Lena Dunham - Sexual Predator?

[Liebling]

Lena Dunham, the star and creator of 'Girls' on HBO included some particularly disturbing narative pieces, fiction or not in her book 'Not That Kind of Girl' about her inappropriately touching her one year old sister, bribing her very much younger sister to kiss her, and admitted to repeatedly masturbating in the bed next to her sister while her sister was asleep.

Of course a right-wing nutjob picked it up and made a huge deal of it, to which Ms. Dunham responded with a self-described "rage spiral" and tried to get every feminist on the planet to defend her and also tried to claim that she's a "trigger artist" and that her little sister Grace is laughing about it all.

But there is something deeply disturbing about the nonchalant way Lena Dunham describes some super disturbing scenes from her childhood, not all of which happened in the younger years when she was 7. She described herself as having a sexual predator vibe towards her sister and how good it felt for her sister to "need" her and be close to her, laying on her physically.

It's really kind of creepy if you read the excerpts in Lena's own words;

“I took to bribing her for time and affection...[I’d give her] three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for just five seconds... basically anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was trying,” she joked.

"One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn't resist and when I saw what was inside I shrieked... My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened Grace's vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did. She just on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been a success."

Now all sorts of people are coming to her defense and describing this kind of behaviour as normal and that Lena Dunham is just being vilified by "White Men"...

But I ask an important question;

What would happen in this story if Lena was a boy instead?

Would it be "acceptable" then?

 

[Bells]

I have to say, this triggered so many warnings in my head... She appears to go beyond natural curiosity about her own body, to actively trying for certain forms of contact with her much younger sister through the use of bribes. It isn't just about looking at what her sister's vagina looked like, but also about desiring that level of contact.

And the way she jokes about it as well, trying to downplay it and in a way, attempts to trivialise it.

It is creepy.

Had she been a boy, then the reaction would have been very different.

Children are naturally curious about their own bodies and other bodies. They want to know. This is normal. But her obsession with her younger sister, and bribing for kissing on the lips for 5 seconds or however long it was and other forms of contact...

As a parent, had I witnessed something like this with my own kids, I would have been very very concerned.

 

[Kittamaru]

...

...

That is my brains reaction to this... no, really... there are no words...

 

[milkweed]

Of course a right-wing nutjob picked it up and made a huge deal of it, to which Ms. Dunham responded with a self-described "rage spiral" and tried to get every feminist on the planet to defend her and also tried to claim that she's a "trigger artist" and that her little sister Grace is laughing about it all.

I never heard of this person until now. Is this the right-wing nutjob?

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391348/pathetic-privilege-kevin-d-williamson

An interesting read above. The following has a scan of the book page so it can be read in context (well as much context of a book that you can get out of a page worth).

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/lena-dunham-responds-to-sex-abuse-claims

But I ask an important question;

What would happen in this story if Lena was a boy instead?

Would it be "acceptable" then?

It would depend on how much money the boys family has (in reference to the first link I posted) :

http://www.delawareliberal.net/2014...due-to-dupont-family-ties-only-to-rape-again/

 

[Liebling]

I think I am just shocked that she has so many people excusing this behaviour as normal, or trying to downplay it. I get that the "white guy" that was trying to vilify her took some of the things out of context, but even when you put them back into context, it just doesn't seem at all healthy, normal or acceptable.

On top of that, the little sister grew up to have differing sexual tastes and not that being a lesbian isn't normal but you have to wonder if she was triggered by the abuse into her position as some women and men are by repeated and unwanted sexual predatory behaviour.

Taken in context, it's even worse. She knew it was a power situation and she craved and wanted her sister to "need" her like that;

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1YZxyHCYAAD1OY.jpg

A lot of Hollywood is rushing to her defense. There's something foul in Hollywood though... they still make excuses for Roman Polanski and Woody Allen too. Apparently being an "artist" excludes you from the responsibilities of any given society.

 

[spidergoat]

Get over it. Kids will be kids. It wouldn't matter if it were a boy or girl.

