Chanel Sayings And Quotes

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

Most people say developing is linear, but for survivors it is cyclic. People grow up, victims grow around; we strengthen around the place that hurt, become older and fuller, but the vulnerable core is never gone.

We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.

The French say you get hungry when you’re eating, and I get inspired when I’m working. It’s my engine

But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I, alone, was not enough...It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body.

In rape cases it’s strange to me when people say, Well why didn’t you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn’t ask, Well why didn’t you fight him? Why didn’t you tell him no? He’s already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What would give you reason to think he’d stop if you told him to? And in this case, with my being unconscious, why were there still so many questions?

I always like to say "be the Swede". Show up for the vulnerable, do your part, help each other and face the darkest parts alongside survivors.

Women are raised to work with dexterity, to keep their nimble fingers ready, their minds alert. It is her job to know how to handle the stream of bombs, how to kindly decline giving her number, how to move her hand from the button of her jeans, to turn down a drink. When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, ‘did you say no?’ This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

We live in a time where it has become difficult to distinguish between the President's words and that of a 19 year old assailant. Society gives women the near impossible task of separating harmlessness from danger, the foresight of knowing what some men are capable of. When we call out assault when we hear it, Trump says, "I don't think you understand. Just words. You are overreacting. Overly offended. Hysterical. Rude. Relax." So we dismiss threatening statements and warning signs, apologizing for our paranoia. We go into a party or a meeting, thinking it's just a party or meeting, but when we are taken advantage of and come crawling back damaged they say, "How could you be so naive? You failed to detect danger, let your guard down. What did you think would happen?" Trump made it clear the game is rigged, the rules keep changing. It doesn't matter what you think is assault because, in the end, he decides.

Is an apology valid without change? If he says he’s sorry, but maintains he’s not guilty, doesn’t that resemble manipulation more than reconciliation?

You speak as though politics is its own separate entity,” he says. “As though it isn’t in the air around us, as though every single part of us isn’t political. How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?

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. It’s true that I’ll never stop hoping that he learns. If we don’t learn, what is life for? If I have forgiven him, it’s not because I’m holy. It’s because I need to clear a space inside myself where hard feelings can be put to rest.

What they were really saying is, victims can’t write. Victims aren’t smart, capable, or independent. They need external help to articulate their thoughts, needs, and demands. They are too emotional to compose anything coherent. It cannot be the same drunk girl who was found unconscious, the one who the media said uncontrollably sobbed throughout testimony. On a deep level, they wanted to take away my writing, which I would not give up so easily.

Victims are often accused of seeking revenge, but revenge is a tiny engine. I know better than to think my peace arrives when the gavel hits, when the handcuffs click shut. He may sit in a cell, but he will never know what it’s like to be unhomed from his own body. We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.

Imagine you’re walking down the street eating a sandwich and someone says, Damn, that looks like a delicious sandwich, can I have a bite? You’d think, why would I ever let you eat this sandwich? This is my sandwich. So you’d walk on and continue eating, and they’d say, What? You’re not going to say anything? No need to get mad, I was just trying to compliment your sandwich. Let’s say this happened three times a day, strangers stopping you on the street, letting you know how good your food looks, asking if they can have some of it. What if people started yelling out of their cars about how much they wanted your sandwich. Let me have some! they’d exclaim, driving by with a honk. Were you supposed to say, I’m sorry, no thank you, every time? Would you feel obligated to explain over and over again that you don’t wish to share because it’s your lunch and you don’t know them? That you don’t owe them any of it? That it’s a little unreasonable that they’re asking in the first place? All you would want is to walk down the street eating your sandwich in peace. Maybe I am making this worse by comparing a woman’s body to a sandwich, but do you see what I mean?

Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.

I was thankful to have Lucas. But it bothered me that having a boyfriend and being assaulted should be related, as if I alone was not enough. At the hospital, it had never occurred to me that it was important I was dating someone. I had only been thinking of me in my body. It should have been enough to say, "I did not want a stranger touching my body." It felt strange to say, "I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body." What if you were assaulted and you didn't already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected?

Coco Chanel is said to have said that a girl should be two things: who and what she is. I say a girl should do two things: what and who she wants.

If ever I was distraught or heartbroken, my mom would always say, Go read history. Her solution for everything... It'd take me a long time to realize history is happening now, and we are a part of it. History is where you will find people who have been through what you’re experiencing. Not only been there but survived it. Not only survived it but changed it. Whose struggles informed them. History shows you what people have endured before you... History shows that if you were in the minority, if no one believed you, it didn't mean you were wrong. Rather, it meant society was slow to catch up to you. And if those in the minority did not buckle, did not give up their truths, the world would shift below their feet.

Some called it a witch hunt, said she’s after him. I ask, starting when. Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she’d say, well, I went to work. She didn’t pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That’s it. He upended that life, and we tried to keep going, but couldn’t. Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.

