Cissi Wallin posted to Instagram the name of the man she says raped her. Now she may face jail time.
 | By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer |
I first got in contact with the journalist Jenny Nordberg in the late fall of 2017, when the #MeToo movement was in the early stages of sweeping the globe. I wanted a perspective from Sweden — how was this movement unfolding in a country known for its feminist credentials? — and Jenny wrote a moving piece about a painful reckoning for a country that has long prided itself as "best in class on gender equality." |
The essay began by introducing readers to Cissi Wallin, the woman whose Instagram post about her alleged rapist had kick-started #MeToo in that country. |
It was an exhilarating, overwhelming moment, and no one knew how #MeToo would unfold in Sweden or elsewhere. Now, we know: Today, Wallin may face jail time. |
In 2019, she was found guilty of criminal defamation for her Instagram post, making her one of at least 12 women in Sweden who have been convicted on such charges for stories they told about harassment or abuse during the past few years. She's also facing charges for self-publishing a memoir, despite not including the name of the man she alleges raped her; the state is seeking to confiscate and destroy all remaining unsold copies. |
In a guest essay today, Jenny tells the story of how this outcome came to pass. Part of it comes down to: In Sweden — unlike in the United States — truth is not an absolute defense against defamation. |
Wallin's story raises fascinating questions: Was it the naming of perpetrators that gave #MeToo its power? How are women expected to find justice if they can't speak freely about what happened to them? |
But it is also a portrait of a woman who is determined and defiant and who has become something of an outcast in Sweden in part as a result of her insistence that she should have the right to tell her own story. |
There was a paragraph from Jenny's 2017 piece that has long stuck with me. Part of the reason #MeToo in Sweden was so painful, she wrote, was because "who can really stand that in the place where a little girl has the best chance of being born with everything — a free education, health care and a social welfare cushion to fall back on — when she attempts to do meaningful work, there's still no escaping from the pervasive law of male supremacy?" |
It was such a depressing thought — who, indeed, can stand it? — and today's essay only reinforces it. Sweden is widely viewed as "the feminist capital of the world," Jenny writes. But if a government that officially calls itself feminist is prosecuting women for telling the stories of their own lives, what does that feminism even mean? |
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