A Crime that Cannot be Named: Normalisation or Distortion of Incest Victims’ Narratives with #MeTooInceste

Abstract

In January 2021, the #MeTooInceste hashtag emerged on French-speaking Twitter, allowing victims of incest to recount their experiences and bring their narratives to light. As the private became public, many defined this movement as a “liberation of speech” (Idoiaga Mondragon, et al., 2022). An extremely taboo subject (Ambroise-Rendu, 2016; Giuliani, 2016), incestuous sexual abuse was suddenly at the heart of the public debate, with politicians and the media commenting on the movement. However, with institutionalisation comes distortion (Ehrlich, 2014). Looking at 1,122 tweets, our comparison of incest testimonies and their reactions on Twitter shows that there is distortion of the victims’ narratives on two aspects: (i) when naming the perpetrator, and (ii) when naming the act. The results show that (i) while victims do name perpetrators, reaction tweets tend to erase them, and (ii) while victims name the act specifically, reactions tend to broaden the subject and talk of sexual abuse in general. The taboo might constrain the content of victims’ testimonies, and institutionalisation distort the narratives, but this movement focused public attention on the subject and normalised at least the use of the word itself. Through this study, we wish to assess exactly how these voices are changing the discursive norm about incest.