Word: hermans
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...Herman's feminist perspective suits her subject matter perfectly. The major biological, psychological and social theories of incest (she deals with them one by one) fail to account for the vast contrast between the sexually abusive behavior of fathers and mothers. According to Herman, father-daughter incest ultimately finds its best explanation in the male-dominated structure of society...
...between members of the nuclear family. No one likes to talk about incest, but the ugly truth is that men sexually abuse their own daughters far more commonly than most people would guess. Mother-son incest is nearly non-existent by comparison. By writing Father-Daughter Incest. Judith Lewis Herman proposes a solution. In effect, she says for the crimes to end, the facts must be known...
...Herman begins by identifying the brutality as widespread. Five surveys since 1940 have asked about sexual encounters between female children and adults (including the famous Kinsey report). Two of them show 15.8 percent and 14.4 percent of the women surveyed to have been involved in a sexual encounter involving physical contact with an adult. One estimate based on the five surveys conservatively concludes "that somewhere in the neighborhood of one million American women have been involved in incestuous relations with their fathers, and that some 16,000 new cases occur each year." Herman stresses that reports of sexual aggression...
Male dominated culture not only results in predatory sexual behavior by fathers, it also lays blame on the victims, or on an outdated morality. Herman recounts how Freud, when faced with claims by women of paternal sexual abuse during their childhood at first falsified his cases by attributing the role played by fathers to "uncles" He later dismissed the women's accounts altogether as their own incestuous fantasies, with the explanation that "it was hardly credible that perverted acts against children were so general...
...good books lately? Well, there is a hardback collection of Typee, Omoo and Mardi, all by a young novelist named Herman Melville (1819-91). Nearly 33,000 copies have been printed, shipped and readied for sale. And that is not all. Three look-alike companions are also hot off the presses and speeding toward dealers: the complete poetry and prose of Walt Whitman (1819-92), the tales and sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) and three novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96). They will soon be available in U.S. bookstores, at $25 apiece...