There has been a concerted effort in the academy over three decades to argue that Aboriginal women were not oppressed by their men. How many times have I read of the autonomy women secured by being the chief food-gatherers, both for themselves and the men? On this basis the peasants in medieval Europe were the equal of their lords. Louis Nowra’s essay on the violence of Aboriginal men to their women is not the first to break the taboo over this subject; it may be, however, that his gruesome accounts will send the taboo into its death throes. He begins with an Aboriginal man boasting of rape, and proceeds through gang rape to sticks being used to enlarge vaginas.