GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

i think the fact that she doesn't freak out is what makes some ppl think the show is really dark, or cold, or working at a kind of distance, which i dont agree with

like, a guy threatening implicitly that he might not use a condom during sex, or initiating anal sex without asking for permission first -- these are rapey things! you can't just handwave it away as less than perfect sex. that's crazy!

Morday I think both of these things are a lot more common than you realize. You said you want to hear personal experiences - fine. I've experienced both of these thing with more than one guy. Neither are uncommon at all, sadly.

I think louie is a very anarchist friendly sitcom, we should ask HOOS for other recommends.
Monty python one assumes

E otm

i think the fact that she doesn't freak out is what makes some ppl think the show is really dark, or cold, or working at a kind of distance, which i dont agree with

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Friday, April 20, 2012 12:23 PM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is an intersting point!

See also the extremely thoughtful and popular pushing down the girl's head move. These are things that some dude's do and a lot of women, especially younger women who want desperately to be liked or may be scared or any number of other things, will experience these and go along with them and not realize they're as wrong as they are because that's sort of what we're conditioned to do.

sexuality is complicated, huh

i mean, i think that's behind bruni's response. which to me is just odd, like thinking dunham is being really mean by having her female characters say mean things about their own bodies or having men say mean things about their bodies. i don't know, to me those responses are like, what world do you live in?

xxp to s10cki

who would have thought?

x-post

there's something about the polarity of relationships here but idk what to say about it exactly. the pecs mcanal hookup dude is portrayed with all of these asshole signifiers, but after having terrible sex with him [lena] is clearly really into him and wants more out of him. [williams kid]'s boyfriend is a sweetheart niceguy drip and she can't stand him.

i don't want to bring j. batman into this but...

i think the fact that she doesn't freak out is what makes some ppl think the show is really dark, or cold, or working at a kind of distance, which i dont agree with

she did demand he quit the anal talk and that made me like the character more. like when she told her parents she didn't want to see them after they cut her off, it implied she had some self-respect and that we weren't in full-on Solondz-land. Though I want to be clear I'm talking about "likable" in the context of a half-hour sitcom that wants me to watch it weekly, not likability in the sense of real-life reactions to male aggression.

said asst prof also noted that she found the scenes where everyone is hanging out and no one really likes anyone there were hella throwback unpleasant to immediate post college days when you spend time in a room simply because this is what's happening, not because you want to. like your lack of social training means that you find yourself acting in ways that aren't really reflective of who you really are or want to be but simply passive with moments of confusion and demands for appreciation of your deep thoughts and meaningful self
ilx works in a similar way

yes, one thing i like about the scene is that she's quick and articulate abuot what she doesn't want sexually in that moment. i also like that later she's less forceful and more unsure, going along with him being sort of dismissively like, sure i'll text you.

there's something about the polarity of relationships here but idk what to say about it exactly. the pecs mcanal hookup dude is portrayed with all of these asshole signifiers, but after having terrible sex with him [lena] is clearly really into him and wants more out of him. [williams kid]'s boyfriend is a sweetheart niceguy drip and she can't stand him.

i don't want to bring j. batman into this but...

― goole, Friday, April 20, 2012 12:27 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heh, theres a kind of notorious scene in the 2nd or 3rd episode where this dynamic is further explored, i havent actually seen it but its been discussed on-line

meanness + darkness are pretty loaded words, but when we talk about a show reproducing faithfully a common experience women have where they are pressured into doing things, or accepting things, wrt sex, that is fairly dark. i believe that the wire faithfully depicted things that i found disturbing and that i think one could call dark, and there was a lot in the wire that i'd consider misanthropic and even nihilistic - that the implicit critique might have been 'this is horrible' but that it was also 'this is hopeless.' i don't think it's unfair to suggest there's something similar at play here.

