Speaking out, and beginning to be heard: feminism, survivor narratives and representations of rape in the 1980s

Serisier, Tanya

doi:10.1080/10304312.2018.1404675

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Moreover, in reflecting their life stories participants explicitly underlined that whatever agency or resilience or courage they demonstrated, they felt that they were forced to take those decisions because they did not have other options. Moreover, survivorship also entailed that they still were struggling with depressive thoughts, memories of violence, lack of perspectives for the future, and with raising the children in a way they would have liked to [19, 23].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘We just been forced to do it’: exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

et al. 2019

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Background Armed conflict in Colombia has a history of 50 years that continues to this day. According to the Victims Record of Colombia, from 1985 to 2013 2.683.335 women have been victims of the armed conflict. Women have been described as the main victims of the armed conflict, especially in the Colombian cultural context that in some regions is still considered to be a ‘machista’ and patriarchal one. In contrast, some authors have explicitly stressed Colombian women’s agency instead of positioning them only as victims. Some of them are described as ‘survivors’ of the war, emphasizing their impressive resistance to the outcomes of war and forced displacement. In contrast to the background of these scholarly discussions, our study focused on how displaced women living in Bogotá themselves articulate their experiences of agency and victimization. This paper will therefore explore how women, in reconstructing their life stories, expressed the tussles between victimization and agency. Methods We used qualitative methods conducted within an ethnographic approach. Based on ten years of experience in the neighborhood and one year of fieldwork, we collected the life stories of twenty internally displaced mothers, and ran eight workshops with them. We analyzed the narratives with a specific focus on how women expressed victimization and agency in four important periods in their life that related to the process of displacement: when they left home, when they became pregnant, when they were forced to leave their towns, and when they arrived in Bogotá. Results Participants’ life stories showed how they struggled with agency during their lives. They were victims of abuse and violence during childhood and finally decided to leave their homes. They decided to have their babies despite the fact that they were abandoned by their partners and families, and after doubts about and attempts to have an abortion. Throughout the process of displacement the participants had been engaged in ambiguous relationships with armed groups. Finally they arrived in Bogotá and faced adverse circumstances but were looking for better opportunities for them and their children. Conclusion The analysis of how internally displaced women narrated their life stories showed us that the concepts that dominate scholarly debates about agency, victimization and survivorship do not do justice to the life stories of the participants in our study. These stories show that changes with a major impact were loaded with ambiguity and were characterized by helplessness, lack of control and agency simultaneously. The reconstruction of these life stories goes beyond the stereotype of displaced women as only ‘victims’, but points also to their agency and courageous decisions they made in contexts that were not controlled by them and where support was often lacking. Instead of label them, it is important to understand the complexity of the life experiences of IDW, in o...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They could understand that there are more survivors of this kind of assaults. It contributes to changing the social myths and victim-blaming attitudes about rape [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘We just been forced to do it’: exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

et al. 2019

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“…At the same time, several researchers believe that feminist movements, public debate and changes in legislation on sex crime have all had an impact on news media representation of rape, dating back as early as the 1980s (Ardovini-Brooker & Caringella-Macdonald, 2002, Lós & Chamard 1997, Serisier 2017). These researchers claim that this has resulted in a widening of the concept of rape to include attacks carried out not only by "psychopathic strangers" but also by acquaintances.…”

Section: Media Coverage Of Sex Crime: Rape Myths and Counter-discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Brave women sound the alarm – representations of men and women in the Swedish media coverage of #MeToo

Lindqvist

Ganetz

2020

Journalistica

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In autumn 2017 in Sweden, the #MeToo movement and sexual assault became a focus of broad debate. Swedish media coverage of the movement was centred around the many petitions made by anonymous groups of women to illuminate the extent of the problem of sexual assault, as well as a few cases of accusations against well-known and powerful men in both the culture and media industries. In order to elicit common representations of men and their female accusers, this study applies critical discourse analysis (CDA) to news media coverage and Facebook comments of three of those accused men: TV personality Martin Timell, journalist Fredrik Virtanen and culture personality Jean-Claude Arnault. The results indicate that representations of women as both witnesses and heroines work to reinforce notions of female responsibility as a means to halt sexual assault, while representations of men as sexual predators build on demarcations of illegal and mere misogynistic or “bad” behaviour, which in turn reinforce notions of male victimhood. These representations point to legal discourse as hegemonic, as it seems to limit the discussion and only present individual solutions, such as women bearing witness, to the structural problem of sexual assault. Simultaneously, the results indicate that the #MeToo movement and other feminist discourse have also had an effect on news media representations of sexual assault by broadening the concept beyond the consent/rape dichotomy.

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“…41 Serisier notes that 'the transformative potential of survivor speech is shaped not only by what survivors say, but the circumstances under which they are heard, and the relationship of feminist politics to other discourses'. 42 It is also vital to simultaneously acknowledge that utopianism is limited by circumstances. Its transformative potential is undermined when it is fully worked out, or trapped by an 'apparatus of self containment', and it is arguably this which has resulted in the flawed and incomplete map out of sexual violence drawn by mainstream UK organisations.…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday Moments of Disruption: Navigating Towards Utopia

Ackhurst¹

2019

SAHJ

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Representations of utopia are often streamlined into being an end goal, a concrete vision for a better future. For mainstream sexual violence response organisations, utopia is largely simplified into being a world without sexual abuse, and the path to this utopia is breaking the silence to end the violence. Using utopic theory, this article will unpick this concentration, and suggest a redirection towards the granular parts of utopia. Davina Cooper's concept of everyday utopias will be utilised, alongside the radical work of adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha to highlight the positive alternatives that lie in everyday utopian social justice practices. Drawing on the work of three groups the author currently organises with, Hollaback! London, Sisters Uncut and the Silenced Museum, an opposition between the teleological narrative of early feminist movements and the everyday utopianism of grassroots organising will be drawn. In doing so the article expands upon three core practices fostered in these groups: intersectional prefiguration, visionary fiction-ing, and everyday disruptions. It will thus be suggested that mainstream sexual violence response organisations in the UK engage in a process of unlearning and learning to better navigate towards an everyday utopian world free from sexual violence.

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Speaking out, and beginning to be heard: feminism, survivor narratives and representations of rape in the 1980s

Cited by 14 publications

References 11 publications

‘We just been forced to do it’: exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

‘We just been forced to do it’: exploring victimization and agency among internally displaced young mothers in Bogotá

Brave women sound the alarm – representations of men and women in the Swedish media coverage of #MeToo

Everyday Moments of Disruption: Navigating Towards Utopia

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