 

[Kittamaru]

Get over it. Kids will be kids. It wouldn't matter if it were a boy or girl.

0_o

You are joking, right? That is not "normal sibling behavior" in any meaning of the phrase...

 

[billvon]

What would happen in this story if Lena was a boy instead?
Would it be "acceptable" then?

If he was 5? Probably. Kids that age are curious about everything and have very little sense of what's appropriate.
If he was 15? Definitely not.
If he was 7? Would depend on the situation. It would most likely not be acceptable to most parents.

 

[Bells]

Get over it. Kids will be kids. It wouldn't matter if it were a boy or girl.

Is it that though?

And this wasn't a one off thing. This apparently went on for years.

This isn't a kid being a kid. This was a kid acting like an adult. And she recognises this herself when she comments that she was like a sexual predator, grooming her younger sister. While she may have said it in jest, her actions very much mirror what a sexual predator does.

There was one thing that bugged me about the whole thing on the driveway.. And Mary Elizabeth Williams went right to the heart of it in her comments about the reaction to Dunham's book. After noting that Dunham had previously told of how she is an unreliable narrator, she went right to what kind of didn't sound right to me:

As a mother of two daughters, my own reaction to Dunham’s revelations isn’t horror at some perceived abuse — it’s confusion over how this whole thing allegedly went down. Why would two young children, including a baby, be playing unsupervised in a driveway? Also, you know that babies wear diapers, right? Either that one-year-old was very adept at getting past clothing and a diaper in her determination to shove pebbles into her body, or she was sitting on a pebbled surface with no diaper – neither of which sounds likely. And how would her sister Lena have been able to lean down between the baby’s legs if she was sitting upright? And “six or seven” pebbles? Really? The scene doesn’t add up – and frankly, Dunham’s book editor should have called her out on this and asked for her to write that perceived remembrance better and more clearly. As it is, that passage doesn’t make me think Dunham is a child molester, but it doesn’t make me want to read the book, either. Is it all this jumbled?​

It's weird. How big was that kid's vagina that she could stick that many things up there?

Look, I don't know if she sexually molested her little sister. But I don't know of any child who has done what she actually did and it was considered normal.. I'm not talking about the touching or wanting to see. But the whole craving that type of contact, needing to be in bed with her little sister to hear her breathing in and out as she slept, that type and level of contact.. And really, what kid do you know would want to be in bed with their younger sibling to masturbate?

It doesn't sound right to me. There's something off about it.

 

[spidergoat]

Sure it's weird, but kids are allowed to be sexual with other kids.

 

[billvon]

It's weird. How big was that kid's vagina that she could stick that many things up there?

Probably bigger than her nostril - and kids can fit a lot of M+M's up there.

 

[Bells]

Sure it's weird, but kids are allowed to be sexual with other kids.

But she wasn't being sexual with a kid her own age, who shared her curiousity as a 7 year old. And she wasn't sharing it as she was experiencing it. As I noted above, what kid do you know needed that level of closeness or would want to be in the same bed as their much younger sibling so they could masturbate?

Probably bigger than her nostril - and kids can fit a lot of M+M's up there.

Possibly.

The whole thing sounds weird. It is as though she was hoping for the reaction she got.

 

[spidergoat]

Who has to answer for what they did when they were 7? That's crazy.

 

[youreyes]

Typical american woman, no constraints, no morals, no ethics, just drive. they all will end up in a ditch.

 

[Bells]

Who has to answer for what they did when they were 7? That's crazy.

I did when I took scissors and cut all the curtains and towels, not to mention all my dolls hair and some of my own...

The difference is that looking back on it, I know it was wrong. And I understand how it made my mother feel and because we were so poor, she had saved a long time for the material for those curtains. I didn't understand all of that at the time. But as an adult, I do understand why it was so hard for her and why she cried. I don't make jokes about it. She does sometimes, but I do not. Because I still remember how hurt she was.

