The idea that the survivor of sexual violence is the expert of their experience has long been a central and mobilising part of feminist politics, and in turn work on sexual violence. This is despite the ways in which expertise and the non-feminist expert have also frequently been subject to suspicion and distrust within feminist work. In contrast, feminism’s endorsement of survivor expertise is premised on the importance of believing and being led by survivor speech. Drawing on their respective work into the figures of (i) the public survivor and (ii) the wounded survivor, the authors of this paper will consider the ways in which both feminist and survivor politics are haunted by “the figure of the expert”, and how it shapes epistemic and political practices. In doing so they will explore the ethics and risks of attachment to particular forms of expertise, particularly in the current neoliberal “post-truth” climate, as well as the ethics and risks of this attachment to this figure. The paper will conclude by engaging Nancy Fraser’s call for a post neoliberalism feminism, arguing that while some engagement with “expertise” may be of use for some work on sexual violence, its simultaneous production of reprivatisation and reduction in oppositional discourse must remain at the forefront of analysis.