“Osborn excels at disrupting conventional ‘truths’.”
—Soundings
Now Available (STT PRESS)
She’s Such a Liar:
Incest, Knowledge & Power
A MANIFESTO
A daring critique of Western patriarchy and its control of women’s bodies.
For centuries, incest has been framed as a private, shameful family matter—but it is also a systemic crime and a social injustice, with deep cultural, institutional, and political roots.
In this shrewd and provocative manifesto, Susan Osborn, Ph.D., examines the ordinary social, medical, and legal systems that allow incest to remain hidden and unaddressed.
She’s Such a Liar offers a rigorous, accessible feminist analysis of the forces that silence women, obscure accountability, and normalize disbelief.
By situating incest within broader systems of power and knowledge production, Osborn exposes why this pervasive—and often unspoken—form of sexual violence remains so difficult to confront.
She’s Such a Liar examines incest, but it is equally a deep look at Western patriarchy and the millennia-old cultural, medical, and political structures used to oppress and subordinate women—revealing insights that will resonate with all readers who care about justice, power, and social change.
“She’s Such a Liar is a seismic indictment of the powerful cultural, medical, and political systems that protect abusers and silence survivors.”
—Regina M. Calcaterra, Esq., New York Times best-selling author of Etched in Sand
BUY NOW
A Manifesto
A daring new critique of Western patriarchy and the enduring systems that control and discipline women’s bodies
Dr. Osborn is a writer and leading cultural critic known for challenging accepted truths about power, gender, and violence. Her work focuses on how everyday systems—from families to social institutions—shape what women are allowed to know and say about their own bodies, and how women have historically been controlled and silenced. Writing with clarity and restraint rather than sensationalism, Osborn brings difficult subjects out of the private realm and into public view, asking why silence persists and who benefits from it. She’s Such a Liar: Incest, Knowledge & Power (Shake the Table Press) extends this work by examining incest not as a private tragedy, but as a widespread and systematically suppressed form of violence.
If we want to fight the patriarchal abuse that keeps all women oppressed, we need to open windows and doors and promote public discussion of this topic not as a sordid private event but as a political phenomenon, part of the patriarchy’s armamentarium of communicative tactics to keep girls and women shut up and subordinated.
Latest Musings About Incest & Power
The Machinery of Disbelief: My Journey Uncovering the Systems That Silence Incest
Image Source: Unsplash When I started writing She’s Such a Liar, many people—in fact, most people I talked to—told me not to waste my time. They warned me that my topic was too controversial, too uncomfortable, not likely to be taken seriously. “Nobody’s going to...
Incest as Systemic Sexual Violence: Why My Book Is a Manifesto
Confronting Family Sexual Abuse “Why did you use the word ‘manifesto’ in the title of She’s Such a Liar?” This question was recently put to me by a friend. I wrote She’s Such a Liar in the hope that it would serve as a clarion call, I explained, a plea that we change...
What Makes for Good Governance?
Accountability, Transparency, Objectivity—and Victim Shaming. When the Epstein victims told their stories of sexual violence—publicly, forcefully, and with documentation—they were met with skepticism, character attacks, and efforts to rewrite their narratives....
Invite Susan to Speak
The Unthinkable: The Medical Suppression of Incest—Then and Now
This presentation exposes strategies employed by medical professionals to keep incest from public view and to erase incest from the historical record. The social and political consequences of the suppression are also addressed.
Why We Need to Repoliticize Incest
In this presentation, Dr. Osborn examines how the medical establishment—functioning as an extended patriarchy—has depoliticized and co-opted the issue of sexual violence.
Sexual Violence Against Girls and the Politics of Shame
In this talk, Dr. Osborn reveals how enduring systems of private, institutional, and political power cultivate feelings of shame and helplessness in victims, undermining collective political mobilization.
What’s in a Word? Re-Visioning the Language of Sexual Violence
Too often, we still rely on euphemisms, sensationalism, and stereotypes that favor perpetrators and discredit survivors. Dr. Osborn’s presentation highlights examples of this language and offers clear, constructive alternatives.
Work in Progress: When she was two, the author’s mother was struck down by polio. Marjorie survived, but her left leg was severely withered and partially paralyzed.