According to Dunham, instead of using the moment as an opportunity to talk about touch and boundaries, her mother merely removes the pebbles while Grace “cackled” about the success of her “prank.” What prank? The notion that a 1-year-old put pebbles in her vagina, in expectation that someone (Lena, perhaps?) would look in there and find them, simply makes no sense. The fact so many publications gave this book such fawning reviews without so much as mentioning this anecdote should give plenty of people pause, because the excuses being made for Dunham seem more attributable to her celebrity than any plausible interpretation of the events she relates.

In fairness, Dunham’s story reveals what was, at the very least, a missed teaching opportunity that might have spared the sisters some pain down the road. In a New York Times interview, Dunham said, “Basically, it’s like I can’t keep any of my own secrets. And I consider Grace to be an extension of me, and therefore I couldn’t handle the fact that she’s a very private person with her own value system and her own aesthetic and that we do different things.”

Dunham’s remarks sum up what is really wrong with the controversial passages from Dunham’s book: it’s not so much that they reveal Dunham as a child molester, it’s that they reveal her as a woman who is troublingly averse to adult reflection on her life, her upbringing, or the effect that her actions may have had on the people around her.

Williamson’s review is vitriolic, and much of it rankles. But while Williamson may have been wrong to characterize Dunham’s behavior as sexual abuse, feminists are just as wrong to turn a blind eye to – or go through hoops to justify – behavior that may require further exploration. It’s probably unfair to call Lena Dunham’s touching her little sister “sexual abuse.” Still, asserting that an older child exploring a younger child’s genitals does not amount to sexual abuse is merely the beginning, not the end, of the analysis.
​

That passage is from a left leaning author who is a feminist. And it is hard to disagree with her.

I do wonder though, if feminists and the hollywood group of groupies would be so forthcoming with their defense if Lena had been male, and I do wonder how well they would have taken the story of crawling into bed with the baby sister to masturbate next to her while she slept, if Lena had been male. My guess is that we would not have heard boo from them.

 

[Liebling]

Bells,

I think that they might have still excused off the whole pebble story because it doesn't even make sense at all, but the crawling into the bed of a younger sibling part...

I think that Lena Dunham is an awful example of American women though, and I think that we shouldn't elevate cover up or otherwise excuse off such nonchalant lying and bullshit. She should be held accountable for making it seem like it's normal behaviour. Clearly she has co-dependance, power issues and is at huge risk of using her privilege to exploit anyone around her that she deems as weaker.

This should throw all sorts of red flags for anyone letting their child near this woman. Clearly she thinks it's just fine or she wouldn't keep reminding us that this is how she feels.

If this was a man saying all of these things now, we'd put him on some kind of watch list. It's one thing to feel that way and keep it to yourself, it's quite anouther to flaunt the behaviour and feelings in the present reality.

 

[Bells]

Bells,

I think that they might have still excused off the whole pebble story because it doesn't even make sense at all, but the crawling into the bed of a younger sibling part...

I think that Lena Dunham is an awful example of American women though, and I think that we shouldn't elevate cover up or otherwise excuse off such nonchalant lying and bullshit. She should be held accountable for making it seem like it's normal behaviour. Clearly she has co-dependance, power issues and is at huge risk of using her privilege to exploit anyone around her that she deems as weaker.

This should throw all sorts of red flags for anyone letting their child near this woman. Clearly she thinks it's just fine or she wouldn't keep reminding us that this is how she feels.

If this was a man saying all of these things now, we'd put him on some kind of watch list. It's one thing to feel that way and keep it to yourself, it's quite anouther to flaunt the behaviour and feelings in the present reality.

The pebble story seems unreal. And by that I mean that I do not see how a one year old could have jammed so many up there or would have had the dexterity to do it (bypass the nappy to stick them up there with her eagle eyed sister watching her her every move so obsessively), certainly as a prank. That makes no sense whatsoever. Even so, we can attribute it down to curiosity..