Life happens whether you’re worrying about it or not, and it seems presumptuous to think we have much of a say in how things play out.

If ever I was distraught or heartbroken, my mom would always say, Go read history. Her solution for everything. For so long I believed history was a thick book you carried around in your backpack, not something you could create. It was one hour in an air-conditioned portable classroom after lunch, watching Civil War reenactments.... It'd take me a long time to realize history is happening now, and we are a part of it. ...History shows you what people have endured before you...History shows that if you were in the minority, if no one believed you, it didn't mean you were wrong. Rather, it meant society was slow to catch up to you. And if those in the minority did not buckle, did not give up their truths, the world would shift below their feet.

An astrologer told Coco Chanel that five was her lucky number. So she named her first perfume Chanel No. 5 and launched it on the fifth day of May (the fifth month). The rest, as they say, is history.

Whenever I hear a survivor say they wish they'd had the courage to come forward, I instinctively shake my head. It was never about your courage. Fear of retaliation is real. Security is not free. It bothered me that coming forward should feel like heading toward a guillotine. I don't think most survivors want to live in hiding. We do because silence means safety. Openness means retaliation. Which means it's not the telling of the stories that we fear, it's what people will do when we tell our stories.

Her Knee will have to be replaced, he says. This should come as bad news. But to Chanel, it feels irrelevant. It is like opening a letter after a tornado has flattened her home and reading that she needs a new roof.

There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort...You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you're better, when what you say can make us feel good, when you have something more uplifting, affirming. ...I've found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living...I write because the most healing words I have been given are It's okay not to be okay...

Is an apology valid without change? If he says he's sorry but maintains he's not guilty, doesn't that resemble manipulation more than reconciliation?

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given.

When Hillary Clinton’s book What Happened came out, I learned she’d quoted my final paragraph: On nights when you feel alone, I am with you . . . Then she wrote: Early on the morning of November 9, when it came time to decide on what I’d say in my concession speech, I remembered those words. Inspired by them, I wrote these: “To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.” Wherever she is, I hope Emily Doe knows how much her words and her strength meant to so many. At a moment of monumental loss, she had consulted the statement for hope. She had returned to my darkest place to light the way forward. 13.

But I had yet to understand the system. If you pay enough money, if you say the right things, if you take enough time to weaken and dilute the truth, the sun could slowly begin to look like an egg. Not only was this possible, it happens all the time.

The way I saw it, my side was going to convince the jury that the big yellow thing in the sky is the sun. His side had to convince the jury that it’s an egg yolk. Even the most eminent attorney would not be able to change the fact that it is a massive blazing star, not a ludicrous floating egg. But I had yet to understand the system. If you pay enough money, if you say the right things, if you take enough time to weaken and dilute the truth, the sun could slowly begin to look like an egg. Not only was this possible, it happens all the time.

There was never any question of marriage if that is what you think. Men do not understand me. They say, ‘you needn’t worry anymore. You don’t have to do anything because I will take care of you.’ But what they really mean is you don’t have to do anything except be there for me.

He may sit in a cell, but he will never know what it’s like to be unhomed from his own body. We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.

These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. He spoke of the verdicts as if they were a disease that had befallen them. Verdict of what? Guilt. Guilt for what? Assault. Assault committed by whom? Brock. Your son has broken and shattered your family. But he could never say that.

Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she’d say, well, I went to work. She didn’t pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That’s it.

The truth is always so very complicated. I'm supposed to say people rarely surprise me, that I've become so good at reading them that I can predict their actions and all that nonsense, but that's not true at all. People are constantly surprising me. The world is not so black-and-white... there is a great deal of gray.

These rules were fascinating to me; the body dictating what you must do. I had fallen into the habit of neglecting my body, often forgetting to feed it, and when I was assaulted I refused even to look at it. Now my body was saying, you have to listen to me. You have to respect my needs. We have to work together or you will end up hurt.

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

Women are raised to work with dexterity, to keep their nimble fingers ready, their minds alert. It is her job to know how to handle the stream of bombs, how to kindly decline giving her number, how to move a hand from the button of her jeans, to turn down a drink. When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no?

Oh, shit.” “What?” “Wouldn’t I have a ring? I didn’t even think to buy one!” “Oh, right.” I reach into my pocket and pull a ring box out, setting it onto the console between us. “There you go.” Anna stares down at it. “This is so surreal.” “What’s that? “This just—even as a little girl,” she says breathily. “This is exactly how I dreamed it would happen.” “Are you ever serious?” Her smile straightens and she gapes at me. “You’ve told me I’m supposed to be a married medical student on the way back from Cambodia. I’m wearing actual Chanel and two days ago had my labia waxed by a woman with hands bigger than yours. My fake husband just dropped a ring box onto the console between us and said, ‘There you go.’ And you want me to be serious?

