want it to be a fuss, right, like she's still in this hopeful place of denial. It's, she's hopeful that there's nothing to even deny that it was just all this misunderstanding and that nothing bad actually happened to her.
Speaker 1:She writes, even though through two decades of private practice. My dad said he has heard every scenario you could imagine. Having grown up in the cultural revolution in rural china, my mom has seen every atrocity you could see. They both understand that life is large and messy and that nothing is black and white. There is no such thing as a linear trajectory and at the end of the day it is a miracle just to wake up in the morning, even though all of that she doesn't want to tell them. She also writes I needed to control the story until I knew more, which I totally get. I totally get and also like when you say something out loud it just makes it more real right.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, that's like giving credence to the situation and you can't take that back. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Has there ever been anything that you've protected your parents from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know, went through something really difficult early in my family planning stages of you know, my life, and I remember just feeling like, if I, it kind of goes back to what we, what you just said about, you know, speaking it out loud and making it feel more real.
Speaker 2:And I remember just thinking like, if I tell my parents this, one, it's going to make them really sad and two, it's something I'm going to have to continue to re-discuss and re-examine and think about.
Speaker 2:And it's just, you know, it's one of those things when we're dealing with our parents, like yes, they are the parents and they are the ones whose job it is to protect us in theory, but you know, at the end of the day, like they're still human and we know that now, as parents, like we're not perfect by any stretch and we're not perfectly, I don't know, mentally well, in all stages of life.
Speaker 2:And so you know, it's just hard to. It's hard to think like, okay, is this something I want to bear to my parents? Is this something that is going to cause more harm than help? And I think what's hard about that on our end is that then it just forces us kind of like we just talked about with Chanel, to bear it all on our own, and I don't think our parents want that for us. I don't think that's you know. I don't know her parents, but I assume that's not what her parents wanted for her. But it's just so hard as a child to put as an adult child to parents, to feel comfortable putting such heavy things on our parents. Yeah, so I can get it.
Speaker 1:I can get where she was coming from Me too. So all this is happening without her parents' knowledge. She's still really young, she's 21, 22. At this point, chanel is asked if she wants to press charges and she feels like she should. So she does. But at this point she's constantly just thinking this is probably not a thing, so it'll go away. And she doesn't realize that the swimmer that's how I'm going to refer to him had already posted the $150,000 bail, and you only pay 10% of that in order to post bail, but still $15,000. Somebody has been able to post for him to get out of jail.
Speaker 1:She writes I didn't know that this little yes, pressing charges would reopen my body, would rub the cuts raw, would pry my legs open for the public. I had no idea what a preliminary hearing was or what a trial actually meant, no idea that my sister and I would be instructed to stop speaking to each other because the defense would accuse us of conspiring. My three-letter word that morning unlocked a future, one in which I would become 23 and 24 and 25 and 26 before the case closed. She later writes when society questions a victim's reluctance to support, I will be here to remind you that you ask us to sacrifice our sanity to fight outdated structures that were designed to keep us down.
Speaker 1:It is not reasonable to casually demand that victims put aside their lives to spend more time pursuing something they never asked for in the first place. This is not about a victim's lack of effort. This is about society's failure to have systems in place in which victims feel there's a probable chance of achieving safety, justice and restoration, rather than being re-traumatized, publicly shamed, psychologically tormented and verbally mauled. The real question we need to be asking is not why didn't she report? The question is why would you? I just want to like stand up and say amen and like clap my hands.
Speaker 2:What it comes down to is like this is a horrible thing, and it would have been so easy for her to just, you know, be Jane Doe and just go through the process and get out of it in whatever way it quote unquote made sense for her, but instead she used her power and her words and her power and her strength to create a movement where people who have been through this feel seen and validated and people who haven't feel that they understand in a small way. You know what these victims have been through, and that's not an easy thing to do, and so it probably took a lot for her to get there. It probably took a lot for her to finally feel like she could tell her story and she could be in front of the media and she could write this book and she could narrate this audio book, but when she did, she saw it as that opportunity to do something big to make sure people understood that this should never happen to anybody and the people who are the perpetrators should pay for what they do.
Speaker 1:She took a traumatic event and turned it into hope for other people. Yeah, and that takes a lot of courage and a lot of strength and I just feel really grateful that she was able to do that. And, like you said, not everyone is able to do that and that's also okay. But thank God, chanel wrote this book. Thank God we have this book now, because it just lays it out for people who don't get it in such an articulate, simple way. It's like now you have to get it because I've said it to you very simply, you know, and very strongly Okay. So back to her story. She goes to the station to press charges and she learns more. She starts seeing press the words Stanford athlete raping unconscious woman. The article mentions the woman was digitally penetrated, fingered and, by the way, the federal definition of rape does include a non-consensual penetration of any kind, no matter how slight. So yes, it is still rape, even though it wasn't his penis.
Speaker 1:Chanel's name isn't in the media. She's protected. She is Emily Doe, but her sister and her sister's friend, julia, are mentioned many times. It's the comment sections of these articles that she comes across, the contempt for her which we've both been talking about, and Chanel wants to separate this person that experienced this from her. So she creates Emily Doe, like this skin that she can put on when she needs to.
