By Caty Lee
[photo courtesy of imgur.com]
Lena Dunham is an open book.
Online news source “Truth Revolt” accused Lena Dunham of sexual molestation based on events depicted in her brutally honest book Not That Kind of Girl. Dunham’s book revolves around multiple instances of her eccentricities — one of them being the time her curiosity got the best of her.
On Oct. 29, Truth Revolt published an article entitled “Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister.”
Dunham’s controversial passage that explicitly described an incident that occurred when she “spread open” her one-year-old sister to see if he private parts were like her own. Dunham also highlights times she masturbated with her sleeping sister in the bed with her and times that’d she’d use candy to bribe her to “kiss her on the lips for five seconds.”
In the book, Dunham attributes her actions as being akin to sexual predator behavior. Many people have expressed their disgust on Twitter. One reader tweeted: “Lena Dunham compared herself to a sexual predator and gets upset when people call her a sexual predator. Okay???”
Dunham defended herself by saying: “If you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you.”
After multiple anger-ridden tweets, Dunham made an apology to Time. She stated: “First and foremost, I want to be very clear that I do not condone any kind of abuse under any circumstances. Childhood sexual abuse is a life-shattering event for so many, and I have been vocal about the rights of survivors. If the situations described in my book have been painful or triggering for people to read, I am sorry, as that was never my intention. I am also aware that the comic use of the term “sexual predator” was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well. As for my sibling, Grace, she is my best friend, and anything I have written about her has been published with her approval.”
Grace Dunham defended her sister’s actions. She tweeted: “Heteronormativity deems certain behaviors harmful and others ‘normal’; the state and media are always interested in maintaining that.” She also insisted that she decides if what happened to her was abuse, not the rest of the world. She wrote: “As a queer person: I’m committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful.”
Lena Dunham is the writer, creator and star of the HBO TV series Girls.
She has been nominated for four Emmys for her roles in acting, writing and directing the series. Not That Type of Girl is her first book.
Dunham has many critics on the feminist left for not living up to the feminist ideals she claims to have. They point to the fact that people of color are under-represented on her TV show, her jokes about rape and molestation and the outing of her sister as being contrary to the identity she tries to project. Critics insist that Dunham uses her rich, white woman status as a crutch to defend her actions.
Dunham canceled her book tour stops in Germany and Belgium in the wake of this controversy
[photo courtesy of Grace Dunham’s Twitter]
intrepidsbu.com 