Society gives women the near impossible task of separating harmlessness from danger, the foresight of knowing what some men are capable of. When we call out assault when we hear it, Trump says, I don't think you understand. Just words. You are overreacting, overly offended, hysterical, rude, relax!!! So we dismiss threatening statements and warning signs, apologizing for our paranoia.

When I left the courtroom that June day, after reading my statement, courage had been the furthest thing form my mind. Now I understood that in this life I've been given, I had done something good, created power from pain, provided solace while remaining honest about the hardships victims face. In turn, they showed me who I was. Now it was just a matter of figuring out how to say thank you.

I struggle with how I am supposed to live as a survivor, how to present my story and myself to the world, how much or how little to disclose. There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let's tone it down. You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you're better, when what you say can make us feel good, when you have something more uplifting, affirming. This ugliness was something I never asked for, it was dropped on me, and for a long time I worried it made me ugly too. It made me into a sad, unwelcome story that nobody wanted to hear.

Some men would be offended when I didn’t respond, one man saying, I’m just trying to start your day right. But the compliments didn’t feel like compliments when my body language communicated I didn’t want to be looked at, didn’t want to be spoken to. They didn’t feel like gifts when they were thrown at me or whispered so only I could hear. Every comment translated into, I like what I see and I want it. But I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I thought.

struggle with how I am supposed to live as a survivor, how to present my story and myself to the world, how much or how little to disclose. There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let’s tone it down. You will find society asking you for the happy ending,

It’s going to be fine, Bennett,” she was saying, words delivered in a way I’m sure I was supposed to find comforting, but only resulted in pissing me off. When things went wrong you screamed at someone. You became the loudest and squeakiest wheel; you let everyone know that anything less than perfect was unacceptable. You slammed doors and fired people. You didn’t stand there in your little blue Chanel suit and pearls and tell the cyborg bride and clueless groom that it would be fine.

Euripides is showing us how the place of The Woman is, ultimately, an empty one. Behind the ideal image of Helen there is, literally, nothing. Hence it is the endeavour of each woman to find a way of making sense of this void and of constructing something in its place. If you have a hundred Chanel dresses, you can still say 'I've got nothing to wear': the one dress you don't have is the uniform of what it is to be The Woman, the definitive answer to the question of femininity. And since the place of The Woman is ultimately an empty one, there will always be a dress missing.

At the front desk there is a box of white tokens. You can place one on your mat to say, Do not touch. I like the way it communicates a subtle need, wished I could tape it to my forehead in public. I used to pluck one from the box. Now I do not, and sometimes the instructor will lay a hand on my back, and that gravity, that firm pressure, makes me tear up. It's not crying. It's the tenderness of a palm, my pulse alive beneath a touch, connecting, something bubbles up through me, releases in the form of an eye droplet. Being fully inside my body makes me feel beautiful, powerful, makes me want to be consumed, to share all the small parts of me.

I wanted to climb onto my stand with a large red paintbrush, to paint NO across the back wall of the courtroom in long red strokes, each letter twenty feet tall. I wanted a banner to unfurl from the ceiling releasing crimson balloons. I want everyone’s shirts lifted, Ns and Os painted across hairy stomachs, NONONONONO, doing the wave. I wanted to say, Ask me again. Ask me a million times and that will always be my answer. No is the beginning and end of this story. I may not know how many yards away from the house I peed, or what I’d eaten earlier on that January day. But I will always know this answer. I was finally answering the question he’d never bothered to ask.

Walking down the street was like being tossed bombs. I fiddled with the wires, frantically defusing each one. Each time I was not sure which wire would cause it to detonate, tinkering while sweat ran down my forehead. Women are raised to work with dexterity, to keep their nimble fingers ready, their minds alert. It is her job to know how to handle the stream of bombs, how to kindly decline giving her number, how to move a hand from the button of her jeans, to turn down a drink. When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given.

Each time, I could see myself sleeping on the gurney. Present me did not want to wake her up and tell her what happened. I could see myself lifting up my loosely bandaged hands, blinking and looking around. I wished to approach her and say, good morning, go back to sleep. I'd quietly roll the gurney back into the ambulance, we'd speed in reverse. I'd be asleep again in the bumpy vehicle, delivered by paramedics back onto the ground. Brock's hand would slide out of me, my underwear shimmying back up my legs, the pine needles swimming back into the ground. I'd walk backward into the party, standing alone, my sister returning to find me. Outside the Swedes would bike past to wherever they were going. The world would continue, another Saturday evening.

I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I've found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living. If I were to say I was healed and redeemed, I worry a victim would feel insufficient, as if they have not tried hard enough to cross some nonexistent finish line. I write to stand beside them in their suffering. I write because the most healing words I have been given are It's okay not to be okay. It's okay to fall apart, because that's what happens when you are broken, but I want victims to know they will not be left there, that we will be alongside them as they rebuild.

