C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

I'm not a he either, when do I get my welcome pack from the patriarchy?

― gyac, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 1:51 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Apologies. Is this rhetorical strategy working for you or no

I don't think that the things she describes are all that unusual or wrong at all and I think described in different terms they'd seem way more "normal".

No

I mean ...odd, obviously. Sexually Abusive? No

or outing your sister to your parents against her will

ah, suddenly your entrenched position makes so much more sense.

D-40 my desire to avoid variations on "does committing a racist act make you a racist" debates (which i expressed last night as well) isn't irresponsible.

unless i'm misreading you e, i think you're kinda otm there, in the sense i think maybe the creepiest thing is how she elevates what occurred into some kind of transgressive rite of passage (even the mere act of writing abt it is elevating it, LL otm too), like she's trying to score points off it or something.

the asking your sibling to kiss you for five seconds though .... Not really strange. For kids

I don't think that the things she describes are all that unusual or wrong at all and I think described in different terms they'd seem way more "normal".

you don't think bribing a significantly younger sibling to kiss you for five seconds on the lips is strange? you don't think the way she decribes revelling in telling her sister bad news in the hope she'd run to Lena for comfort is creepy? you didn't raise an eyebrow at her trying to get the kid to lie on her while she watched tv?
― gyac, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 2:53 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not as strange and creepy as you do, no I don't. Kids are fucking weird and go through some very strange developmental stuff. I did a ton of fucked up stuff when I was a little kid and I turned out (relatively) normal. She even said in that passage that she was looking for affection and wanted to feel needed. If I think of those things as the motivation for her actions then I can totally understand them as the actions of someone who for some reason needed to feel loved. I don't think that makes her a sexual predator (despite her essentially calling herself that).

not if they were both 5 xp

D-40 my desire to avoid variations on "does committing a racist act make you a racist" debates (which i expressed last night as well) isn't irresponsible.

― da croupier, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 1:57 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Your comparison of these two issues is 100% intellectually dishonest. They aren't even parallels

if i was on a jury, you'd be right. if i'm debating what to think of a celebrity online, you're wrong

That's cool croupier, it is your right to call kids playing doctor sexual abusers because it's just the Internet

In the real world, I'll continue to think that's stupid

in the real world, kids play doctor with their peers. A 1 and 7 year old aren't peers. A 1 year old can't even speak to say if she's ok with it or not.

her responses to the whole thing, published in TIME.

I am dismayed over the recent interpretation of events described in my book Not That Kind of Girl.

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.

or maybe just like, her mom should have used that as a teachable moment that you dont pry peoples vaginas open? and the fact that she didnt is really deeply disturbing?

my 4 year olds know this. a 7 year old for damn sure should have been taught this boundary

Again: I think the way this is broken down in the jezebel piece explains the nuances of it accurately. What Lena did isn't good or to be encouraged, like she clearly wasn't learning boundaries. But it also was probably not abuse

That's cool croupier, it is your right to call kids playing doctor sexual abusers because it's just the Internet

now who's being intellectually dishonest - i haven't called her anything other than a gross narcissist

tbqh, the fact that her mother felt it was normal said more about it than anything, what the fuck happened in that house?

i also haven't talked about the pebble thing at all, i find the teenage stuff far more disturbing xpost

D-40 otm and, yes, this totally should have been a teaching moment.

i've merely said i'm not interested in DEFENDING people who i think have committed gross acts from titles given to repeat offenders

actually people, especially woc feminists, have been talking about her fuckedupedness since wayyy (like years) before the NR piece

What does "fuckedupedness" mean here? Because I'm still looking for the connection between Dunham's bad track record on race and what she did with her sister when she was seven.

really?

yall cant read, bye

I don't think the behavior is as disturbing as how she writes about it is ...hokey or faux-deep or, like, trying to make herself seem more interesting than she is by comparing somewhat odd childhood behavior to being a sexual predator or implying that an anecdote about touching herself while sharing a bed with her sister was some kind of sexual relationship w her sister when it doesn't really seem like it

I have a feeling that Lena Dunham does not at all understand the actions she described and she has written her memoir long before she has come to grips with the memories that make up her material. I further suspect she hasn't a clue what idea she hoped her readers would extract from her description of them.

