{"id":145655,"date":"2014-11-03T08:30:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T13:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/?p=145655"},"modified":"2014-11-04T16:58:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T21:58:59","slug":"lena-dunham-memoir-abuse-accusations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/lena-dunham-memoir-abuse-accusations\/","title":{"rendered":"7-Year-Old Lena Dunham Wasn’t A Child Molester, But Adult Lena Is A Boundary-Crossing Creep"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lena

Note: The following details of Dunham’s behavior might be triggering for people with experience with child molestation, or who have worked with victims. During the events she wrote about, Dunham was seven years old; Grace was only one. The key passage<\/a> is this one, although Dunham later writes about bribing her sister with candy for several-second-long kisses, giving her control of the TV remote to lay on top of Dunham on the couch, and even, as an older child, masturbating next to her in bed:<\/p>\n

\u201dOne 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\u2019t resist and when I saw what was inside I shrieked\u201d\u00a6. My mother didn\u2019t bother asking why I had opened Grace\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Am I the only one who is confused at how a one-year-old had the manual dexterity to give herself a pebble pessary? I’m much more disturbed, though, by Dunham’s mother’s reaction. A seven-year-old is old enough to understand when you tell her, NO, her little sister’s body is her own and not for you to poke and explore.<\/p>\n

But apparently, learning that other people have boundaries and, indeed, personal thoughts and worlds of their own, is something Dunham never learned, because by writing about this now, as someone who is supposed to be an adult, she’s re-victimizing her sister. This isn’t exactly new for her, as she also outed Grace to their parents before Grace was ready, and it’s not surprising behavior on the part of someone who has previously described Grace as an ‘extension’ of herself<\/a>. Grace, for her part, doesn’t seem thrilled with the situation either, saying in the same interview with After Ellen<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Without getting into specifics, most of our fights have revolved around my feeling like Lena took her approach to her own personal life and made my personal life her property.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, a spoiler alert: I, and probably 90% of people who have an opinion about this, have not actually read the book. Spoiler #2: I also don’t especially care for Dunham, who, though she has sometimes been unfairly treated by media sources<\/a>, also represents many of the things about white, sex-positive feminism that trouble me. But I also think it’s worth acknowledging that this story was first picked up in a seriously scuzzy right-wing article<\/a> by Kevin D. Williamson<\/strong> for (barf) National Review<\/em>, that basically compared Dunham’s interactions with her sister to that of the man who raped her, and to basically blame her for ruining that man’s life<\/a>. This story originated as a misogynist attack against Dunham, and whatever Dunham has done wrong here, let’s not forget to leave a finger or two pointing in Williamson’s creepy direction.<\/p>\n

\"lena

You cannot equate the actions of a seven-year-old child to an adult rapist<\/a>: that is, frankly, obscene. But you also can’t hand-wave away Dunham’s childhood behavior, and you absolutely cannot justify the decision she made as an adult to publicly discuss this history in a way that once again crossed her sister’s boundaries. This is not okay. There is nothing about this that is on the same planet<\/em> as ‘okay’.<\/p>\n

And as for the people who are out to unequivocally support Dunham as a feminist hero despite her not very feminist disregard for the personal autonomy of others, well, someone else said it much better than I could:<\/p>\n

\"stella

(Photo: Stuart C. Wilson\/Getty)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lena Dunham‘s new book, Not That Kind Of Girl, is raising some eyebrows, and probably not for the reasons…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1000031,"featured_media":145662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6809],"tags":[622,1639,95,7353,1662],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":6809,"label":"News"}],"post_tag":[{"value":622,"label":"Celebrities"},{"value":1639,"label":"child molestation"},{"value":95,"label":"feminism"},{"value":7353,"label":"gallery"},{"value":1662,"label":"rape"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/lena-dunham-not-that-kind-of-girl-book.jpg",418,594,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Aimee Ogden","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/aimeeogden\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":6809,"name":"News","slug":"news-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":6895,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":2405,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":6809,"category_count":2405,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news-2","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":622,"name":"Celebrities","slug":"celebrities","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":622,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":57,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":1639,"name":"child molestation","slug":"child-molestation","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1700,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":22,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":95,"name":"feminism","slug":"feminism","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":95,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":141,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":7353,"name":"gallery","slug":"gallery-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7444,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2500,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":1662,"name":"rape","slug":"rape","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1723,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":262,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1000031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}