This was the topic I was given. If something else had happened to me, I would have written about that too. When I get worked up over what happened, I tell myself, you are a pair of eyes. I'm a civilian who's been randomly selected to receive an all-access pass to the court system. Feelings will include invasion, shame, isolation, cruelty. My job is to observe, feel, document, report. What am I learning and seeing that other people can't see? What doorways does my suffering lead to? People sometimes say, I can't imagine. How do I make you imagine? I write to show how victims are treated at this moment in time, to record the temperature of our culture. This is a marker, and I hope that in twenty years this grueling aftermath of victimhood will feel foreign.

The saddest things about these [sexual assault] cases, beyond the crimes themselves, are the degrading things the victim begins to believe about her being. My hope is to undo these beliefs. I say her, but whether you are a man, transgender, gender-nonconforming, however you choose to identify and exist in this world, if your life has been touched by sexual violence, I seek to protect you. And to the ones who lifted me, day by day, out of darkness, I hope to say thank you. … When I’m afraid, all I have to do is think of the two of them [Peter Jonsson and Carl Arndt]. I think of how I want to return the favor; to pull the heaviness off you, to be the one yelling it is not okay, pinning your demons down in the dirt, so you suddenly find yourself free, given the chance to begin your journey, growing on your own, uncovering your voice, finding your way back. I want to stay and fight, while you go.

I began avoiding certain streets. If I was spoken to going one way, I’d come back a different way, and found myself winding around many blocks. I trained myself to tuck my head down, avoiding eye contact, feigning invisibility. Instead of strolling looking up at the trees, I walked with unwavering conviction, or stared down at my feet. Once a man started walking next to me and said, Can I walk with you? I began walking faster. Let me walk with you. As his feet kept pace with mine, I just shook my head, my hands gripping the handles of my backpack, waiting for him to fall back. Some men would be offended when I didn’t respond, one man saying, I’m just trying to start your day right. But the compliments didn’t feel like compliments when my body language communicated I didn’t want to be looked at, didn’t want to be spoken to. They didn’t feel like gifts when they were thrown at me or whispered so only I could hear. Every comment translated into, I like what I see and I want it. But I don’t want it, I don’t want it, I thought.

When a victim does go for help, she is seen as attacking the assailant. These are separate; seeking aid is her primary motive, his fallout is a secondary effect. But we are taught, if you speak, something bad happens to him. You will be blamed for every job he doesn’t get, every game he doesn’t play. His family, friends, community, team, will unleash hell on you, are you sure you want that? We force her to think hard about what this will mean for his life, even though he never considered what his actions would do to her. Inherently the victim is outnumbered. She is the sole object of his sexual aggression, expected to single-handedly undo all of their staunch beliefs, backed by years of amiable stories. They’ll say, We’ve never seen him behave that way, so you must be lying. This sentiment was echoed in Brock’s sister’s statement: The evidence presented during his trial and the conclusions that were made about his character were only from one night of his life, from strangers that didn’t know him: a fraction of a fraction of his existence. Victims are not fractions; we are whole.

Good luck. For most of my generation, it would just go to student debt and cocktails. If anything came to me (an impossibility), I would dump it into a poorly managed career in edgy luxury items. You can’t make opera money on perfume that smells like cunts and gasoline. At any rate, I didn’t usually make an appearance beyond the gala. Or, I hadn’t until recently. But Joseph Eisner had promised me a fortune, and now he wouldn’t take my calls. He did, however, like his chamber music. It had been an acquired taste for me. In my distant undergraduate past, when circumstance sat me in front of an ensemble, I spent the first five minutes of each concert deciding which musician I would fuck if I had the chance, and the rest shifting minutely in my seat. I still couldn’t stand Chanel. And while I had learned to appreciate—indeed, enjoy—chamber ensembles, orchestras, and on occasion even the opera, I retained my former habit as a dirty amusement to add some private savor to the proceedings. Tonight, it was the violist, weaving and bobbing his way through Dvořák’s Terzetto in C Major like a sinuous dancer. I prefer the romantics—fewer hair-raising harmonies than modern fare, and certainly more engaging than funereal baroque. The intriguing arrangement of the terzetto kept me engaged, in that slightly detached and floating manner engendered by instrumental performance. Moreover, the woman to my left, one row ahead, was wearing Salome by Papillon. The simple fact of anyone wearing such a scent in public pleased me. So few people dared wear anything at all these days, and when they did, it was inevitably staid: an inoffensive classic or antiseptic citrus-and-powder. But this perfume was one I might have worn myself. Jasmine, yes, but more indolic than your average floral. People sometimes say it smells like dirty panties. As the trio wrapped up for intermission, I took a steadying breath of musk and straightened my lapels. The music was only a means to an end, after all.