a kind of notorious scene in the 2nd or 3rd episode

well unless hbo puts the whole thing on utub i'll never know

omg pecs mcanal

i got an intern applying who was hella aggressive even after i let him know all positions filled who kept writing these semi-nonsensical reality show styled multi-paragraph letters about how deeply he appreciated the opportunity and how perfect this job was for him and he ended the last email that I finally determined that it was best not to respond to with "my interest continues to be valid" which seemed like a good summing up of the GIRLS philosophy too

i don't want to bring j. batman into this butt...

the wire is not nihilistic and neither is Girls fwiw

partly discussed in q5 of this interview, spoilers i guess

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/dunham_girls_sex_scares_men/singleton/

many xposts:

again my cynical side really doubts that most men identify themselves with male characters or reflect on those scenes and wonder if they have made women uncomfortable, or done something non-consensual. because the nature of dudes who do that kind of thing are not typically the kind of people who challenge themselves. it would be great if it did spark awareness but i'm just highly sceptical. it's really not a criticism of the show but of maleness/culture. it's not a single television show's responsibility to tear down something so complex and deeply entrenched and it IS interesting that it is starting a dialogue by showing it in a different way. (though i wonder exactly *how* different it really is given the amount of pornography that features humiliation/degredation). i agree with mordy that it should be a bigger part of the discourse about this show, for sure.

the wire is not nihilistic and neither is Girls fwiw

nihilistic is definitely the wrong word, and i chose it poorly

fair enough. i didn't mean to be minimizing what a dick the dude she has sex with in the pilot was being, to joke about not using a condom and to try to initiate a sexual act he knew from previous experience she wasn't into. it's just that i think those experiences are pretty common. which sucks.

i don't think i've ever suggested it was rare. i've not personally experienced it, though, which might account for some of my reaction.

friend just pointed out that the issue with a show as concerned with verisimilitude as this one is: you forget that it's a comedy and not everything is serious or totally real. pecs mcanal is her version of Mr. Big and that's part of the gag. that he's mega gross is meant to be funny as he is a not-so-far-from-the-truth version of men available in that age/location/privilege bracket

horseshoe has the higher-level discussion PoV all sewn up here, Imma let her stay on that. But I can back up E that the disrespectful/casual treatment of women by their sex partners is completely par for the course. It would be nice if we always got up and left when we should, but we don't because that attitude is COMPLETELY NORMAL and you could date and sleep with people for YEARS and have it always be kind of like that, or not completely UNLIKE that. And unless you have really good models in your life or your levels of self-protection are higher than most people's, you pretty much just go with it. I have. And not in the distant past, either.

we all totally know people who would talk about NEVER BE A SLAVE TO THE SYSTEM while cashing gramma rent checks
"are you still doing that play"
"no"
"why"
"fuck that guy, he's a dick"
^had this conversation like eighty times my first year in nyc

that exchange really made me laugh.

i guess when i mostly see this kind of thing discussed it has generally been in a reactionary anti-sex context (which accounts for my feeling that this show has stuff that a republican might dig) - ie: Caitlin Flanagan, kinda also Wendy Shalit, Mary Pipher, i'm sure some of these writers have handled it better than Flanagan (ugh), but is it possible to say you're concerned about this kind of dynamic, or that you think it's wrong, without being ridiculous and worried about the future of american female innocence? like maybe that's some of the tension - you want to acknowledge that this is common. both common, like, doesn't it suck how widespread and terrible this is? but also common like, it's also no big deal, don't panic over it. am i reading this correctly at all?

but is it possible to say you're concerned about this kind of dynamic, or that you think it's wrong, without being ridiculous and worried about the future of american female innocence?

i don't see where innocence comes into it at all? you're right, this is the kind of material flanagan mines in order to indict feminism for giving women too much freedom, but she's just wrong about what the problem is. (and an asshole) thinking the dude in that sex scene is a dick is not the same thing as thinking the dunham character should wait to have sex until she gets married so that this never happens to her, like wendy shalit would say, or whatever. that whole transfer of responsibility is kind of the whole problem with conservative rhetoric about sexual mores.

