Rocking the cradle of sexual politics

the long version

In 1978 Louise Armstrong started it all by writing Kiss Daddy Goodnight, the bestselling book that spoke the terrible truth about incest. Now, more than fifteen years later, she stops to ask the questions: How did we get here? How did we get from "dread taboo" to the point where talk of incest is routine and banal, a pet of the talk shows? How did we get from serious inquiry into what causes incest - to exclusive focus on what incest causes? How did we get from total disbelief, to a brief moment of belief in the testimony of women and children - to the point where, once again, women's and children's credibility is under attack? To False Memory Syndrome and adult survivors undergoing exorcism - into a glare and cacophony such that the best interests of our children are still being forsaken and self-described healers and empowerers are getting rich. . Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics is the story of skillfully mounted backlash. But it is also the story of how it is now possible for the powers-that-be to use noise to achieve the end that was once served by repression and enforced silence - and how they defuse the political, the potentially politically explosive, by turning it into the personal. It is, alas, also the story of the power of the promise of "help" and the language of "treatment" to infantilize massive numbers of women, and to lead us away from any serious action for change.