I am not super-attached to my career,' Audrey Tautou says in that sultry, Gallic voice of hers, a glint of recklessness in her big brown eyes. 'I have several plan Bs: I want to become a sailor; I like to draw; I would love to learn many things, but I don’t have time…' She trails off, leaving an uncertain silence hanging over the Kensington hotel room where we’ve met to discuss her latest film, a delightful comic confection called Beautiful Lies. 'That is the problem, you know,' she continues, more carefully. 'That is the reason why I will quit acting very soon.' She lets out a strange little laugh, a creaky exhalation, as if her own admission has taken her by surprise... 'I didn’t want to have this power,' she says, with a shrug. 'I would rather have freedom; and to find that you have to stop being in big, exposed movies. I don’t surf on the big waves. When I see them coming, I take my board and go straight back to the beach.'... 'I am always surprised to be chosen by a director for a role because I never understand why they like me,' she says. Surely, I suggest, that is false modesty, coming from one of Europe’s most bankable stars. 'Oh no, really, I am serious,' she says, leaning forward and planting her feet back on the carpet. 'I am always surprised to be cast.' Does her track record – in Jeunet’s hits; or in Stephen Frears’s acclaimed Dirty Pretty Things, or as a compellingly self-possessed Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine’s 2009 biopic – not give her at least a little confidence? 'No,' she says with a scowl, 'pas du tout.' 'A few months ago, I watched one of my old movies and I thought to myself, 'Oh, Jesus!’ Thank God that at the point I made that film I didn’t realise the extent to which I was terrible. Oh, mon dieu! Mon dieu!' But surely, I say, she can take from that the reassurance that she has only improved as an actress. 'Or,' she says, jabbing a finger in the air, 'I say to myself, does it simply mean that if in another 10 years I rewatch the films I am making today I will say, 'Oh mon dieu, how terrible I was then.’ She laughs that odd, breathy laugh again and then looks me dead in the eye. 'You have to be very careful in this life.

I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living. If I were to say I was healed and redeemed, I worry a victim would feel insufficient, as if they have not tried hard enough to cross some nonexistent finish line. I write to stand beside them in their suffering.

We called it a night, heading back to my friend's apartment, craving buttered toast and water. As we walked we exchanged stories of ludicrous encounters with guys, the things they would say and do. 'One time this guy at a coffee shop,' 'one time my friend's brother,' 'one time my philosophy professor,' 'one time...' 'Where are you ladies going?' A black Mustang was rumbling at the stoplight with three heavyset guys inside, snug in their seats. 'Do you want to come to the club?' The club! I felt dehydrated, vodka and tiny pineapples streaming through me, my mind filled with stories of 'one times', and suddenly I was delusional over how much I was expected to tolerate. The street was mostly empty, we were blocks away from the bars; nothing but houses with black windows and dormant Greyhound buses. I walked into the middle of the empty street, clenched my fists, threw back my head, and started screaming.

It felt strange to say, I have a boyfriend, which is why I did not want Brock touching my body. What if you’re assaulted and you didn’t already belong to a male? Was having a boyfriend the only way to have your autonomy respected?

In fact we were told to keep well out of the way. And I told you—I was outside taking pictures when they arrived, then I sneaked up with the rest of the press photographers and made myself inconspicuous at the very back of the room.” Now the inspector looked interested. “So let me ask you this—did you happen to see anyone creeping around during the show? Going up to another guest? Handing her something?” Arnie frowned. “I can’t say that I did. Apart from Georgie, and you already knew that.” “Georgie?” “Lady Georgiana here. I saw her come out at one stage and go up to the lady and then come back to ask for help in carrying her to this room.” “And what did this Georgie do when she got to the woman?” Arnie shrugged. “I can’t say I noticed too much. There was a spectacular dress on the runway. All gold. I wanted to get a good picture of it. But I did see she was carrying a program, I believe.” “You see,” I said to the inspector. “I took her a program. As simple as that.” The curtains parted and Chanel came in. She looked flustered, not her usually poised self. “How much longer is this to continue, Chief Inspector?” she asked. “My clients are becoming increasingly angry. I can’t afford to offend these women. They are my bread and butter.” “I understand, madame,” he said. “It seems, from my investigation, that we may be looking for an assassin who came with the party of Germans.” “Germans?” Then the light dawned. “Oh. I see. You are suggesting that this unfortunate woman

I withdraw and shut the closet door with more force than I mean to. I feel that awful, snakelike squeeze around my chest again. I fight against my body, pressurizing my tears. This is going to happen, I tell myself. You’ll hear a song from The Sound of Music, or smell someone’s Chanel perfume on the bus. Someone will say something that isn’t exactly a thing she’d say but your brain will bridge the gap and whisk you back in time. This is going to happen.

body. It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body.

It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body. It

It should have been enough to say, I did not want a stranger touching my body.