Speaker 1:She writes the body being publicly taken apart did not belong to me. This was when Emily Doe was born Me, but not me at all and suddenly I hated her. I didn't want this. Her nakedness, her pain it was Emily. All of this was Emily. A little later, she writes I wondered how, in an instant, my identity had been reduced to the blacked out and raped woman, this person who could never be a role model, at best a cautionary tale. If anyone ever found out, I understood I'd be publicly disgraced, permanently branded. This part of me had to be severed. I passed all of this mess on, these new obstacles, uncertain future, soiled identity, to Emily. She took this person who could never be a role model, and she has become a role model. She's a thousand percent become a role model, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can only imagine what that feels like for her to you know, cause we all think like, oh, we'd like to be a role model, like in whatever way maybe it's just to a little sister, or to like a teacher to her students, and so you know, I wonder how she feels about knowing she is a role model, not in a way she ever imagined it would play out, but she has to understand the depth of the impact that she has made in so many people's lives. You know, that's gotta that's gotta mean something, I would think.
Speaker 1:And I also can't imagine having to process you're, you're reading all of this shit about you, you're trying to disassociate it from yourself and like she's created Emily, all while still not having a clear idea of what exactly happened. But it is through the media that she learns more about what happened to her, which feels very unfair, honestly. Two Swedish bicyclists were the ones who came to her rescue. They intervened, chased the swimmer down, held him down, and the media is also where she learns that the swimmer denies it all. So she's introduced to her DA Alali. She briefly hears from Stanford checking in that she's okay. So this didn't take place on Stanford's campus, but the fraternity was affiliated with Stanford and most of the students there were Stanford students. So, yes, the school kind of shows up here, and then later there's like a section about how they try to like make things right but they end up still failing her in so many ways. This was all added to the betrayal for Chanel because, like she wrote about earlier, this happened 10 minutes away from her home. Stanford was her backyard, this was her neighborhood, this place where she felt safe. And, yeah, again, like I said, it feels like Stanford just tried to do this like major PR stunt later instead of actually being accountable, and she details it more in the book. We won't really have time to get into it today.
Speaker 1:This also is not the first time that Chanel has encountered traumatic events, though this is definitely the most personable and intimate. But, growing up, multiple students committed suicide at her high school ultimately 10 students and she writes about how this experience conditioned her to detach. She writes whatever alarms arose in my body were silenced. The horror made distant. My eyes became wet. I would cry in private, but I knew I would do what I had always done detach keep going. I remember we had a couple of student deaths at my high school. Did you have any student deaths while you went to high school?
Speaker 2:Yeah, a few. How do you, even you know?
Speaker 1:internalize that at such a young age it's just, it's hard, it is really hard. And then for them to be suicides feels like it just adds even one more layer, because it almost felt like it was this domino effect in her school. And then this isn't the only other trauma that she experienced. Before she was raped at a Stanford fraternity, which we will get into in a second. But at this point in the story Chanel decides that it's the right time to tell her parents and she tells them, she breaks down and she writes that night my body could finally soften, exhale, which I loved that little moment of reprieve for her because she deserved it so much. Her DA warns her that the swimmer's only way out of this is through Chanel.
Speaker 1:She writes I realized the assault had only been the first challenge. If I ever wanted to confront him, contest his side of the story, it would have to be in the court. Now we have to assume his innocence in the court system. In the court system the assault hasn't even happened yet. He'd seen me as a body but would attempt to destroy me as a person. And again she goes to the comments section. She writes they seemed angry that I'd made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he'd acted on my vulnerability, being drunk and raped seemed to call for condemnation. People were confounded that I had failed to protect myself. Again giving this burden of responsibility to people who? Why should we bear the brunt of responsibility for other people's actions? Other people should just fucking not rape people. Is it that hard?
Speaker 2:It's mind blowing, like how simple you saying that sounds, but it's not the reality, it's just not and it doesn't make any sense. And like the fact that we continually go back to this argument like don't do this, don't wear that. You know, travel in packs. Bring your pepper spray. Yes, I get all of that, but it shouldn't be that way. And, like I said, the fact that we continually go back to that, just I don't know. I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 1:It's frustrating. Chanel tries to keep Emily and her pain and suffering separate from herself. Chanel, she writes about how blind she went into this process, how little she knew of the character assassination that would be attempted. The pressure for her to be on her best behavior, to be a quote good victim, she writes, to deny my messiness would be to deny my humanity. I don't believe there's such a thing as an immaculate past or perfect victim. Yet now I was being upheld to an impossible standard of purity, worried that failing to meet it would justify Brock raping me. Her life is scrutinized. Her relationship with her boyfriend, lucas, is scrutinized. Her life is turned upside down because quote Brock Turner fingered me while I was unconscious. Her life is turned upside down because of the actions of this person.
