The 7 Most Defining #MeToo Moments of 2019

It is inaccurate to describe Know My Name as poetry. But it seems wrong, as well, to classify the book in any other way. Chanel Miller’s treatment of her assault and its aftermath—a memoir, but so much more—is guttingly lyrical. The poetry is there even when Miller, who was previously known only as the “Stanford rape victim,” discusses the bureaucratic dimensions of sexual abuse. It is there even when Miller describes the trial at which she testified against her (now-convicted) rapist, and when she describes the room where she was made to wait before making her appearances in court. “The victim closet,” she calls it—a green room, essentially, for an extremely sad stage.

“Victim” and “closet” are not words that belong together. But their collision reveals something mournful and true about how the American justice system treats survivors. The room features, Miller writes, a dirty yellow couch, as well as expired magazines, “a cloudy bag of markers with uncapped, dry heads,” and “dusty stacks of domestic violence brochures.” There’s a poster printed with bland truisms about victims’ rights. The space is so well-meaning and so condescending. Miller learns later that, while she was waiting in the room, a large photograph of her nearly naked body—taken by police and, then, offered as evidence—had been presented to the courtroom full of strangers, family, and friends. Had the victim closet been protecting her, or doing something else? As it turns out: Both. — Megan Garber

Unbelievable’s Rape-Kit Scene

“Rape kit” is a terrible term. It’s too casual. It’s too clinical. It’s misleading in its tidiness. Those insufficiencies are brought to life in one of the earliest and most striking scenes of Unbelievable, Netflix’s radically humane portrait of sexual violence and its aftermath. In it, Marie (played by Kaitlyn Dever), a very young woman who has just been raped, undergoes her post-assault forensic exam. The scene is stark. The show’s camera is unsparing. The nurse, who’s kind but brusquely efficient, explains what she is about to do to Marie, and then goes about swabbing and poking and photographing and evidence-collecting. The room is quiet, which makes the sounds of the work being done—the rustle of paper, the ratcheting of a speculum—all the more affecting. Marie, too, remains silent; she merely winces, her body wrapped in a hospital gown, her hands clasped tightly over her chest, her face frozen in a please-let-this-be-over-soon grimace.

The scene is invasive. It is not, however, voyeuristic. And that makes it all the more bracing: This is not the kind of moment that is typically shown in depictions of sexual violence. This is Unbelievable, revealing what happens when a body becomes a crime scene. — M.G.

Mandy Moore’s “When I Wasn’t Watching”