The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists. I’ve spent more than a decade studying this, and it turns out to be far less difficult than I expected. The starting point is curiosity: pondering why the default exists in the first place. We’re driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, the opposite of déjà vu. Déjà vu occurs when we encounter something new, but it feels as if we’ve seen it before. Vuja de is the reverse—we face something familiar, but we see it with a fresh perspective that enables us to gain new insights into old problems. Without a vuja de event, Warby Parker wouldn’t have existed. When the founders were sitting in the computer lab on the night they conjured up the company, they had spent a combined sixty years wearing glasses. The product had always been unreasonably expensive. But until that moment, they had taken the status quo for granted, never questioning the default price. “The thought had never crossed my mind,” cofounder Dave Gilboa says. “I had always considered them a medical purchase. I naturally assumed that if a doctor was selling it to me, there was some justification for the price.” Having recently waited in line at the Apple Store to buy an iPhone, he found himself comparing the two products. Glasses had been a staple of human life for nearly a thousand years, and they’d hardly changed since his grandfather wore them. For the first time, Dave wondered why glasses had such a hefty price tag. Why did such a fundamentally simple product cost more than a complex smartphone? Anyone could have asked those questions and arrived at the same answer that the Warby Parker squad did. Once they became curious about why the price was so steep, they began doing some research on the eyewear industry. That’s when they learned that it was dominated by Luxottica, a European company that had raked in over $7 billion the previous year. “Understanding that the same company owned LensCrafters and Pearle Vision, Ray-Ban and Oakley, and the licenses for Chanel and Prada prescription frames and sunglasses—all of a sudden, it made sense to me why glasses were so expensive,” Dave says. “Nothing in the cost of goods justified the price.” Taking advantage of its monopoly status, Luxottica was charging twenty times the cost. The default wasn’t inherently legitimate; it was a choice made by a group of people at a given company. And this meant that another group of people could make an alternative choice. “We could do things differently,” Dave suddenly understood. “It was a realization that we could control our own destiny, that we could control our own prices.” When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them. Before women gained the right to vote in America, many “had never before considered their degraded status as anything but natural,” historian Jean Baker observes. As the suffrage movement gained momentum, “a growing number of women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible.

People want certainty and experts provide some appearance of that certainty. The problem for the old communist states was that they were unable to move into the postmodernist world in the same way capitalist states had. They were still building tractors and talking in the tonnage of iron being produced, even while capitalist society had moved on to the information age, an age defined more by consumption than by production. And so, young intellectuals in East Germany are discussed, since they felt they wanted to leave, not because they were unhappy with their state supplied doctor – but because in post-modern times, one is defined by the choices one makes – and where there are no choices, there is no identity either. This runs the whole way down. He constructs a dualism between seduction and surveillance (Foucault’s panopticon). He says that the main force of social regulation now is seduction. At least this is true for those who matter in society. They are seduced by products – their need to buy is generated by their need to assert and create their own identity – and so, we are all constantly seduced by the images of what we could become if only we added this one more item to our store. For those who are at the bottom of society, all that is available to them is the minimum necessary to keep their body and soul together. And so, these people must be watched to ensure they do not try anything that might otherwise damage social harmony. Bauman doesn’t say this here, but since these people are essentially failed consumers, all they really want is access to the same kinds of products the comparatively wealthy enjoy, products that would enable them to also construct their own identities. When there were riots in England in 2011, for example, as others have said – including Bauman, I believe – the precariat did not seek to tear down the system, they broke into department stores and stole shoes and wide-screen televisions. The revolution was not a call for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – but Gucci, Chanel, Calvin Klein.

I do not attribute surviving to willpower or optimism because none of this I had. It would take weeks to recover, depression would take over. But that October, the Swedes had introduced this new voice inside me. I had to teach myself to talk like them. To one day face my attacker and say, What the fuck are you doing.

From grief, confidence has grown, remembering what I’ve endured. From anger, stemmed purpose. To tuck them away would mean to neglect the most valuable tools this experience has given me. 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. It’s true that I’ll never stop hoping that he learns. If we don’t learn, what is life for? If I have forgiven him, it’s not because I’m holy. It’s because I need to clear a space inside myself where hard feelings can be put to rest.

In a film literature class I once took, Mr. Hernandez showed us the scene in Jaws where Martin, the lead, is about to get on the boat, and is saying good-bye to his wife, Ellen. Ellen is worried about losing him, but instead of saying, ‘Please be careful, I love you’, she says ‘I put an extra pair of glasses in your… black socks and… and there’s the stuff… your nose, the zinc oxide, the Blistex is in the kit’. And in response, instead of saying ‘Don’t worry, I’ll come back for you’, he says ‘Don’t use the fireplace in the den, because I haven’t fixed the floo yet’. She nods and says, ‘What am I going to tell the kids?’ He says ‘Tell them I’m going fishing’. Love is implied, love is the black socks she packed, the promise he’ll return to fix the floo, the desire to protect the kids, the detailed attention to each other’s lives, the urgency of comforting one another amidst the gravity of what’s about to happen. The most important messages are felt, never stated explicitly.