Speaker 1:She writes about how expensive it is to be a victim. This was something that I never even thought about. The hospital bill is several thousand dollars and the hope is that Brock will be court ordered to pay it back, but it's at a much later date. The bill is on her until then. Her rape kit at this point still isn't tested, and this is where she talks about the backlog of rape kits, like I talked about earlier. Her parents worry. Her mom can't sleep if she's not at home. The world is closing in on her on all sides and her hearing date keeps getting pushed, which was also really frustrating. And it felt like the defense, because I remember like the first time it got pushed was because the defense had like something else going on Brock's attorney, the swimmer's attorney and you were just like. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you motherfucker? Like I don't know if it was, but like that was my initial instinct, you know it just again. It feels so disrespectful, like at a basic human level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you already did this, you already put her through. You know the incident itself, the rape itself. But yeah, you're just prolonging the trauma by pushing this out further. And, like you said before, don't want to be in limbo. I can't imagine this kind of limbo that she had to live in for this long. It's just yeah to your point incredibly disrespectful and just one of those things where it's their time, not hers, and that's just unreal.
Speaker 1:That's not how it should be. Not how it should be, she writes. I was beginning to feel acutely that I was not fitting into old patterns of myself, who I was or who I thought I would be. I wanted a place where I could create a corner of the world where I could disappear. So she decides to leave Palo Alto for the summer. But before she leaves she finds a renewed sense of purpose to continue the fight.
Speaker 1:She tells a good friend about her assault, and her friend had gone through a very similar experience but was informed that there was not enough evidence to move forward with charges. She tells Chanel that this is her opportunity and Chanel's. You're the one who's going to do it. And Chanel writes I understood what I had to do and I understood what it meant. Another weight that she's placing on her shoulders, but also a propelling forward, a sense of camaraderie with her friend, which, again, like we don't wish on anyone. But you're also grateful that Chanel had this person who could understand her in a way that other people just couldn't at the time. So she goes to Rhode Island and she enrolls in a summer program at the Rhode Island School of Design. She struggles there, but she pushes herself, to understand it, to grow. And she writes I saw the part of me that insisted on surviving. Still, she has trouble sleeping, knowing what waits for her at the end of the summer when Emily and Chanel have to merge.
Speaker 1:She also writes about her fear of Brock's reaction to this situation because of another trauma that she experienced when she was a student at the University of California, santa Barbara, when a shooter killed multiple people and left a manifesto blaming his actions on the rejection of women around him. He had written I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. Okay, and when I read that part, I was like, are you kidding me? Chanel was at UCSB when this happened too. I remember that because that had happened. I think I had just graduated college and I don't live as UC Santa Barbara, like I go to Santa Barbara. I know that town that is not very far away from LA and it was just this chilling. And then, when that was why he was killing women just for the crime of being a woman, like the audacity that no woman would give him like it, just it was horrifying. It felt like we were a crime just for existing as women, just because we have the audacity to not be into someone.
Speaker 2:And you know, what makes me so upset about that, on top of just the fact that it happened, is how many people, how many men out there, share that belief. Because I operate in a very I'm very particular about who I let into my world, right, like if you have kind of at that point where I'm just like let's welcome all you know perspectives. If the perspective is immoral, the perspective is not welcome, right, yeah. But so you know, sometimes I feel like I only witness these types of mindsets through what I read in the media or through books that I read, right, and so you just forget, like how many people, how many men especially out there, think this way or how many women buy into it because they've been brainwashed to believe that it's the truth and it's just. It's really sad and scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, it is. It's really sad and scary. Yeah, it is, it is. And again, this is just another toll that Chanel takes on because, on top of the already traumatic things that have happened to her in just relation to the sexual assault, she now fears Brock's reaction in a way that, like I wouldn't have done had I not been a student at a school where a college shooting had happened, because of you know this person's reasoning. And she takes on the responsibility of Brock's actions again, fearing that at any point he might snap. She writes that she would feel responsible if he did, and even though she knows it's out of her control, and she writes I wanted accountability and punishment, but I also hoped he was getting better.
Speaker 1:I didn't fight to end him. I fought to convert him to my side. I wanted him to understand, to acknowledge the harm his actions had caused and reformed himself If he truly believed his. And that's exactly what the media was spinning at this point. Do you remember Like it was so interesting to?
Speaker 1:Because, again, I was old enough when this happened to pay attention to it in a way that maybe I wouldn't have done if I was a teenager? I knew enough to pay attention to it in a way that maybe I wouldn't have done if I was a teenager. I knew enough to pay attention to it and the media was just like saying that this boy had had so much potential and all of that was being ruined because of one little mistake that he made when he was drunk. And it's like but you know who doesn't make mistakes when they're drunk all the time? A lot of fucking people.
Speaker 1:I was talking to my husband about this because I was like, okay, babe, you were in a fraternity at USC. Were there guys like this that you knew in the frat who, like you guys knew All right, you know Joe blows over there Like he's the raper guy. And my husband was like, absolutely not, we wouldn't fuck around with those guys, those guys would not be invited into our circle. We knew better, you still know better. When you're drunk, you still know better.
