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Poster short abstract:

The poster presents how women navigate uncertain tellability when narrating stories of rape in a Finnish MeToo campaign. As increased tellability does not inevitably make an experience tellable for the individual, nor guarantee an audience willing to listen, speaking of rape was an uncertain project

Poster long abstract:

The MeToo movement was hailed for breaking the silence around the subject of sexual violence—creating discursive space for previously untellable narratives. However, if tellability is understood as stories that are accepted, while untellable stories are ones that are rejected (Shuman 2005), then tellability is not only determined by the experience but also by the situational and cultural context in which it is presented. Thus, the tellability of stories is connected to the reception of it—whether it is “heard” correctly, i.e., the way in which the teller intends. The breaking of silence around the subject of rape did not necessarily create an understanding and accepting audience, and thus speaking about rape continues to be an uncertain project (not the least aided by the inherent difficulty of the subject).

This poster summarizes the core findings from my Ph.D. project, in which I study how women narrate experiences of rape in testimonies shared within a national Finnish MeToo-campaign. I question how writers present and structure their stories when being given space to freely narrate these kinds of experiences, with the promise of being heard. How do the writers use genre and narrative tools to navigate this uncertain space of increased tellability? And what insight into the uncertain experiences of gender, sex, and rape does this narration offer us?