Rape and Regret
45
has their strength, then they presume she must be like them. If she survives
being shot, then she must be an assassin. If she can fend off thugs sent to kill
her, then she must be psychotic. If she can neuter her pervert guardian, then she
must have authority issues. Terrorized by men she must indeed be a terror
herself If she refuses to fit into a sick society, and insists on living a solitary and
silent life, then she must be a Satanist. An offense to the society that shapes her,
Lisbeth is a mirror of this community’s failures. She reflects its responsibilities
back at its leaders when she resists. Her failure to speak allows her tormentors to
hang themselves when they call her names. Lisbeth’s legal trials are overt
attempts to keep her word from being validated. If Lisbeth tells her story, she
inadvertently reveals the scope of masculine criminal behavior that shapes
everyone’s world, and this is the sin that enrages her persecutors who need her
erased. This need frees the men from guilt and makes it imperative that Lisbeth
accept the stories being told about her, as is demonstrated most fully in this
conversation between Lisbeth’s attorney and the psychiatrist who imprisoned
Lisbeth. The structure only holds if Lisbeth’s word can be invalidated:
“For how many days in two years . . . was she kept in
restraints?”
“. .. perhaps on 30 occasions.”
“. .. that’s a fraction of the 380 that she claims.”
“Undeniably.”
“. . . a copy of Lisbeth Sander’s medical records . . . [lists] the
figure [at] 381.”
“. . . this is classified information” (485, The Girl Who Kicked
the Hornet *s Nest).
Instead of being saddened because he lied, the doctor, one of the prominent
authority figures Lisbeth must face, is outraged at being contradicted. In his
view it is the little girl’s business to take the shape she is offered in his
interpretation of her. In his mind he molested her because she hated herself and
proof of this is the fact that she accuses him. He cannot let her make statements
about herself without seeing them as statements about him. He reveals Lisbeth’s
story in pieces so that the general vision of the girl has no context and therefore
seems perverse. All legal documents concerning Lisbeth cannot legally be
revealed because men (doctors, policemen, government officials, and legal
guardians) say so. Records that the girl burned her father to protect her mother
are shredded. Records that prove Lisbeth’s mother was mentally ill remain
intact. Records of Lisbeth being bullied vanish. Affidavits recording her
responses are published. If Lisbeth resents this effort to alter her history then she
must be deranged.
The men after Lisbeth believe that they are acting in self-defense. “The
solution to the problem had been simple. . . [she] would necessarily
disappear.. .” (92, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest). A description of
the solution that in these men’s minds would resolve the “worst crises” they had