Speaker 2:And if you don't one get out or two, where are the people around you to be like, hey, let's, let's move on, like let's get out of this situation. You know, before we do something that we really shouldn't do? And yeah, to your point, it's just like you would hope that that's the standard, right, like what your husband shared, you would hope that's the standard. And but like, clearly it's not. And I remember feeling that same, just like rage within me seeing how this was being covered, like, oh, his life is ruined, like you know who else is. You know, I'm not going to say she's ruined because she's not, but in that moment, before we really saw the evolution of the story and where she is now, like you felt like her life was ruined and nobody cared about that.
Speaker 1:We cared more about this swimmer, I would say her life was broken and I think she would acknowledge it, which is why she did the Kintsugi cover. And she tells us I mean she is broken. She tells us I was fucking broken by this and all you guys cared about was that this guy might lose his swimming scholarship and he was what supposed to be an Olympian. We shouldn't be hoisting those people up in our society. We should have said shame on you. You should have known better. Sorry, face the consequences of your actions, you little brat. You know what I mean. Yeah, there's not even a word for this douche, which is pretty close. We'll go with that one, okay. So at the end of the summer she moves in with Lucas in Philadelphia and as the date of hearing grows closer, her anxiety grows. She writes that she becomes volatile and she doesn't recognize herself. And she starts therapy. She writes it may seem strange that I had postponed it for so long, considering my dad's a therapist, but I was still in complete denial about the magnitude of the role this case would play in my life. Only when it was staring me in the face did I succumb to addressing it. And she writes about the lightness that she experiences when she tells the story to her therapist. She also writes that her therapist helps her realize that she hadn't heard any of these extremely negative things that are written online about her in real life. Instead, in real life, this news is met with sadness or a hug. You know, compassion. She writes I began to distinguish real life experiences from online ones. I repeated mantras in my head when I washed dishes before I slept. I did nothing wrong. I am strong, I have a voice. I told the truth. The hearing keeps getting pushed, like I said, which again every time that I read it got pushed. My stomach turned, once even the night before. And she's in Philadelphia and has to fly back to Palo Alto Like this is not the toying with her life, you know what I mean and her feelings Hated it. So she just decides to go back to Palo Alto so that she can just be there and maybe feel less of this emotional manipulation that's happening. And finally, it's time for the hearing. But she has to finally also expose herself and come face to face with Brock.
Speaker 1:At the hearing, she's buoyed by her DA and her advocate. There's a woman that's been assigned to her to kind of be her sexual assault victim advocate this entire time and I loved that. I thought that was very cool. I didn't know that that existed. But those people are doing beautiful, amazing work. And she even writes about the kind court reporter who kind of like winks at her and is, like you can do this, I love that. Just women being there for each other, you know.
Speaker 1:But she writes that after going through her story and she has to go through every small excruciating detail. It's exhausting. And then the defense goes after her. The comment section goes after her Once again, placing the responsibility of the swimmer's actions, his choices, on her. But she thinks about the two Swedish men who had also shown up to testify at the hearing. She writes the Swed, like the Swedes, are these just like they're not unspoken heroes, because she definitely gives them like their due credit and appreciates them. I don't know what their names are. I don't think she ever said it. I don't think she does either.
Speaker 2:No, but I remember feeling the same way, Like thank goodness for somebody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are good people in the world.
Speaker 2:I wonder what we would do. Thankfully, I've never been in a situation where I've had to intervene for something like this, but I would hope I would just jump in and do what I could, just like these people did, and just are just so thankful that somebody was there. In this case, you know more than one person who could step in and be there for her in a way that you know obviously was impactful in the long term. So, yes, thank goodness for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you know, the thing that I also kept thinking about the entire time was what if there had been no Swedes? Who knows how these events would have escalated. Events would have escalated. And that's the other thing, too is I think people were trying to downplay the criminality and the act. Disgustingness of the act, because it seemed like it wasn't quote unquote that big of a deal. But it's like we don't know what his intent was. This could have been step A and we don't know what Z looks like. You know, like intent matters, thank God. Federally, rape is defined as penetration by any object, no matter how slight, because anything against somebody else's body without consent should be a criminal offense.
Speaker 1:You know, I completely agree. So now it's time for the trial. She writes we were fighting for closure, for justice. It was not for me but at the expense of me that we'd be able to get there. She finds reasons to stand in the sun, to live her life. She plans a trip to Indonesia with Lucas. She discovers standup comedy. She writes about being nervous to do her set. She says my nerves shot up in flames but for the first time in nine months, anxiety did not cause me to shrivel up and shut down. It fueled me to begin.
Speaker 1:And she goes into more detail about all of these things. And then the trial gets pushed again, and it's not only wrecking havoc on her and her mental, emotional health, but her sister's, because her sister has to testify every time too, and her sister is in college at this point. And every time that the date gets pushed, first Tiffany has to kind of talk to her professors beforehand, and then the date gets pushed and then she has like talk to her investors again, and it's, it's just not a good situation. And then, when the trial actually happens and she finally gets to testify, she writes about all the empty seats on her side of the courtroom, compared to the swimmers who had a lot of family and support there, because so many of Chanel supporters also had to testify so they couldn't be in the courtroom with her and she's warned not to get angry. She writes I learned that if you're angry, you're defensive.
