C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

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"

read the passage

― jello my future biafriend (roxymuzak), Tuesday, November 4, 2014 3:16 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read it—but it's a subjective reading of a particular situation, who knows what was going through her mom's mind at the time: oh crap, there is stuff inside my daughter might have looked more worrying at the moment than, wait a minute, why were you looking in the first place ... idk, 'spectrum of things i did'—in that moment, she's putting herself in her own mother's head, and kind of implying that she was always doing stuff like this, which ... we've established this is an unreliable narrator. I guess basically i don't trust that she's not playing up the 'disfunction' in a memoir, unconsciously

or otherwise

treeship, for the purpose of the discussion at hand, it doesn't matter if her memory is correct in each detail or her characterizations fit some platonic version of truth, since we are discussing her account as written, which she has very deliberately made public and hopes we will all read and talk about.

why is anyone still engaging with this dummy

Since when was her hand "in" her vagina? I thought she was just looking and that the looking was in the realm of things that she did and yes I think that makes a difference. The details of that particular instance are pretty vague and maybe I misread it but I do think that makes a difference. I'd prob handle a kid I thought was curious and looking at her younger siblings Gentiles a lot different than one who had been touching them.

xxp so many possibilities as to the referent there

Errrr genitals not Gentiles - phone

lol

why is anyone still engaging with this dummy

― kissaroo and Tyler, too (DJP), Tuesday, November 4, 2014 2:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this thread proves she is an enormously successful artist

artist / provocateur

also Idgaf about Dunham in general but I think the discussion around this is interesting. Mostly I just can't believe how tone deaf she must be to have framed these experiences the way she did and not expect people to lose their minds. The I remember she's 24 but stil.