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 the way we see—and talk—about incest. 

For most of recorded history, incest has been talked about as an isolated family tragedy. And it is a painful family tragedy, something most still whisper about. But incest is also something more than a private catastrophe. It is also a widespread, systemic form of violence that has been used for millennia to control, oppress, and forcibly heterosexualize girls. 

The systemic nature of sexual violence helps explain both its persistence and its invisibility. If we want to do something about its prevalence, it’s imperative that we reframe our thinking and start acknowledging incest—and all forms of sexual violence against girls and women—as systemic injustices, injustices that are as embedded in the infrastructure of patriarchal society as is racism.

For this reason, I wanted to write a book that doesn’t just ask for awareness, but invites a re-examination of the core systems, the ordinary material and institutional arrangements that support and maintain incest’s suppression and privatization. I also wanted to explore the powerful cultural mechanisms through which individuals and institutions have actively engineered the eclipsing of incest from our collective consciousness, and to consider how those same actors and structures remain invested in its suppression. That’s why I examine how these institutions and cultural arrangements wield power in ways that extend far beyond the family unit. Understanding this allows us to see incest as a structural issue deeply connected to the broader fight against gender-based violence and all forms of social inequality.

Calling the book a manifesto is my way of acknowledging its intent to provoke thought, raise difficult questions, and encourage meaningful engagement. My decision to use “manifesto” doesn’t mean that the book is definitive or dogmatic. It’s not. Rather, She’s Such a Liar asks readers to confront uncomfortable truths, challenge societal norms, support survivors in meaningful ways, and ask more questions. Only by naming, confronting, and collectively addressing incest as a systemic crime will we be able to begin to dismantle the systems that allow sexual violence against women and girls to persist.

Photo: Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel running the Boston Marathon with a red handprint over her mouth to raise awareness of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).

Photo source: Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons