Know My Name: A Memoir

Chapter 2 recounts Miller’s transformation in the aftermath of her sexual assault. Physically, she notices bruises emerging from the attack. These serve as visible representations of the trauma she has endured. Mentally, she finds herself more and more distracted as she attempts to store away any memories or thoughts of the attack. She uses the image of the jar as a symbol of this detachment and dissociation, which cause her to become increasingly overwhelmed: “I was full of these sealed jars, no room to sit or walk or breathe” (32). She takes up riding her bike alone at night to run away from her thoughts and emotions and to distract herself.

Miller learns about the graphic details of her rape from the newspaper. The fact that she only finds clarity about what happened to her in this highly public forum demonstrates how survivors are not centered in the investigation process and the confusion left in the wake of their assaults. She illustrates the overwhelming nature of this process when she relays the first phone conversation she has with Deputy District Attorney Alaleh. Here, Miller uses a lack of punctuation and run-on sentences to capture the deluge of details and emotions that engulf her in this moment. The reader absorbs the information in the way that Miller absorbed the information and is left swamped and exhausted in the process.

This relentless outpouring of information characterizes the days that follow Miller’s assault. She is contacted repeatedly and warned of investigators and reporters who may seek to engage with her and her family. Miller describes this as “being hunted” (35). By comparing this to a hunt, Miller conveys the invasive nature of these contacts that do not center her recovery as a victim but seek to parse the details of the case for public scrutiny. Miller thus depicts the ways in which survivors are silenced and violated beyond the assault itself. She realizes that reporters might have gained access to her transcripts from the rape clinic in the vulnerable hours after her assault. She poses the following rhetorical question: “If words spoken softly at a rape clinic were projected over a megaphone, where was it safe for me to speak?” (36). Miller implies that, for survivors, the answer is nowhere. By posing this question, Miller calls into question the lack of a safe and protected platform for survivors to speak from.

As a result of this silencing, Miller decides to dissociate. She refers to the version of herself that survived a sexual assault as Emily Doe. To cope with the raw reality of her assault, Miller decides that “the body being publicly taken apart did not belong to [her]” (37). This is a choice made for self-preservation and survival. Miller takes time to explore where she learned this coping mechanism by sharing her experiences growing up in the high-pressure environment of Palo Alto. Miller describes how she learned to separate awful circumstances from daily life in high school in response to the prevalence of suicide in the community. Miller forges a direct connection between her experiences as a witness to her community’s struggles with mental health and the detachment she adopts in the wake of her sexual assault. She states, “[W]hatever alarms rose 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” (41). As Miller’s story progresses, she grapples with this coping mechanism and its implications for her mental health.

Through her examination of the public portrayal of her assault, Miller studies the ways in which society enforces double standards for female survivors and male assailants. After reading Turner’s defense of consent, Miller realizes that “He’d force moans in [her] mouth, assign lecherous behavior, to shift the blame onto [her]” (46). She documents the dehumanization she continues to face as a survivor: “[H]e’d seen me as a body, but would attempt to destroy me as a person” (46). She examines not only the ways in which Turner’s defense attempts to villainize her but also the ways in which the public blames women for their own sexual assaults, including the higher standard placed on women in regard to drinking alcohol: “[B]eing drunk and raped seemed to call for condemnation. People were confounded that I had failed to protect myself” (47). Meanwhile, news coverage laments Turner’s lost potential as a gifted swimmer.

Miller calls out the hypocrisy of these double standards that place the burden of safety on women while excusing the violent choices made by men. She proclaims that “[B]oys are people, they have minds, live in a society with laws. Groping others was not a natural reflex, biologically built in. It was a cognitive action they were capable of controlling” (50). In her feminist analysis of society’s unequal treatment of female survivors, Miller exposes how society tolerates and centers men by making “their behavior […] the constant, while [women] [are] the variable expected to change” (50). The effect this treatment has on female survivors is not confronted. This leaves survivors struggling to cope with feelings of low self-worth and aggravated self-blame.

At the chapter’s conclusion, a desperate and distraught Miller reaches out to the hotline number the Stanford representative provided to her in passing in her hospital room. She is not provided any real support and is left alone to navigate the trauma that increasingly threatens to disrupt her daily life. This moment embodies the negligence of Stanford University throughout Miller’s account. She states that the phone call she receives in the moments after the assault is made public “would be the first and last time [she]’d hear from Stanford for almost two years” (34). Miller does not shy away from confronting colleges’ negligence in confronting sexual assault on campuses and providing support centered on survivors.