Speaker 1:If you're flat, you're apathetic. Too upbeat, you're a suspect. If you weep, you're hysterical. Being too emotional made you unreliable, but being non-emotional made you unaffected. How should I balance it all? As a woman, I feel like we just have to in so many ways, fit into this very small box to be taken seriously or respected, instead of just accepted for who we are and all the beautiful, interesting ways that our personality can be.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I think a lot about that just in terms of my work. Like if I'm too aggressive or too like forward in the way I present ideas, I'm seen as aggressive, whereas my male counterparts might. Just that's the way they are, because they're a man that's confident. You're a bitchy, they're confident, exactly. So I think, yeah, that I remember reading that too and just thinking like so relatable outside of the story that we're in, like so many people can relate to that. And yeah, I just I felt the same way when I read that line too.
Speaker 1:At the trial she does break down. Her testimony is a long, drawn out, multi-day process, because there's first you know her saying her testimony, and then there's a cross-examination where the defense tries to destroy her character and shift accountability. And then there's redirect by the DA, which is when Chanel's lawyer gets to talk to her again and kind of try to fix anything that the defense is trying to muck up. And during the first day the defense keeps interrupting her testimony with moves to strike what she's saying from the record. And so she writes I let go. Guttural sounds crawled out of my throat, long and loud. I didn't collect myself, didn't say I'm okay, just decided you will wait as long as it takes. And I loved this for her. I you know. When I read the part where she's like I was told to not get too emotional, I was like no, they should have to look at it what that boy has done to you. They should have to look at it, you shouldn't have to hide that?
Speaker 2:No, and it kind of goes back to what she was saying before, like how am I supposed to balance it? Well, guess what? I'm not. I'm going to do it the way I want to, the way that feels right to me. Because, to your point, yes, they need to hear it, they need to witness it, they need to experience it, because it has to be seen, it has to be shown and it has to be experienced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she takes a break after this breakdown and then she has to see photos of herself that were taken at the hospital from the night she was assaulted. She had not been prepared, she had not seen these photos. She worries about her mom seeing them. Her anger drains, her tears dry up and she's found a sad resignation. She writes I thought I could protect my family, tried to hide the damage, but I had failed. This is all. I am to everyone here and nothing more. It did not matter what questions followed. I did not care about the outcome, about impressing a jury. All I could think of was home. I was ready to go home. She has had to be so strong for so long. To quote hold it together, be a good victim. She's only human. It's just. There's only so much that she has left in her.
Speaker 2:And I think about that a lot in terms of just like everyday difficulties that we experience. Like the other day I just had a really bad parenting morning and I just felt like the worst mom in the world and I was like how am I going to go about my day? And like this is a completely different level of difficult, not to minimize the everyday things that we go through. But let's be honest, I don't think we were meant to have to handle this type of trauma, this type of experience, this type of stress, like having to protect yourself against something when you've already been through so much. And so, yeah, I just I don't blame her for just feeling like I feel so out of my ability to even handle this anymore.
Speaker 1:I'm done, I'm tapped out. Yeah, finally she finishes her testimony, but she knows that it's Tiffany's turn and she can't protect her from the defense's fucking playbook. Later there's a blackout expert to testify for. The defense paid $10,000 to do so. Chanel writes she claimed I could have been ready, willing and able to consent, even if I could not remember it. And then this was a woman, which made me really angry again. Also, like what the fuck is a blackout expert? How do you even become that what? You just get blackout a lot and you like remember it. I am over all of these experts that happen in these trials. They're just paid liars.
Speaker 2:As far as I'm concerned, totally, it's just a different type of opinion to get on the stand when you feel like you've run out of things to say or run out of ways to you know, defend, manipulate, exactly. So let's just throw in some other type of expert that makes it sound like you know they know what they're talking about, because it's very niche and very specific to what we're dealing with here, blacking out Like what. I am with you. What is that? It's gross. How do you study that? Thanks, I hate it.
Speaker 1:How do you study that exactly? But Chanel refuses to break. She is bending y'all but she refuses to break. Brock testifies and his story is that Chanel wanted it and kept verbally telling him she was okay with it and that he ran away because he was scared of the two Swedes. But you know he didn't care about leaving a drunk Chanel with them. He said versus, she said Chanel writes. His reconstruction was just poor writing, almost comical. It was insulting to be on the other end of this dim-witted dialogue. I love it and I will say like she still treats him honestly with way more respect than I could have ever mustered. And she does have a point where she's like I wrote the memoir, I had to go through and edit out all of the cattiness and like you know whatever, and I was like girl, you can leave. I want to read that. Let me read the full version.
Speaker 2:Give it to me. I'll pay for that. Yeah, cause he deserves it.
Speaker 1:I would love that, but he's literally putting words into her mouth because he can. Character witnesses are brought in for him. No one from Stanford testified, chanel, writes, which meant only people from Brock's past life were flying in to speak on his present self. And Chanel is not given the same courtesy. She writes there was nothing to suggest that I was the person extracted from a full life, surrounded by people who cared about me. She continues 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.