In rape cases it's strange to me when people say, Well why did you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn't ask, Well why didn't you fight him? Why didn't you tell him no? He's already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What could give you reason to think he'd stop if you told him no? And in this case, with my being unconscious, why were there still so many questions?

In rape cases it's strange to me when people say, Well why didn't you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn't ask, Well why didn't you fight him? Why didn't you tell him no? He's already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What could give you reason to think he'd stop if you told him no? And in this case, with my being unconscious, why were there still so many questions?

I had written the statement to say stop. Stop treading on me, denying my truths, stop pushing back. I have had enough, I have taken too much, I can’t take anymore. It ends now.

That’s not the answer I need for my question. I felt naive as it dawned on me he was never interested in my responses. He already knew the answers he wanted; he just wanted me to say them.

The saddest things about these cases, beyond the crimes themselves, are the degrading things the victim begins to believe about her being. My hope is to undo these beliefs. I say her, but whether you are a man, transgender, gender-nonconforming, however you choose to identify and exist in this world, if your life has been touched by sexual violence, I seek to protect you. And to the ones who lifted me, day by day, out of darkness, I hope to say thank you.

On July 25, 2018, Brock’s appellate attorney appeared in court before a panel of three judges to present his case that Brock had only intended to have outercourse. The Mercury News reported Justice Franklin Elia responding, I absolutely don’t understand what you are talking about, which summed up everything I could say.

Walking down the street was like being tossed bombs. I fiddled with the wires, frantically defusing each one. Each time I was not sure which wire would cause it to detonate, tinkering while sweat ran down my forehead. Women are raised to work with dexterity, to keep their nimble fingers ready, their minds alert. It is her job to know how to handle the stream of bombs, how to kindly decline giving her number, how to move a hand from the button of her jeans, to turn down a drink. When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

Six months after my assault, two young women found detective Kim and reported they'd encountered Brock at the KA Fraternity the weekend before I was assaulted. The police report noted, he put his hat on her and she took it off, he then started to dance behind her and tried to turn her around to face him. She felt uncomfortable and tried to turn her body away so that he would not be directly behind her. He became really touchy and put his hands on her waist and stomach. He even put his hands on her upper thighs. She felt more exceedingly uncomfortable and got down off of the table. She said the defendant creeped her out, because of his persistence. The same location, the week before. I was grateful the girls had taken the time to find my detective, knew it would have been easier to see the news and say, woah, that was the same guy at the party and carried on. Instead, they contributed their story, then returned quietly to their lives.

This wasn't the plan. Fostering was temporary until we got a big, blusterous dog. After an assault, the world tells you to put your guard up, fight back, be careful. The world does not remind you to unclench your fists, to go on a stroll. That you do not have to spend all your time figuring out how to survive. Nobody says Adopt the Pomeranian. I had planned to surround myself with high gates and sharper teeth, but maybe that was not what I needed. Maybe it was possible to build that security within myself.

Now my body was saying, you have to listen to me. You have to respect my needs. We have to work together or you will end up hurt.

Olga did not see this as a theft as much as an equalization of resources: Mrs. Henderson had aggressively accumulated too much of something while her family had acutely too little. At the Henderson wedding, despite all the time and energy spent discussing, procuring, pleating, and angling these napkins, they would go unnoticed. But at Mabel’s, like a black Chanel suit in a sea of knockoff Hervé Léger bandage dresses, they would stop people in their tracks. “¡Qué elegante!” she could hear her Titi Lola saying. She could picture her Tío Richie holding two of them over his chest and saying, “Hey, how many do you think I’d need to make a guayabera?” There would be countless cousins uttering, simply, “Classy,” as they thumbed the fabric between their fingers. This was the least Olga could do, she felt. Why shouldn’t her family get to know the feeling of imported Belgian flax against their laps? Because

His mistake was that he was going after someone I would go to the ends of the earth for. See, if it had just been me in there, being attacked, I might've backed down, retreating to my places of self-doubt. But her? I had been asked, earlier in the day, what I meant when I'd said I was more of a mother to her than a sister. I wanted to say, I don't know, you tell me. What happens when a person gets in between a mother bear and her cub, have you read about the maulings, faces ripped clean.

Some called it a witch hunt., said she's after him. I ask, starting when. Mark the day. Trace it back. I can almost guarantee that after the assault she tried to live her life. Ask her what she did the next day and she'd say, well, I went to work. She didn't pick up a pitchfork, hire a lawyer. She made her bed, buttoned up her shirt, took shower after shower. She tried to believe she was unchanged, to move on until her legs gave out. Every woman who spoke out did so because she hit a point where she could no longer live another day in the life she tried to build. So she turned, slowly, back around to face it. Society thinks we live to come after him. When in fact, we live to live. That's it. He upended that life, and we tried to keep going, but couldn't. Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don't we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.

