Professionalized movement organizations today rely on outside expertise in fundraising, recruitment, lobbying, management, and public messaging. We argue that the risks that accompany that development have less to do with experts’ mixed loyalties to the movement than with the tendency of expert discourse to remake political problems into technical ones, thereby obscuring the dilemmatic choices movement groups must make. We focus on expert discourse around personal storytelling, a strategy that has become popular for raising funds, advocating for policy, and building public support. Our interviews with activists and consultants and content analysis of stories they rated as successful point to an expert discourse that emphatically rejects “victim” storytelling. Instead, activists are instructed to tell stories of hope and resilience, avoid referring to the graphic details of abuse, and only hint at their emotional pain. Experts justify these strategies as the best way to avoid exploiting storytellers, and only coincidentally as also appealing to audiences. However, we argue that, rather than superseding the tension between empowering movement participants and persuading those outside the movement, storytelling as currently practiced has reproduced that tension.

如今，专业化的运动组织在筹款，招募，游说，管理和公共消息传递方面依靠外部专业知识。我们认为，发展所伴随的风险与专家对运动的忠诚度有关，而不是与专家话语将政治问题转变为技术问题的趋势有关，从而掩盖了运动团体必须做出的两难选择。我们专注于围绕个人叙事的专家讨论，该战略已广泛用于筹集资金，倡导政策和建立公众支持。我们对活动家和顾问的采访以及对他们被认为是成功的故事的内容分析表明，专家的论述着重于拒绝“受害者”的讲故事。取而代之的是，要求维权人士讲一些关于希望和韧性的故事，避免提及虐待的图形细节，仅暗示他们的情绪痛苦。专家认为这些策略是避免剥削讲故事者的最佳方法，而且恰巧也吸引了听众。但是，我们认为，目前的讲故事并没有取代赋予运动参与者权力和说服运动之外的人之间的紧张关系，而是重现了这种紧张关系。