Speaker 1: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, I think. Sometimes, as a society, we want things to be simple. We want things to be black and white. In a world where things aren't, we want bad guys to wear a shirt that says I'm a bad guy and I will hurt you. But that's not real life and you're just like trying to create 2D characters out of three-dimensional people, like it's just you can't do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know how incredible would that be if we could do that, and it's.
Speaker 2:I think what makes that scary is that you could trust a person Like it could be a situation where you met them that night, like this that we're dealing with. Or it could be somebody you know for weeks or years or however long, and it just people can surprise you to your point of, like, creating 2D out of 3D. You just can't do that and it's hard when they surprise you and they end up being completely different than what you expected, because I bet you know, even though she doesn't remember, there's a lot that she doesn't remember from that night. You don't go into a party expecting that you're going to meet somebody who's going to have ill intent towards you, like especially when you're young and you're just at a campus or off campus, but at a party associated with a campus, like it's just not something you expect and to be able to have that idea of bad person versus good person if only think about how much harm we could save in the world. But it's just, it's not the reality and it's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think there's always like a weird justification that happens. There are people in the media right now that I feel you and I would be like that's clearly a bad person. But you know what, there are a lot of people who don't think that way, so that's also why we have to be like huh. To Chanel's story's point. There were people who felt like the swimmer's actions did not justify the consequences he received, because it wasn't that big of a deal, and it's like how do we change that person's mind? How do you say no, this is a really big deal. He took advantage of someone who didn't have the ability to speak for herself In any big or small way. That's wrong. How do you teach that person that that's?
Speaker 2:wrong. Yeah, and let's just call a spade a spade. His wealth or his I guess he wasn't like the wealthiest person in the world, but he had status, swimmer at Stanford and his skin color, yeah, like, oh, he didn't really mean any harm, he just made a mistake. Would we have said the same thing about somebody else from a lower socioeconomic background or a different cultural group or race? No, we wouldn't be having that same conversation. So it's, yeah, it's a whole host of things that is a problem.
Speaker 1:Exactly, spot on. Okay. So back to Chanel. At this point, testimonies are over. She writes by the end of the two weeks my mind had withdrawn, my body withered. So she's asked to sit in on a closing statement so the jury can see how much she cares. So she does. Then she's told to go home and wait, but as soon as the verdict is released she'd only have 15 minutes to get down to the courthouse. So again she's on a tight leash.
Speaker 1:Fortunately, the jury doesn't deliberate very long and Brock is found guilty of three felonies Assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, an intoxicated woman sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. Chanel writes about the hate-filled looks she receives from Brock's side. She writes I stare back through my own red eyes unyieldingly. You are looking at the wrong person, girl. Even just like repeating these to you right now, like I'm getting goosebumps and like, again, I'm so grateful for this woman's strength, ugh. Later Chanel writes that the swimmer's mom wrote why him, why him? And no one has ever asked why, chanel. He is allowed to go free until sentencing because there's also the appeal Guess what?
Speaker 1:It's not over, but Chanel writes about the outpour of support from people all over the country who send her words of gratitude. She writes she was, quote surrounded by survivors. I was part of a we. Still it's taken its toll and it's not over. Chanel writes during trial I had shut down to make it through. Now came the release. My body was helpless against the anguish passing through in waves. Each time it would rise in me like the need to vomit, and I'd lock myself in and hyperventilate, my eyes stinging. Why are you sad? I kept thinking you won.
Speaker 1:She's asked to write a victim impact statement and she reads it out loud at the sentencing. It's a letter directed to the swimmer, but the way that the room is set up, she ends up delivering it to his back. She includes it at the end of her memoir and it actually ended up being posted online via BuzzFeed. In response to Brock's extremely lenient sentencing, the DA was asking for three years, happy with one. And Brock gets six months, which actually means three months, because apparently every day of good behavior was a day off your sentence. Oh, and the day he served for the night, the night he spent in jail after he was initially caught. He gets that off of his sentence. That pissed me off.
Speaker 1:To justify his sentence. The judge actually says, basically well, because he was drunk and did it, that's different than had he done it sober. Quote there's less moral culpability attached to the defendant who is legally intoxicated. Oh OK. So if?
Speaker 2:you're drunk driving and you kill someone. Is there less moral culpability? I remember the sentencing itself and just thinking, like what world are you living in? Like I, this is this can't be reality. Like yes, so everything that I've ever done when I have been a little bit too far into a few glasses of wine, just like, doesn't matter. No, you are still fully responsible for the decisions that you make and any argument to the contrary is just null and void. Like that's it, that's not, that's not a thing. That shouldn't even be a conversation.
Speaker 1:Completely agree, because for every one person that does this, I will show you nine who don't, because they still know right from wrong. You still know right from wrong, all right. Also because of the collateral damage done to his reputation by the media circus. Apparently the judge felt really bad about that. Also, the judge thought that the swimmer was really remorseful, which he delivered this super monotone PR apology and of course, this is Chanel's account of it, but like I believe it and the judge is also basically like I believe, the swimmer's account of everything. He thought he wasn't necessarily doing anything wrong, even though the jury disagreed. It's like bitch. The jury found him guilty. That's not on you anymore. This was yeah, I was very upset at that. This is the part where I wanted to throw the book across the room. Also, the character witnesses for the Swimmer really impressed the judge, like this judge. Just clearly. He just clearly saw a young himself is what I think was in this kid.
