Part of me has wanted to hate Lena Dunham since I watched the first episode of Girls. Maybe it was her talent, or perhaps I just felt threatened by the fact I spent all my time overweight being ashamed of my body, and there she was, all areolas and yellow bikinis, making me feel like my years of body shame were all for nothing. When recent allegations interpreted passages from Dunham’s book Not That Kind of Girl as shocking details of the sexual molestation of her younger sister, I had every reason to condemn her. I could negate her every accomplishment by citing pages in her own memoir. Yet, as I sit here reflecting on my many opinions about Lena Dunham, I keep arriving at the same sentiment: I don’t think she’s a child molester, but what she wrote doesn’t sit well with me, either.
There are plenty of people who will say that means that I don’t understand sexual abuse, white privilege, etc., and that sucks, but I’ll endure it because I think the reason(s) everyone is so outraged may extend far beyond the insinuation of sexual abuse. These allegations are about more than morality; this is about politics and furtherance of the witch-hunt to denounce Dunham since Girls came to our television screens in 2012.
I’ve been reading Not That Kind of Girl off and on when I have time, and if there’s one thing I’ve established about Lena Dunham, it’s this: there was some weird, hippie shit going on in that household when she was growing up. It’s clear that her upbringing was very liberal, and at times, reading about it gave me eerie cult vibes. That’s just how different it was to me, but hey, I grew up in the south Chicago suburbs in a bungalow. Essential gender roles were things I learned from life and the Internet, not from my mother. That doesn’t make Dunham’s upbringing superior or inferior to mine (and it certainly doesn’t give her a reason to molest anyone, if you’re already making that leap), but I candidly admit that I probably would’ve raised my eyebrows at lot of things that were c’est la vie in that household.
When I was seven I learned the word, “rape,” but I thought it was “rabe.” I pronounced it like the playwright, not the broccoli, and I used it with reckless abandon… Oh, the justice of having to live with a child. Grace, wanting desperately to play, grabbed at my feet and ankles…
“Mom! Papa!” I screamed. “She’s rabing me! She’s rabing me!”
“What?” my mother asked, desperately trying to keep her lips from curling into a smile.
“Grace is rabing me.”
The chapter “Who Moved My Uterus?” begins with Dunham discovering she has adenomyosis, which is a telltale sign of endometriosis, a condition that can make it harder for women to get pregnant. From discovering this diagnosis at the doctor, we jump to a seven-year-old Dunham asking her mother, “Do we all have uteruses?” From there, we get the passage everyone’s been talking about this week:
One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist, and when I saw what was inside I shrieked.
My mother came running. “Mama, Mama! Grace has something in there!”
My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been such a success.
It gets weirder than vagina pebbles.
As she grew, I took to bribing her for her time and affection: one dollar in quarters if I could do her makeup like a “motorcycle chick.” Three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds. Whatever she wanted to watch on TV if she would just “relax on me.” Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.
Um.
I shared a bed with my sister, Grace, until I was seventeen years old. She was afraid to sleep alone and would begin asking me around 5:00 P.M. every day whether she could sleep with me. I put on a big show of saying no, taking pleasure in watching her beg and sulk, but eventually I always relented. Her sticky, muscly little body thrashed beside me every night as I read Anne Sexton, watched reruns of SNL, sometimes even as I slipped my hand into my underwear to figure some stuff out.
Okaaaaaaaaay.
I don’t read any of that and feel comfortable. It weirds me out with its brassy, confident language, however, I must admit that prior to someone else saying it, “sexual molestation” didn’t enter my mind. Why that is, I can’t explain. It’s not because I’m a die-hard Dunham fan and feel obligated to protect her (and all privileged white women) from bad press, or because I think we should brush these off as an extreme examples of Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine—I just think there’s so much more to consider than the narratives in Dunham’s book. For instance, what about Grace? What are her thoughts on this?
heteronormativity deems certain behaviours harmful, and others “normal”; the state and media are always invested in maintaining that
— Grace Dunham (@simongdunham) November 3, 2014
As a queer person: i’m committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful — Grace Dunham (@simongdunham) November 3, 2014
2day, like every other day, is a good day to think about how we police the sexualities of young women, queer, and trans people
— Grace Dunham (@simongdunham) November 3, 2014
As the alleged victim in this situation, I do think Grace’s point of view is important. Moreover, what a lot of articles I’ve read about this have failed to establish is that there is more to Lena and Grace’s relationship than forced sensuality.