This clusterfuck seems to me to be ilx reflecting back Dunham's own confusion, which comes out in Dunham as a tendency to blurt a bunch of ill-digested nonsense, knowing only she will get lots of attention for it. Which seems to be her SOP.

I don't really feel qualified to evaluate the exact level of perviness/normalness/inappropriateness/predatoriness/whatever of the behavior described, beyond that it seems a little *off* to me, and I think it's kind of ridiculous to discuss whether she is a "child molestor" based on this.

But yeah, the fact that she thinks "sexual predator" is sort of a fun, kooky, irreverent metaphor to deploy, and not even in a "I'm dropping an IRREVERENT JOKE BOMB" kind of way, but just sort of tossed off. It just speaks to the broader coldness and lack of self-awareness, or maybe just a lack of awareness that there might be a reason for certain boundaries, that I find in her work, in spite of a lot of it otherwise being very good. She's always good at apologizing afterwards, she always *gets* that people are upset by something and even seems to feel bad that people are upset by it, yet it seems like she only becomes aware of these things based on feedback. IDK, it's just a frustrating thing about her writing and her show, it doesn't make her evil.

She's written pretty bogus shit about race. Blaming her for the makeup of the cast always seemed a little extra to me, basically agreed with Hilton als take on it, but she def wrote something about Japan that was like O_O

xp

to me she's evil, considering that mostly the damage is done and than being sorry all the time is merely a replacement for some traumas and generally a good indication that she does not give a fuck. she is not a sexual predator or a child molester, but she's a spoiled bully and she makes a spectacle out of herself, if you find it fascinating it's cool, to each their own, i find it frightening and gross and i don't find any good reasons to enable this behavior.

For some reason I keep thinking of the scene in Girls where Hannah deliberately walks in on Ray and Marnie having sex -- it seemed like a perfect example of a moment where the show was "aware" that Hannah was being a jerk, but yet we were still somehow supposed to empathize with the fact that she had the impulse to do it, whereas I don't think most people would actually empathize with that impulse at all? Maybe I'm overthinking it.

I think the right hate her because she's an EASY TARGET, and they have a decades-long track record of picking easy targets, based on lifestyle, affluence and personal branding.

The RW is not above co-opting (interrupting?) WOC or Womanists' complaints about white feminists. That does not mean that WoC are "participating" or entertaining a right-wing discourse. Or aiding and abetting.

I think Dunham is problematic as some feminist icon. If she can't defend herself well, that's her problem.

They are not the same critique.

Lena Dunham is insensitive toward issues of less privileged groups =/= Lena Dunham is an evil monster guilty of one of the worst crimes of all

People should be allowed to be assholes sometimes and still not have their character totally massacred for unfair reasons. This is like a fundamental ethical precept for me.

nobody is taking GIRLS away from you Treeship.

“I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty.”— Britta
“You can excuse racism?!”— Shirley

first they took Richard Yates, now they're taking Girls

what will be next -- Merriweather Post Pavilion?

xp

Have u guyz fixed lana dunham yet

lana dunray

D-40 otm and, yes, this totally should have been a teaching moment.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Tuesday, November 4, 2014 2:07 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(we are of course assuming her mom knew ... i do think that the right wing critique of left wing 'permissiveness' is what this latest argument is mostly about...but they see it like a spectrum or like the broken windows theory, i'm guessing? where encouraging her narcissism is part & parcel w/ the slippery slope to abusing your sister) (which maybe it is to a degree? but i don't think this is a prob w/ leftist political thought, maybe a prob with parents who dont have common sense)

Also Aimless OTM

She's always good at apologizing afterwards, she always *gets* that people are upset by something and even seems to feel bad that people are upset by it, yet it seems like she only becomes aware of these things based on feedback.

this is some classic narcissist behavior fwiw but then this is not a particularly challenging diagnosis...

"narcissistic"

no we arent assuming that her mom knew. she states explicitly that her mom didnt care and didnt even ask why her hand had been in grace's vagina because "this was within the spectrum of things i did"

read the passage

Yeah but she was seven and might not remember this correctly

hahaha so there's a chance that it's not true! ok so its all totally fine

treezy...

"yeah but"