Telling the Truth: Using Narrative Accounts of Sexual Violence to Trouble Feminist and Therapeutic Theory

Abstract

For women who have experienced sexual violence, to tell another person is both a considered and a compulsive decision. Many women never tell, yet, within our therapeutic culture, it is thought imperative that women recount their stories of abuse in order to heal and become socially responsible. Not only does the act of sexual abuse violently fragment identity, but the process of recovery through speech concerns the purposeful transformation of identity from victim to survivor, albeit always associated with the original act of violence. It is the speech act, the storying of the incident, that is transformative. The moment of telling therefore represents a dynamic and socially situated event which can, within the context of therapeutic discourse, powerfully transform the agentic speaker into a victim or a survivor. This article explores this moment of telling stories of sexual violence, focusing on two women's accounts which arose as part of a long-term ethnographic study within a feminist voluntary organisation working with women who have experienced sexual violence. The point of recognition in this interpersonal and socially situated transformation into victimhood is explored, to highlight instances of resistance and to trouble the discourse of psychological harm. In so doing the binary of victim/survivor is contested as a useful categorisation of those who have experienced sexual violence. In concentrating on this specific moment of telling, it is suggested that identity is constructed continually and so, although this article is necessarily focused, extrapolations to the wider field of education can be made.