Speaker 2:Oh, totally, yeah, that is such a good point. Yeah, I never thought about it like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Totally. Yeah, that is such a good point. Yeah, I never thought about it like that. Yeah, chanel writes.
Speaker 1:At the very start of the sentencing the judge said that the question he had to ask himself was is incarceration in a state prison the right answer for the poisoning of Chanel's life? I thought it had been very strange the way he'd phrased it. To him, my lost job, my damaged hometown, my small savings account, my stolen pleasures had all amounted to 90 days in county jail. The judge had given Brock something that would never be extended to me empathy. My pain was never more valuable than his potential. We're just going to let that sit there for a second.
Speaker 1:So she does write about like she did. She quit her job because she needed to go to Rhode Island to get out of Palo Alto. I talked a little bit about just the betrayal of this happening in her neighborhood and her hometown doesn't feel safe to her anymore. She lost so much because of this dickhead's actions and he gets 90 days in a county jail, but really less than that. Chanel writes that she tries to comfort herself by saying quote you get to be a normal person again, but this was not how freedom should feel. Because she feels really shitty, and reasonably so. She gets a journal and she writes you are worth more than three months, over and over again, until she can sleep. My heart just broke for her. I feel really emotional right now because, like, she is worth so much more than that and she had to put herself through the ringer and prolong her trauma and still in the end he's hoisted up on this pedestal and given this weird acclaim.
Speaker 2:still, it just felt so unfair, but it didn't surprise me, which sucks, I know, and it's one of those things where we want to feel like we're learning and we're progressing day by day, but then something like this happens and it's just like we're still in this same moment where not poor Chanel, poor Brock, his life is ruined. And I think what it comes down to is you can see how his life is going to be different because you can visualize okay, he's off the Stanford swim team, like he's not going to be an Olympian. You can't see her pain. Her pain is internalized. Her pain is something that she has to live with day in and day out.
Speaker 2:Her pain is much more close to her and people are just so. You know. It's hard for them to empathize and to show that kind of understanding of people when you can't visualize it, and I think that's also part of it. It's not right at all, but I really think that people could see so much more of how his world would change versus just get over it. It's over for her. You can move on right, like you can't move on from losing your opportunity at the Olympics and I'm being very facetious, obviously, yeah, but I honestly think that's so many people's mindset when they're thinking about impact over time on these people. Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1:I hadn't thought about that. So her victim statement is released, like I said, on BuzzFeed. It goes viral and strangers from all over the world wrap their arms around her. Congresswoman Jackie Speier led a one hour reading on the House floor and I did an episode on her memoir Undaunted with my friend Lizzie and I highly recommend that episode and her memoir. That's a great memoir. She was a survivor of the Jonestown massacre.
Speaker 1:Classmate of the swimmer labels him as the face of sexual assault in the United States of America and at the time VP Joe Biden writes her a letter. I see you, he wrote. I see you. Still she struggles with all of this.
Speaker 1:Chanel writes assault, buries the self. We lose sight of how and when we are allowed to occupy space. We are made to doubt our abilities, disparaged when we speak. My statement had blazed erupted, was indomitable, but I was holding a secret fear. Yeah, the judge eventually gets recalled, which I love. See, that gave me hope.
Speaker 1:People disagreed with his sentencing and they did something about it. You know these people are elected by us. Like we can hold them accountable. Two bills are signed into law by then California Governor Jerry Brown that put in place a mandatory prison sentence for those convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated person and expanded California's definition of rape. And then this really weird thing happens, where Emily gets flipped. She is now the defiant and courageous one with all the answers and Chanel is left picking up the pieces, processing everything, still grappling with anxiety and fear. She writes about how she scrutinized every article of clothing before putting it on. What will they think if I wear this, she says.
Speaker 1:She continues therapy, she starts writing, she starts doing yoga, she works to feel comfortable, having sex again. I mean all these things right that she's having to deal with, having to try to heal these wounds. And she writes about how these scars are not healed, they're cut open and the way that survivors have to move through the world irrevocably changed. She writes about becoming paralyzed during a pap smear and these things that you just don't think about if you haven't experienced this, these ways that you don't realize. Survivors are forever affected, she writes. Even if elements of my physical self had diminished, I believe they could be restored. I trusted that when I gave my body love, soft touch, stretching, sunlight, strength and sex, what was lost would be regrown in new form. I love. She also learned to heal by fostering older rescue dogs and then she ends up adopting one of them because she can't quite give them up.
Speaker 1:She writes from grief. Confidence has grown. Remember what I've endured From anger, stemmed purpose. If you're wondering if I've forgiven him, I can only say hate is a heavy thing to carry, takes up too much space inside the self.