It should be a big deal, it should be WAY bigger than women who get subjected to it think it is. But it's horrible NOT because of female innocence for the love of little green cabbages, jesus christ. It's horrible because IT IS BASICALLY NORMAL CONDUCT for a lot of men, a looooot of perfectly nice men who are not in fact obvious douchebags or easily categorizable. It's just ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR IN THE CONTEXT OF CASUAL SEX, and that's the horrible part. Sex can be casual as all getout but why is the loudest narrative one in which both parties are not equally entitled to respect?

Did I say "loudest"? Because you can also substitute "only" there, if you want.

innocence is the paradigm that those conservative writers are working in - lost innocence, etc. obv bullshit + very condescending. xxp

but that's not the paradigm Dunham's working in. the sex scene is horrible not because her "innocence" has been destroyed, as Laurel points out so well.

just to clarify, i'm not sympathizing at all with the innocence narrative which is i think is really destructive + terrible. i was just pointing out that it is often the way that ppl like Flanagan discuss the issue. and i'm not claiming that Dunham is doing that either. i kinda feel like maybe i didn't adequately explain myself in the above post...

but certainly if Flanagan was going to make a gritty show about how casual sex culture is destroying America she might have a scene where a guy threatens not to wear a condom during sex and tries to initiate anal sex without consent, and another character has a loving boyfriend she hates, and another character has lots of casual sex and winds up unintentionally pregnant.

okay now you sound like Bruni

women shouldn't make culture that reflects their point of view and experiences because caitlin flanagan is an asshole?

i don't know how you got that from what i said. i don't know how you could possible get any opinion from me about whether they should make the show or not from what i said, especially since i've already said that i think the show is really well made and very interesting + provocative, and that part of its value is in bringing up these issues for me.

i dont see how the character who hates her bf can be used to argue that casual sex is destroying america, you could easily use that to argue that committed relationships are destroying america

i don't understand your point, Mordy

also we know next to nothing about the prego girl's situation at all at this point, a caitlin flanagan type could easily chastise this show for making it seem okay for a woman to get pregnant out of wedlock

she'd certainly find a way to chastise the show because she hates women, but i think mordy's right that she would use it as evidence of how feminism has ruined young women's lives. but that's because she has only one idea and she says it about everything.

why are we even talking about caitlin flanagan

did you guys know that caitlin flanagans husband is the president of the barbie division of mattel

we know that friend asked, "was it intentional?" and english girl said snarkily, "what do u think?"

i don't think the subtext of discussing this show needs to be 'should it be made or not?' i think that's pretty much the worst context to talk about this, or any piece of art or culture, and is not on my mind. xp to horseshoe

Sorry, I should point out that I haven't seen the show, I assume from slocki's post that the guy in the ep is actually her boyfriend and I probably shouldn't have used the term "casual sex" but I think there's a sense in which any sex you are having with someone who treats you poorly or disrespectfully is "casual"--they aren't valuing you and you aren't valuing yourself or insisting on anything better so how can that be beautiful or meaningful or intimate or whatever?

i think theres really common dynamic in your early/mid 20s where if you like someone more than they like you and you dont have the will or the sense of self or w/e to just stop wanting them or seeing them and so you just let yourself get treated worse than you should? and a lot of times you end up sleeping with this person that doesnt care about you or doesnt care enough like the sex in the pilot where their disinterest and your vulnerability make things really toxic

and like for straight guys i guess this dynamic rarely plays itself out during sex its more like the one girls clingy boyfriend instead but ive def been in situations and feel like its p common for that kind of emotional power inbalance to get ppl to have sex or types of sex they wouldnt choose for themselves in order to please. and i mean to hannahs credit shes asserts herself w/that guy even if she cant bring herself to stop wanting him