If you haven't, let me fill you in. Lena Dunham is a young actress/producer/writer who became a celebrity in 2012 with the release of her mega-hit T.V series, "Girls." Described as being a "Sex and the City for 20-somethings," the show follows the lives of young women trying to get it together in New York City. From this show, Lena became an instant success, and has been featured in practically every talk show, magazine, blog (hee hee), you name it. Almost every millennial knows her name.
Recently, Dunham has become the subject of a controversy because of certain scenes in her recently-released memoir. (Yes, this woman has a memoir. At age 28.) In these scenes, Dunham describes spreading open her younger sister's vagina to find pebbles she had stuffed in there, masturbating in bed next to her, and bribing her sister with candy to kiss her on the lips for long periods of time.
FYI, I did read the actual passages in the book before I started writing this post, so I'm judging these based on what I have actually read, not what some bozo on the Internet has told me to think. In the pebbles-in-vagina scenario, Lena was 7 and Grace was 1. In the masturbation-in-bed one, Lena was 17 and Grace was 11, in the kissing-on-the-lips incident, it's not clear what ages the girls are, but they were both still children.
The controversy is what to make of it all.
Some people say Lena molested her sister. Some people are saying everything she did was just normal childhood sexual exploration. Which side should we take?
Well, I'll give you my two cents. There are a couple of factors that need to be taken into account. One is the definition of molestation. According to this website, there are a couple of acts that are defined as child sexual abuse. These are:
- sexual touching of any part of the body, clothed or unclothed
- penetrative sex
- encouraging a child to engage in sexual activity
- intentionally engaging in sexual activity in front of a child
- showing children pornography or using children to create pornography
- encouraging a child to engage in prostitution
OK, I feel sort of sick just typing all that. Let me take a break.
I'm back. So did Lena molest her sister? Looking at the definition of child sexual abuse, there are a couple of things that immediately seem not OK. Out of all the incidents, the kissing one seems the most serious to me. Why? Because it seems like the most intentional, where Lena seemed to be purposely deriving sexual pleasure from a non-consensual act.
The other ones are grayer to me. Masturbation is definitely a sexual act, but was Lena intentionally engaging in it in front of her sister? I don't think she was. The pebble incident is also a little bit iffy, but it seems more like curiosity than an intent to arouse.
The second factor is how Grace feels about it all. Does she feel victimized by what Lena did? She has come out publicly that she does not. She has said it is up to the individual affected by it to decide whether or not it was harmful. I agree.
What the Lena controversy can teach us all is that it's important for parents to police the behaviors of children. Internet experts everywhere were saying, "Oh, childhood sexual exploration is normal!!!!" And maybe it is. But if sexual exploration is normal, then children should explore their own bodies and be taught to leave others' bodies alone.
Maybe you yourself were a victim of sibling sexual abuse, and this recent controversy has left you feeling angry, or confused, or scared. I say that each person is the narrator of his or her own story. If you felt victimized by something a sibling did to you, then that is your story. You have every right to feel that way.
And in case you didn't already know, I've mentioned Lena on my blog before. Whether she is a perpetrator of sexual abuse is iffy, but she was certainly guilty of another type of abuse. A type of abuse we as a society haven't talked about, and need to.
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