Speaker 1:I wrote this book because the world can be harsh and terrible and unforgiving. I wrote because there were times I did not feel like living. I wrote because the court system is slow as a snail and victims are forced to spend so much time fighting. I wrote to expose the brutality of entitlement, gender violence and class privilege in our society. But I would be failing you if I walked away from this book untouched by humanity, without seeing what I saw those thousand handwritten letters, the winking court reporter, all the small miracles that had sustained me. We may spend half of our time wandering around wondering what we're even doing here, why it's worth the effort. But living is an incredible thing, just to have been here, to have felt, if only briefly, the volume and depth of others' empathy. I wrote most of all to tell you I have seen how good the world can be. It's so strong. She does mention other sexual assault victims.
Speaker 1:In her book she writes about the Me Too movement. She mentions the victims of Larry Nassar, anita Hill, christine Ford, other women who came forward to tell their stories, and she writes for years, the crime of sexual assault depended on our silence, the fear of knowing what happened when we spoke. Society gave us 1000 reasons Don't speak if you lack evidence, if it happened too long ago, if you were drunk, if the man is powerful, if you'll face blowback, if it threatens your safety. When silence and shame are gone, there will be nothing to stop us. We will not stand by with our mouths covered, bodies entered. We will speak. We will speak. We will speak. We spoke about Chanel. Today we say her name again Chanel Miller.
Speaker 1:I love that she highlighted these other women. I love that she talked about the Me Too movement. This is a movement. We can support each other. We need to believe each other. We cannot let shame silence us because it's been too long, we're done. It's time. That's what they want. That's what they want. So, becca, how do we prepare and teach our daughters and how do we teach our sons?
Speaker 2:Goodness, I, you know I'm going to start with my son because I feel an immense responsibility as a mom of a son. I've thought about you know, I want him to read this book when the time is right. I want him to read this book when the time is right. I want him to read a firsthand account from a woman who has been through this so he can see, not like why you don't do it, because I'll teach him that, but I want him to hear the impact. And I think, like that's one of the things that is on my heart. When is that right time going to be? I don't know. I'm not quite there yet. He's only eight, so we're not there yet. I there yet he's only eight, so we're not there yet.
Speaker 2:I have some time to think about that. But yeah, I think you know, cause there's only so much I can say as a parent before things. Just okay, mom, like I got it. I know, yes, you know, like we've been there to stop talking to me, you know, and I think it's these types of firsthand accounts and it's not to scare them but just to show them the reality. This is what your actions or not, you know, not just going to say your actions, because he's not going to do that right, but like the actions of people who perpetrate this type of violence, this is what it does and this is like beyond not being right, like you need to understand this firsthand account.
Speaker 2:So I think there's that with my son and then with my daughters. It's teaching them that it's never their fault. It's any shame that they might feel. While I understand where it comes from, it's not yours to bear and, goodness, I hope that they feel like they can come to me if they're ever having any problems, if they ever feel any type of uncertainty about their place in the world and they want to talk about it because we are their first line of defense. And right now I live in this bubble of. My kids are so little that I don't feel like I have to think about it too hard yet. But I know that's wrong. I do have to think about it because age is not a factor, it's just not, sadly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's such a great suggestion having your son read this book when it's time. I feel like if I were to root it down to one word, which I think there are many words, but if I'm like trying to figure out. Okay, what does it come down to? I think it comes down to a disrespect. I don't think that these people respect their victims, respect women. I don't think that these men respect women, and so to me, that's the biggest gift that I can give my son for the rest of the world is to learn to respect women, and I think I did that by choosing his father. The world is to learn to respect women, and I think I did that by choosing his father, and I feel like you've already done such a great job by choosing your children's father, because I know you and I know the type of people that you've surrounded yourself with, and you know my son will learn he's already learning kindness and compassion from my husband and you know, I think that's one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is in choosing their other parent.
Speaker 1:And then, yeah, with my daughter. I love what you said giving her that safe place to come to you and for my daughter to come to me just a place without judgment and acceptance, and I'm not going to be able to fix everything which kills me kills me. I want to be able to fix everything for them, but just I will help you bear whatever burden. But if she wants to be a runner, I'm a teacher. Carry your pepper spray with you. I want your location app on. You do have to protect yourself from this world, because not everybody is raised by great men and great women, and that's just a truth, but that we're doing everything we can to make the world a better, safer place for them. Do I have to have hope?
Speaker 2:that it is yeah, we'll get lost. If we can't, if we don't have that hope, we'll just, we'll just yeah, we'll get lost.
Speaker 1:And, speaking of hope, I just want to share the RAINN Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline. It is 800-656-HOPE 4673. So if you ever need that, have it in your back pocket and I hope you don't, but this is a hotline for any listener out there. Just to know it exists. I mean, that's great that it exists, that there is a resource. And, becca, thank you so much for talking about this really important, powerful book with me today. I loved our discussion. I loved the way that you want to help shape the world. Thank you for suggesting this book. I feel like it really should be required reading at school. How do we make that happen? I don't know. I don't know either.
Speaker 2:That's a tough one. That's a tough one, but I agree with you, it should for sure. So I'll just start with where I can in my home library with my kids, so there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:So thank you, becca, and thank you, chanel, for telling us your story. We feel honored to urge to be able to discuss it today, and I hope that we did her justice, and I hope so too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, alex. Bye Becca, have a great week. Bye Alex. Thank you, you too.
