The book I have just finished, She’s Such a Liar, is not just about the institutionalized suppression of incest and patriarchy’s dependence on father-daughter incest. It’s also about our culture and two of our culture’s founding presuppositions, that of gendered subjectivity and heterosexuality.  

She’s Such a Liar is by no means autobiographical.  But what surprised me while writing was how many memories came back to me about how I learned about sexism and gendered hierarchies of power.

Some lessons were subtle, others painfully obvious. An early one:  I was four and was desperate to play with my five-year old brother and his friends who were quarantined behind the closed door of the playroom where the sounds of their joy—wild, rambunctious, and full of the unselfconscious noise boys were (and still are) permitted—spilled down the hallway. I ran to join them, but the door was closed to me.

“Verboten” my mother said in German (translation: don’t even try negotiating this one).

However, if I wished, I was allowed to serve them tea.

Not what I had hoped for. But it was an entry point nonetheless. She tied the tiny red gingham apron sewn shortly after my birth around my waist (it was trimmed with white rickrack and had one of my initials sewn onto each of the two pockets), and then I strapped my bare sweaty feet into the most uncomfortable shoes I have ever worn: glistening black patent leather Mary Janes. She poured warm water into my dolls’ teapot, filled the flower-rimmed sugar bowl and creamer, and then propelled me toward the door. But as soon as I stepped in, I was rebuffed by pistol-waving Rough Riders. Think of the boys who take over Barbie Land, and you’ll have the right idea.

Even though I was only four, I realized that there was something disturbingly ritualistic about all this role-playing and dress-up, something really repulsive about the way my mother assembled me for a role of female subservience and duty. Clearly, being a girl was not going to be fun.