C/D LENA DUNHAM (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

"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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAeAp9MzPtk

that makes no sense and is completely fucked up tbh

yeah i think at the very least it's a little blithe. Victims of abuse can be in denial, after all.

i also dont understand how the same people claiming that it wasnt sexual are also claiming that it was sexual and that to criticize it is to attack sexual freedom

well 'sexual narrative' can also mean identifying what is not a part of the sexual narrative ... i dont think that part is a problem per se

ugh, i'm not going to look at that tumblr. i'm super duper guilty of tmi-braindumping but i think in general ppl would do well to just keep these types of childhood transgressions to themselves tbh

TMI brain dumping is like the rhetorical whatever of our, like, age

That tumblr is a bunch of anonymous posts for the specific purpose of defending a celebrity, so I take it with a grain of salt. It even includes defensive response posts to people who describe situations in which they felt violated.

Also almost all of them seem to involve two kids doing something together, not one describing doing something to another.

Also almost all of them seem to involve two kids doing something together, not one describing doing something to another.

― my jaw left (Hurting 2), Tuesday, November 4, 2014 4:31 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bc they are not brave artists like Len—KIDDING

Let's leave Len out of this

actual lol

d on't steal her dunshine

I'm thinking LD is not invited to Mia Farrow's for Thanksgiving now

ZONG

She wanted to see what her sister's vagina looked like - even I don't think that story is a "sexual narrative". It's about kids picking up on taboos -not "exploring" or "experimenting". These people are fools. Would we be having this discussion if it was a butthole?

I think they just want to talk about how much they jerked off when they were little - not the same thing as this sad story.

Would we be having this discussion if it was a butthole?

new board description

Another article, someone has some sense:

http://verysmartbrothas.com/the-problem-with-girls-like-lena-dunham/

Wait... who on earth is Lena Dunham?

I know that I M Losted article was written by a feminist identifying woman of color but this passage could have come from the national review:

The extent at which she is nude on her show is less “admirable” or “audacious” as some have suggested previously, and more like a crutch to make us keep watching. Dunham has been pretty successful at courting attention and feigning displeasure when she gets it.

That's because I'm a Republican operative.

Anyway, Dunham addresses the abuse thing:

Check out this article from Detroit Free Press:

Lena Dunham 'sorry' for sex abuse stories in memoir

http://on.freep.com/1qpbTdX

I don't think you're secretly conservative. I just think it's a bad look to criticize women for "courting attention" and denigrating the very idea that she could be using her body in her art for a different purpose than this

Keep coming for the womanists treesh, that's always a good look

you mean her sister's body?

I'll say this much for Dunham, she acknowledges that her writing might disturb or trigger people. This in an Internet culture where people are hostile toward notions like "triggers".

you mean her sister's body?

― example (crüt), Wednesday, November 5, 2014 8:41 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...

http://flavorwire.com/486328/lena-dunhams-triggering-art-doesnt-make-her-an-abuser-no-matter-what-some-transphobic-bigot-insists

cause "some transphobic bigot" is really the only person talking about this