Lena Dunham Responds to Sex Abuse Claims

[Lurker_Karl]

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

That's the article. Will be interesting to see how this gets spun, if it gets attention, etc.

Hope it isn't a repost.
Karl

[J. D. Stembal]

I don't get it. Why would Dunham write about trying to groom her sister sexually, then start denying it when other people blog about it? Was her book meant to be a work of fiction? Something smells fishy here.

[shirgall]

She has claimed that part of her book was fiction or written by others for her, but did not deny this part of it. She sent a C&D letter to Breitbart to pull down the allegation of sexual abuse, but their defense was that they were only quoting the book. Now she has supposedly canceled her book tour. She's equating it to normal "playing doctor" kind of growing up, so it's all going to hinge on whether a curious 7-year-old intended it as sexual or not.

 

Total drama.

[MMX2010]

I don't get it. Why would Dunham write about trying to groom her sister sexually, then start denying it when other people blog about it? Was her book meant to be a work of fiction? Something smells fishy here.

 

I emailed the author of the anonymousconservative.com blog to get his expert take on it.  But I've noticed: (1) Lena Dunham literally has no idea why people are shocked/horrified by the story.  Hence, she has a small amygdala that is typical of leftists/feminists.  (2) She immediately tries to assuage peoples' legitimate fears by saying, "And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid's vagina, well, congrats to you."  (3) Her use of "This is a rage spiral." is an easy and simple indicator of both small amygdala and extreme narcissism.  (4) Her idiotic argument, "Those Right Wingers twisted my words!" is LOL-dismissible - but her argument isn't meant to be factual; it's meant to get other people to unite in force and attack the oppressive Right Wingers.  (Rabbit behavior).  (5) The people who've supported her have said, "I don't think I should dictate Grace's (the victim of Lena's sexual abuse) experiences to her.  (Rabbit Behavior.)  (6) Grace's tweets are also LOL-dismissable, "heteronormativity deems certain behaviours harmful, and others "normal"; the state and media are always invested in maintaining that." AND "As a queer person: i'm committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful."

 

If AnonymousConservative is correct about the amygdala, particularly about how you can directly attack it in order to make the Rabbits surrender, then there has to be a way to expose Lena, Grace, or both to the impending negative judgments of the crowd.  My amateur attempt at this is to ask, "Since every scientist agrees that suffering sexual abuse, and *especially* committing sexual abuse, both  gravely increases the risk of developing a personality disorder, why don't Lena and Grace get interviewed by the three most world-renowned experts on sexual abuse and personality disorders?  They can refuse, if they wish.  But such refusal literally means that they both think they're smarter than the experts - which is laughable sad." 

 

I dunno whether AnonymousConservatve will respond, but I hope he does. 

 

And if you're not familiar with r/K selection theory, and with his thesis on the amygdala, his blog is here: anonymousconservative.com/blog. 

[PGP]

This is disgusting misogyny. Can't a leftie feminist molest her little sister and write a book that describes it without getting pulled up on it?

 

Seriously though. From the response I have seen like in the twitter, she has big problems in the reality dept.

Either that or she's just a very smart leftie who is generating publicity. Not unheard of.

 

I blame the green revolution for this and its likes. A creature such as this would have had no function or means to secure resources before the advent of chemical fertilisers.

[J. D. Stembal]

If it was a simple matter of stuffy conservatives mis-characterizing her story, why is her victim (sister) also speaking out against her?

[MMX2010]

If it was a simple matter of stuffy conservatives mis-characterizing her story, why is her victim (sister) also speaking out against her?

 

I don't think her victim (sister) is speaking out against her.  She's either speaking in support of her sister, or taking no sides at all. 

 

The victim's (sister's) only tweets have been: (1) "heteronormativity deems certain behaviours harmful, and others "normal"; the state and media are always invested in maintaining that."  (2) "As a queer person: i'm committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful."

 

--------------------------

 

AnonymousConservative praised this photo http://i.imgur.com/W6PPyMs.jpg for triggering conservative fears against liberal policy, which will enable conservatives to more committedly fight against liberal policies. 

 

So I think an even more effective amygdala attack against Grace Dunham would be: "QUICK!  Name two people who think children as young as three are mature enough to engage in sexual acts - A pedophile and Grace Dunham." 

[J. D. Stembal]

I don't think her victim (sister) is speaking out against her.  She's either speaking in support of her sister, or taking no sides at all. 