As soon as my issues disappeared, Grace’s replaced them, as if sleep disorders were a family business being passed down through the ages. And though I persisted in complaining, I still secretly cherished her presence in my bed. The light snoring, the way she put herself to sleep by counting cracks in the ceiling, nothing them with a mousy sound that is best spelled like this: Miep Miep Miep. The way her little pajama top rode up over her belly. My baby girl. I was keeping her safe until morning.
You know what really sucks about all of this this? There’s no way to defend Dunham without seeming like you’re denouncing the severity of sexual abuse. I can’t explain the tenderness, jealousy, curiosity, and security that—from my perception formed entirely by Not That Kind of Girl—forms Lena and Grace’s relationship, because that seems to say, “What’s a little sexual molestation between siblings, eh?” I think that’s part of why so many people – some without having read a page of her book – are in an uproar about this. On some level, how can you not be outraged when you read about a sibling spreading open another sibling’s vagina? What defense exists that acknowledges the gravity of the circumstances but offers the suggestion that perhaps this isn’t what we think it is?
I think my desire to defend Dunham has a lot to do with the fact this evidence all comes from her memoir. As a writer who frequently writes about things that have happened in my life, one of my greatest fears is sharing something that somehow turns me into a monster. I never spread anyone’s vagina apart, but I can recall having a pants off Spice Girls party with two of my friends (one of whom was a boy) in my living room when I wasn’t allowed to have anyone inside the house when my mom wasn’t home. It wasn’t sexual—it was purely curiosity. I can also recall crushing up a bag of white chalk into a fine powder that resembled cocaine and strategically placing that bag near the sidewalk outside my house. Me and my friend, two twelve(ish)-year-old girls, wanted to see if we could ambush some nefarious coke addict.
Being misunderstood and/or labeled something you aren’t can be one of the most challenging things about being a writer, because once your words are out there, they’re completely out of your grasp, free to fly in the wind and into the wrong hands. I can’t help but put myself in Dunham’s shoes and think about how helpless and terrifying these accusations must feel, even for a person as in-your-face and over-the-top as Dunham. I imagine if it were me how I wish I could go back and revise that section of my book and erase the text from the page like it never happened. I’d hate my seven-year-old self in retrospect for putting me in this position. That’s my bias when thinking about this scandal.
Dunham has recently stated that she intends in pursuing legal action against Truth Revolt for the article they published about all of this (though these claims first appeared in an article in National Review written by Kevin D. Williamson). Now I’m no lawyer, but I don’t really see how that’s possible. What they wrote is a serious accusation (and a horrible one), but it is based on passages in her memoir. ANYWAY. Here’s Truth Revolt’s response to those reports:
We refuse. We refuse to withdraw our story or apologize for running it, because quoting a woman’s book does not constitute a “false” story, even if she is a prominent actress and left-wing activist. Lena Dunham may not like our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that book – and the First Amendment covers a good deal of material she may not like.
I had no intention of making this article political, but what in holy hell does Dunham’s status as a left-wing activist have to do with any of this? Sexual abuse is not political. When I read this response, with its First Amendment citation that all people/organizations use to excuse the unsavory things they say/write, I see an agenda. If you’re outraged because what Dunham wrote is how you define sexual molestation, you have every right to feel that way. As for me, what I’m left wondering is if Kevin D. Williamson, Truth Revolt, or whoever capitalized on an opportunity to drastically change public opinion about someone who is an outspoken, liberal woman. If this is truly about sexual abuse, let that speak for itself, politics should have nothing to do with it.
As for my thoughts about Lena Dunham, I still don’t hate her–what I feel now is pity, confusion, and concern.
