Let's Talk About the Lena Controversy

Maybe you've heard of her:

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. 

A Fourth Reason: Insecurity

A year or two ago, the television show "Girls," was the next big thing everyone was talking about. Created by mid-twenty-something Lena Dunham, the show is often described as a modern version of "Sex and the City" for twenty-something women. I don't have HBO, and "Girls" isn't streaming on Netflix, so I never really got around to watching it. Recently, though, a friend told me about this website where you can watch a bunch of different television shows for free (illegally, of course), and "Girls" was on there. My curiosity got the best of me, and one night I sat down and binge-watched my way through the entire first season.

I don't like Lena Dunham (more on than later) so I was expecting to hate the show. But to be honest, I didn't feel that strongly about it. The characters were annoying and the dialogue was clearly contrived from eavesdropped Starbucks conversations, but nothing else really stood out to me. Except for one scene.

During one part of the first season's finale episode, Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham's character) and her roommate, Marnie have a fight. It begins with Marnie passively-aggressively insulting Hannah, and then spirals from there. The two begin attacking each other, and Marnie says at one point,"You judge everyone, and yet you ask them not to judge you!" And then Hannah responds with a line that made me reach a new level of clarity in my quest to understand sibling abuse:  

"That is because no one could ever hate me as much as I hate myself. Any mean thing someone's gonna think of to say about me, I've already said to me, about me, probably in the last half hour!"

Pause. Rewind.

Let me take you back to the year 2010, and introduce you to another, lesser known creation produced by Lena Dunham, "Tiny Furniture." This was the first feature-length film Dunham created, and tells the story of Dunham and her post-college graduation crisis. This film doesn't say much of anything--in fact, it's one of the most boring movies I've ever seen--but it does reveal a lot (at least in my opinion) about Dunham herself.

Fiction is always at least partly autobiographical, and "Tiny Furniture" is definitely a mini-autobiography of Dunham's life. Many people will notice many different things when they see the film, but one thing that certainly stood out to me when I watched it is the relationship Dunham has with her sister. What stood out to me the most was that Lena Dunham was an abusive older sibling, and her younger sister, Grace, sought revenge in her teen years. How do I know this?

As someone who has developed an eye for abusive sibling relationships, I can confidently tell you that "sibling abuse" is written all over the relationship Dunham has (or had) with her sister. One thing I dislike about Dunham is the fact that she always portrays herself as the innocent victim. In the very first scene of "Tiny Furniture," Grace starts being snarky to Lena, who then says to Grace, "You're being mean!" (Grace then quips back with, "And you're being over-sensitive!," a remark I'm sure was always leveled at her when she defended herself.)

That film made me dislike Lena Dunham (I have no tolerance for abusive older siblings, and even less for ones who think they're innocent), and "Girls" made me understand her. Why was Dunham mean to her sister? Because she was filled with insecurities, and picking on her sister made her feel better. What we see in that episode of "Girls" is not Hannah Horvath talking, it's Lena Dunham talking. And she's telling us about the hurt that pushed her to want to destroy others.

Insecurity in the abuser is another big reason for sibling abuse. For these abusers, the words they say out loud are reflections of the thoughts inside their minds. In a weird way, the abuser is also being abused--by their very self. And if we want to stamp out sibling abuse, we should focus on all of the abusers present, even the ones not visible.