 

The victim's (sister's) only tweets have been: (1) "heteronormativity deems certain behaviours harmful, and others "normal"; the state and media are always invested in maintaining that."  (2) "As a queer person: i'm committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful."

 

--------------------------

 

AnonymousConservative praised this photo http://i.imgur.com/W6PPyMs.jpg for triggering conservative fears against liberal policy, which will enable conservatives to more committedly fight against liberal policies. 

 

So I think an even more effective amygdala attack against Grace Dunham would be: "QUICK!  Name two people who think children as young as three are mature enough to engage in sexual acts - A pedophile and Grace Dunham." 

 

Thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood the Buzzfeed article. I must have skimmed it too quickly.

 

Isn't it interesting that the victim, Grace, identifies as gay, but Lena, the instigator of the abuse, is not? Did Grace know that she was gay before she was molested at age two or three. or is it an ex post facto justification for her older sister's actions? Would we be having the same discussion if Lena was a straight male and playing doctor?

[MMX2010]

Thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood the Buzzfeed article. I must have skimmed it too quickly.

 

Isn't it interesting that the victim, Grace, identifies as gay, but Lena, the instigator of the abuse, is not? Did Grace know that she was gay before she was molested at age two or three. or is it an ex post facto justification for her older sister's actions? Would we be having the same discussion if Lena was a straight male and playing doctor?

 

I get it, and I agree with you.   

 

Imprinting: "When a father exposes his son/daughter to porn at a very early age and engages in mutual masturbatory actions, thereby making his son/daughter prone to engaging in future sex acts with older men."

 

Not-imprinting: "When Lena Dunham exposed her sister to same-sex mutual masturbation at a very early age, thereby making her sister prone to engaging in future sex acts with women." 

 

---------------------------

 

But it's not enough to point out obvious hypocrisy - especially when "one side of the debate" doesn't care when their hypocrisy is exposed, choosing instead to double-down.  It's necessary to shame them, and rob them of their power. 

 

Hence the amygdala attacks, and the "pulling of sponsors", and the public shaming to deprive person of their audience.

 

I'm working on that by sending a couple of emails. 

 

Will let you know how that goes. 

[jzd19]

From the passages, it doesn't look like abuse or molestation on her part. But it does suggest growing up with a lack of boundaries.  

[J. D. Stembal]

From the passages, it doesn't look like abuse or molestation on her part. But it does suggest growing up with a lack of boundaries.  

 

What does abuse or molestation look like if not this?

 

 

 

Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds … anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — “my curiosity got the best of me,” she offers, as though that were an explanation. In one particularly unsettling passage, Dunham experimented with her six-year younger sister’s vagina. “This was within the spectrum of things I did,” she writes.

 

I think there is a danger in not considering what happened to be abuse at all. Lena was six years older than her sister, Grace. Her sister was one year old when the abuse started! What if a prominent male actor wrote about playing with his little sister's vagina and then tried to pass it off as normal to the world in a memoir? There is a gaping double standard going on here that says that it's okay for abuse to occur as long as there isn't a penis involved anywhere in it.

 

Jezebel just posted a new article defending Lena, but I the backlash was so severe that the body of the article was deleted.

 

http://jezebel.com/the-right-to-a-sexual-narrative-on-the-lena-dunham-abu-1654187731/all

 

Edit: It must have been Chrome botching the page. I could only see the comments and thought the author retracted.

[shirgall]

It just gets worse:

 

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/11/when-im-bad-my-father-sticks-fork-in-my.html

 

November 4, 2014

"When I’m bad... my father sticks a fork in my vagina."

 

"This is hard to share without alarm bells sounding. We’re taught to listen to little girls, particularly when they say things about being sodomized with cutlery. Also my father makes sexually explicit artwork so he’s probably already on the FBI’s fork-in-vagina radar. It’s a testament to his good nature that, after the British lady repeated my 'hilarious' story to a group of adults, he simply scooped me up and said, 'I think it’s someone’s bedtime.' It’s hard to grasp what my intent was here— we’re talking about a child who was fond of pretending a ghost was touching her nonbreasts against her will— but I guess the moral of this story is that my dad’s really nice, yet I’ve always had an imagination that could grasp, maybe even appreciate, the punitive."

Yes, I bought the Kindle version of Lena Dunham's "Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's 'Learned'" and did a search on "vagina."

I mainly wanted to do a search on "vulva," for reasons stated here. The answer to that question is: 0.

 

Posted by Ann Althouse at 5:07 PM 

Tags: books, genitalia, Lena Dunham