C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

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.

she's 28

i doubt she "pried it open" with her eyes

xp sleepingbag thanks but i prefer masculine pronouns

I assumed she was prying open her legs.

Like someone changing a baby might do to clean it? Will reread.

"and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist..."

she literally said "opened Grace's vagina".

From the Jezebel article—the writer interviewed "Debby Herbenick, PhD, an associate professor at Indiana University, writer for the Kinsey Institute, and author of Sex Made Easy.":

Anyone who has worked in K or pre-K will tell you that you're often having to remind little children not to touch their genitals and to keep their hands to themselves, because genital exploration is very, very common among young children. Ask any parent of young children and they will also have stories to tell (I've worked with parents of young children for years about how to talk with their own children about bodies, puberty, and so on and these instances always come up: not just about kids exploring their own bodies but about how kids explore with each other).

Dunham's story is not one of sexual exploration and she doesn't describe any sexual acts. The story she tells is one of bodily exploration; sex is not a part of it. Her story also includes her sister's own exploration in that it turns out her sister had been putting pebbles inside her own vagina (some small girls put things in their vaginas—toys, pebbles, Legos, etc—there is a case study of a 4 year old girl who put a Bratz doll in her vagina).

People who are attaching sex to these stories seem to equate the genitals with sex, but that's not how young children see their genitals. Dunham's story is not an uncommon one. The research (and any preschool or home with young children) is full of stories of childhood 'play' not so different than this one.

i think this thread proves she is an enormously successful artist

― sleepingbag, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 4:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

artist / provocateur

― sleepingbag, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 4:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thank you for finally making the most boring non-point that can possibly be made about this, that "she got us talking."

pre K kids are 4

People who are attaching sex to these stories seem to equate the genitals with sex, but that's not how young children see their genitals.

^^^

ftr I was talking about Treeship

pre K kids are 4

― jello my future biafriend (roxymuzak), Tuesday, November 4, 2014 3:50 PM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

roxy, she read the piece.

like, is this slightly outside the norm bc lena is a weird kid, yes. is being 'slightly outside the norm' = def sexual deviance? i would argue no

yep and "I've worked with parents of young children for years about how to talk with their own children about bodies, puberty, and so on and these instances always come up: not just about kids exploring their own bodies but about how kids explore with each other" - this didnt happen according to the story

fwiw when my brother was 2 he put a bunch of pachinko balls in his butt and then informed us of this fact; however I can't say I felt the slightest urge to look.

I was grossed out by the porny phrasing personally - the language was, "spread her legs". I'm not shocked by a messed up kid doing this, but I feel for all of the sensitive folk out there who were molested as kids who get depressed reading that. I'm a sensitive person, I had a baby sister and I had an emotional reaction to it.

nope, the language was what i quoted above

you'll argue whatever you need to in order to avoid any recognition that this might fall outside "weird" for some people. particularly given that plenty of children are abused by older siblings in ways not so different from the various ones described upthread, but hey, Jezebel got some psychiatrist to do a very selective overview of the passages, not asking what she thought of the ongoing patterns of behaviour, or the significant age difference, so it's all cool!

"and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist"

this is a quote from the memoir

no one said it was "cool"

im open to the idea that this was bad parenting. i dont know that it's an open & shut case ... the right wing critique is that this is a slippery slope, right? permissive parenting that was like, "it's natural that you explore each other's bodies" that leads to unusual stories like this are the result of the left's abdication of personal responsibility, or something. Not to say that this critique is wrong, i'm cool with "we keep our hands to ourselves" norms. but using this as an excuse to beat up on someone who's a product of this particular philosophy seems beside the point, if the philosophy itself is what we should be attacking

you'll argue whatever you need to in order to avoid any recognition that this might fall outside "weird" for some people. particularly given that plenty of children are abused by older siblings in ways not so different from the various ones described upthread, but hey, Jezebel got some psychiatrist to do a very selective overview of the passages, not asking what she thought of the ongoing patterns of behaviour, or the significant age difference, so it's all cool!

― gyac, Tuesday, November 4, 2014 3:55 PM (44 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, i'm arguing that it's not an open and shut case and acting like it is, or that people who think it might be more complicated are basically complicit in abuse, is ridiculous. i do not know for a fact that this wasn't sexual abuse but neither do you

"an excuse to beat up on"? lol

i mean at least jezebel got a psychiatrist who specializes in this, you're just throwing conjecture because lena decided to use particularly porn-y words

that's an xp to gyac

this is absurd

Yeah who the fuck said any of this is cool?

deej otm. It's the slippage between different critiques of lena dunham, between objecting to her way of writing about the issue to saying she was an abuser that bothered me most about this situation.

can you at least keep track of who you're replying to, that wasn't what I said. I'm sure the thread has yet to hit the bottom of the barrel, so I'm going to post her quotes that people keep conveniently misremembering again, then I'm gone and you can keep splitting hairs on this bullshit.

its almost like there are lots of problems with this person

she literally said "opened Grace's vagina"

this phrase has a nice biblical ring to it

Lol

http://38.media.tumblr.com/0b31f4064b0c252fe656fa36365d8346/tumblr_needai8Xu31qd6pzuo1_500.png
http://33.media.tumblr.com/8119e753b43dc8a115e582d2e2d85e87/tumblr_needai8Xu31qd6pzuo3_500.png
http://31.media.tumblr.com/8e3408fa0ecf161f19afe66c65baedc4/tumblr_needai8Xu31qd6pzuo2_r1_500.png

she did it with care!

FWiW i am pretty sure i disagree w/ treeship when it comes to art being a justification for itself (apologies if i'm misreading you)

my only real concern is that the assertions about her abuse seem like they need a lot finer critique—about the broader implications for demonizing childhood behavior that, first of all, is being subjectively described from memory, and secondly, an expert has already determined is within range of norms, and third, of course, is the notion that these 'norms' are hard lines rather than constantly shifting, debateable, and often arbitrary

which was, i believe, the point of her sister's tweets

we need to redo this poll btw

Also, I do not have a determined opinion on this passage because I could see ways in which it ... could be problematic. But I am curious what the various sides think about this particular para. from the jezebel piece:

On the newly-founded Those Kinds of Girls tumblr, all sorts of anonymous accounts are coming in about childhood memories that are—like Dunham's—uncomfortable, awkward, funny, and to all parties actually involved, non-abusive. I trust these readings. I always think we should trust what people, and particularly women, say about their life experience. If they say they were harmed, we should believe them; if they, like Grace Dunham, say they were not, what do we gain by pushing victimhood on them when they don't want it?

There is enough real abuse out there. There are enough people who never got that freedom to let their own kid bodies be unburdened. Part of granting people the ability to tell their own sexual narrative is granting them the ability to tell their own sexual narrative, whether it matches your reading or not.

you can refuse to participate in (and actively denounce) the obviously sexist right-wing campaign against her without refusing to acknowledge that some of this shit and her attitude about it is pretty messed up xp

― k3vin k., Tuesday, 4 November 2014 03:36 (18 hours ago) Permalink