What floored me was her creeping into her sister's bed to masturbate. This did not happen when she was 7 years of age, but when she was older.

Who does that?

Someone commented above that kids are often sexual with each other. Yes, they sometimes are. This is not what she was doing though. This was not two little kids looking at differences or even experimenting. This was one child experimenting with another when the other had no idea what was going on or when she was asleep... But she was waiting until her little sister slept and then crept into bed with her solely to masturbate. Because she couldn't masturbate in her own bed?

It is that needing her sister there with her to do it, that's the 'what the fuck?!' of this story.

If a teenage boy has to get into his little sister's bed to masturbate, no one would be defending him today. Would so many feminists be going all out as so many of them are? Hell no.

But there is a certain element of defending the famous person to this story. Like Woody Allen.. And I wonder if much of that defense of Dunham is reactionary to the political right attacking her so voraciously about it. Is it because she is such a darling of Hollywood? She certainly seems to be everywhere. I'd never even heard of her until this story broke and I had to read back about her.

At any rate, she will probably sell more books now, as people flock to read the juicy details. But it does make me pause and wonder at what point are we going to stop making excuses.

 

[Tiassa]

How many of us have actually read the book? No, that's not a speak-nothing-unless-you-have argument, but it seems to me there is something I'm not comprehending about this family dynamic.

Beyond the questions about diapers or sitting in gravel or cackling at a prank ... well, what the hell was going on in that family in general? Is there anything in this book that might explain a thing or three about that?

Bribing for a kiss or a touch or whatever? That wasn't bribing "for time and affection". At least, not in my day. That sort of behavior was "dirty" the same way seven year-old boys of my generation always wanted to see "privates" or peek in while a girl is using the toilet.

Bribing a significantly younger sibling "for time and affection"? When one is seven years old?

Seriously, what the hell was going on in that home?

From my distal vantage point, whatever "teaching moment" we might find in the episode pretty much begs the question.

It might be that the "problem" as such is fairly simple and silly, and this is just one of the creepy results that might occur among a vast range of potential outcomes.

The thing is that the separation of years between reported act and act of reporting is problematic; Lena Dunham is twenty-eight, and there is no useful reason under the sun why this should have been published. That is to say, she is human, and most humans I know don't have a handle on their own childhood even when they're in middle age.

The reality behind the story is not what we're seeing. It is either much less worrisome or exponentially more frightening.

But given her age, this is about 1993 she's talking about, and all I can really remember about '93 was that the eighties were pretty much at critical mass and exploding all over the place. Of those aspects of the eighties? Latchkey children, the monetary value of being in the family, staying together for the kids, and all sorts of toxic errors; my generation did okay within its constraints, but we're now finding that the constraints themselves were wrong. Honestly, when you see GenX on through millennials acting like complete, greedy assholes, they're actually doing great according to the pathways prescribed by their parents.

But none of this matters in the question of Ms. Dunham's memoir unless there is some framework for considering it. Hence I wonder who all has read it. I haven't. I don't intend to. This episode changes nothing about my perception of Lena Dunham, as I generally avoid such pop-culture trends. I wouldn't know her name at all but for its frequent appearances in the "most read" sidebars of news sites. Indeed, before reading the first sentence of Liebling's post, all I knew about Lena Dunham was that she was famous and popular and widely disliked.

Oh, right. And something about her allegedly being a child molester.

And now I find myself wondering, "Really? This is what all that was about?"

Whatever else is going on in her life, I'm struck by the unhealthiness of the rising public response to ... what? Really? This?

So I figure there must necessarily be some circumstance I am missing. Yet answers to my early questions would have an explanatory effect not conducive to all the wailing and hand-wringing that keeps popping up in the sidebars.

 

[spidergoat]

She's a fucking comic.

It is creepy.

So what. People are weird. It's not worth dissecting. I appreciate her letting us into her past for a moment of honesty. I remember doing some weird things too as a kid, I bet everyone has but isn't bold enough to admit it.

 

[GeoffP]

Too many variables for inference.