“Osborn excels at disrupting conventional ‘truths’.”
—Soundings
Now Available (STT PRESS)
She’s Such a Liar:
Incest, Knowledge & Power
A MANIFESTO
A provocative feminist examination of how institutions, systems of knowledge, and structures of power shape what we understand about sexual violence—and how we respond to it.
For centuries, ideas about sexual violence have been constructed through cultural assumptions and institutional practices that determine what counts as evidence, whose testimony is considered credible, and whose knowledge is allowed to count.
Using the history of incest as a case study, Susan Osborn, Ph.D., reveals how medical, legal, psychological, and cultural institutions have defined the ways sexual violence is recognized and understood. In turn, these institutional forces have produced, legitimized, and suppressed evidence in ways that often obscure accountability, normalize disbelief, and silence survivors.
The questions Osborn raises extend far beyond incest: Who gets believed? What counts as evidence? Whose knowledge is treated as authoritative? And what happens when the institutions charged with responding to sexual violence become part of the problem?
By examining the relationship between knowledge and power, She’s Such a Liar asks why sexual violence remains so difficult to recognize, discuss, believe, and confront—and what history can teach us about changing that.
She’s Such a Liar offers a provocative, accessible feminist analysis of the systems that shape how sexual violence is understood—and a powerful invitation to rethink whose voices, experiences, and knowledge count.
“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 provocative feminist examination of how history, power, and institutions shape what we understand about sexual violence—and how we respond to it
Dr. Osborn is a writer and cultural critic known for challenging accepted truths about power, gender, violence, and knowledge. Her work examines how everyday systems—from families to medical, legal, and social institutions—shape what people are allowed to know and say about violence, whose accounts are believed, and how survivors are understood and treated. Writing with clarity and restraint rather than sensationalism, Osborn brings difficult subjects out of the private realm and into public view, asking why disbelief persists, how systems of knowledge are constructed, and who benefits from them. She’s Such a Liar: Incest, Knowledge & Power (Shake the Table Press) extends this work by using the history of incest to examine the broader cultural, medical, legal, and institutional forces that have shaped what we know about sexual violence—and how we respond to it.
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 sexual violence not as a series of sordid private events 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 Hostess with the Mostest
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...
Why I Write About Incest—The Forgotten Feminist Issue
It started this way. In graduate school, while reading a Victorian novel about a father-daughter relationship, I was surprised to discover an incest theme in the book. A quick trip to the library indicated that no other scholar had yet picked this up. Thrilled by my...
What My Grandmother’s Etiquette Lessons Taught Me About Being a Girl
When we’re young, we don’t think much about how we learn what we learn. We just learn. But while writing She’s Such A Liar: Incest, Power & Knowledge and reading about the whole structure of unequal social relations and prejudicial ideologies maintain patriarchal...
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 Sexual Violence
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.