One of the biggest patriarchal secrets has been the rape of girls by male relatives in “normal, happy families.” We’re taught the lie of “family love,” but we live the reality of family rape.

Many Lesbians don’t want to know about the extent of family rape and the reality of male violence in general, and say that talking about it is “negative.” That attitude weakens us. Knowing and facing the truth stops the flow of self-hatred in ourselves. Men don’t want us to remember or to know what they’ve done and continue to do. They don’t want us to remember the power we felt in our essence as little girls before they began their assaults. And they don’t want us to regain our full selves, because then we can stop them and change the world. Our families fight to stop us from talking about rape by male family, to protect our attackers. For most of us, we already know the truth. To finally say it out loud and to fight it politically releases the horror and frees us.

Girls are literally owned by their rapist fathers. Families exist in order for men to be served by females — domestically, emotionally, and sexually. A lot of us haven’t realized until recently that such sexual service is required of daughters as well as wives, and that the rapists include all male family members as well as fathers. Combining the numbers of reported assaults10 with the many more unreported ones (especially knowing that many victims of rape by male relatives forget the attack, and others lack information to name it for what it is), we believe over 90% of all girls are victims of family rape. Of the many females we know who were raped as girls, none reported it to the authorities. The majority don’t tell what they know won’t be believed. And they’re also in fear for their lives. Most who did tell their mothers were not protected. Instead, the mothers defended and protected their husbands, sons, and other male relatives, and the attacks continued. The horror of living with rapists, sadists, and their collaborators — usually without the support of one person –means many little girls survive by forgetting the attacks and ultimately forgetting much of our/their own girlhoods. This mental and psychic colonization10 is even more powerful than males’ ownership of our bodies.