Most people say development is linear, but for survivors it is cyclic. People grow up, victims grow around; we strengthen around that place of hurt, become older and fuller, but the vulnerable core is never gone. More

Sloane describes her own father, Peter, simply as Andover, Princeton, Harvard. You’ll know what I mean, she says, when I say that. She doesn’t intend to boast about education or money. Her feelings about where she came from were metabolized long ago. Now they are a Chanel suit in a cold closet.

But when I wrote the ugly and painful parts into a statement, an incredible thing happened. The world did not plug up its ears, it opened itself to me. I do not write to trigger victims. I write to comfort them, and I’ve found that victims identify more with pain than platitudes. When I write about weakness, about how I am barely getting through this, my hope is that they feel better, because it aligns with the truth they are living. If I were to say I was healed and redeemed, I worry a victim would feel insufficient, as if they have not tried hard enough to cross some nonexistent finish line. I write to stand beside them in their suffering. I write because the most healing words I have been given are It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to fall apart, because that’s what happens when you are broken, but I want victims to know they will not be left there, that we will be alongside them as they rebuild.

There have been numerous times I have not brought up my case because I do not want to upset anybody or spoil the mood. Because I want to preserve your comfort. Because I have been told that what I have to say is too dark, too upsetting, too targeting, too triggering, let’s tone it down. You will find society asking you for the happy ending, saying come back when you’re better, when what you say can make us feel good, when you have something more uplifting, affirming. This ugliness was something I never asked for, it was dropped on me, and for a long time I worried it made me ugly too. It made me into a sad, unwelcome story that nobody wanted to hear.

hope they listen, because in an odd way, this is a love letter. My unending attempts to reconcile and reconstruct the world I grew up in. I write in hopes that schools will see how much power they have to help or hurt a victim. Listen to survivors when they come to you. Offer help when they don’t. Do not write polite emails about how you did the best you can, about how actually that was not your job. Just help them. If I accuse Stanford of failing to support victims, I hope they prove me wrong by saying they care about victims and then show everyone how they do.

I walk down these streets, and I look out to the sea, and I want to feel as though I belong here, but I’m a visitor here, a guest in my own country.” Luis takes my hand. “Then you know what it means to be Cuban,” he says. “We always reach for something beyond our grasp.

Coco Chanel used to say, ‘Dress shabbily and they remember the dress. Dress impeccably and they remember the woman.

In my experience, lots of people say lots of stupid things. Fear and panic make them search for scapegoats.

I couldn’t say it because as soon as the thought hit me, I realized that all of the things that had kept me sane were the same things she’d lost. I’d found peace in her life and she’d lost hers with my death.

What was unique about this crime, was that the perpetrator could suggest the victim experienced pleasure and people wouldn’t bat an eye. There’s no such thing as a good stabbing or bad stabbing, consensual murder or nonconsensual murder. In this crime, pain could be disguised and confused as pleasure. I had been to the hospital, a place where people go when their bodies are sick or wounded. But I pulled my sleeves over my bruises, afraid I would not receive the same comforts as an injured person. In rape cases it’s strange to me when people say, Well why didn’t you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn’t ask, Well why didn’t you fight him? Why didn’t you tell him no? He’s already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What would give you reason to think he’d stop if you told him to? And in this case, with my being unconscious, why were there still so many questions?

When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, 'Did you say no?' The question assumes the answer is always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?

When I left the courtroom that June day, after reading my statement, courage had been the furthest thing form my mind. Now I understood that in this life I've been given, I had done something good, created power from pain, provided solace while remaining honest about the hardships victims face. In turn, they showed me who I was. Mow it was just a matter of figuring out how to say thank you.

When I share with people that Stanford was more intent on self-preservation than caring about one person, people say in the gentlest way possible, No shit. But why? Why no shit? Why do we expect so little from universities?

When you say go to the police what do you envision? I was grateful for my team. But the police will move on to other cases while the victim is left in the agonizing, protracted judicial process, where she will be made to question, and then forget, who she is.

Many wrote to me saying they had been in my position before, wanted to show me who survivors become, told me about their careers, their kids, caring partners. This is what your life can look like in ten, twenty years. They gave me one thousand futures to grow into.

In rape cases it's strange to me when people say, Well why didn't you fight him? If you woke up to a robber in your home, saw him taking your stuff, people wouldn't ask, Well why didn't you fight him? Why didn't you tell him no? He's already violating an unspoken rule, why would he suddenly decide to adhere to reason? What would give you reason to think he'd stop if you told him no?