Did Lena Dunham Really Molest Her Younger Sister?
Clearly, Dunham didn’t have the most conventional parents. But it’s unfortunate that they didn’t establish boundaries. After her mother removed the rocks that were in her sister’s vagina (completely unbelievable), she should have had a conversation with her already-school-aged daughter about the importance of respecting people’s bodies enough not to touch their private parts.
Then later, Lena describes the tactics she used to gain her sister’s affection. There’s the questionable “relax on me” line and the part where she likens herself to a sexual predator. Perhaps it was supposed to be a joke. But sexual predators aren’t exactly funny and when you describe your interactions with your sister in what could be interpreted as a sexual manner, it would be wise to avoid that type of language. Instead, Dunham put the very strong image of “sexual predator” in the readers’ minds and then was outraged when people drew the same conclusion.
She took to Twitter in what she called a rage spiral to address the accusations.
Do I think Dunham molested her sister? No. But I do believe it was inappropriate. For me, a lot of this boils down to Lena’s parents failing to establish boundaries with her little sister’s body and then Lena struggling to see her sister as a person, separate from herself.
Tellingly, in an interview with New York Times Magazine, where the sisters talk about the time Lena took it upon herself to come out for her sister to their parents. Lena said:
“Basically, it’s like I can’t keep any of my own secrets,” Lena said. “And I consider Grace to be an extension of me, and therefore I couldn’t handle the fact that she’s a very private person with her own value system and her own aesthetic and that we do different things.”
And Grace said:
“Without getting into specifics, most of our fights have revolved around my feeling like Lena took her approach to her own personal life and made my personal life her property.”
For me, that’s the crux of all of this. As someone with a younger sister, I can relate to Lena viewing her sister as an extension of herself. It’s not hard to make the leap that in exploring her sister’s body, she felt like she was gaining insight into her own. I know what it’s like to feel like your little sister belongs to you. Without any genital touching, I remembering spending a significant portion of my childhood manipulating my younger sister in one way or another, trying to wield control over this “other part of me.” But it never got to genital touching because my parents nailed “good touch, bad touch” into our heads. There was a boundary. My sister was the keeper of her body, like I was the keeper of mine. If I had to explore, I could look at my own body. But apparently, Lena’s upbringing was different. I’d argue, judging by her mom’s response after the pebble incident, that she didn’t get that message.
I even understand sharing your sister’s secrets and stories. I was in my twenties when I went around telling entirely too many people that my sister’s boyfriend had cheated on her. At the time, hand to God, I didn’t see anything wrong with it. It wasn’t until my sister threw eye daggers at me right as I was about to tell the fifth person, that I realized I was doing entirely too much. Before the look, in my mind it was our shared pain and our shared story, which I felt I had the right to tell. In retrospect, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
And while I hope Lena got her sister’s permission to tell these stories, her track record does make you wonder if Grace is really cool with all of this. Lena is the sister who likes to share and overshare. Grace is not about that life.
Grace, like her sister, also responded to the recent criticisms that have been lobbed at her sister.
Like I said earlier, I don’t believe it was molestation, just normal, albeit disturbing childhood behavior that went unchecked. The fact that Grace says she didn’t internalize these incidents as harmful may mean that it’s true.
It’s just interesting that Lena Dunham thought these instances were suitable for her memoir in the first place. Everything doesn’t need to be shared, specifically when it’s something that could be interpreted as predatory or molestation. And while Lena’s story is gaining some traction, I shudder to think how this book would have been received if it had been written by a man or a person of color. It would have never made it past editors. But because Lena is white, privileged and has marketed herself as a feminist/proponent of women’s issues we were supposed to laugh at her childhood quirks and keep it moving.
It was just anything but funny.
