Lena Dunham denies child abuse claims stemming from new autobiography

[Annika]

i personally would not have included it in my biography, but the responses people are giving this chick on different sites is pretty crazy. from 'she made her sister a lesbian because of the abuse she dished out' to 'have her arrested'. seriously?

and yeah, they 'mistakenly' my ass. got everyone all riled up.

i don't really know who this chick is but i agree, people are making it disgusting. i myself was 'experimented on' a bit when i was younger and i don't feel like i was 'sexually abused', actually it felt good to me and i really think being told you were molested is what fucks you up. (i am not talking about being raped by a 40 year old man, i'm talking about two kids who kinda have no idea what they are doing and just going with it).

(my aunt who was like 3 years older than me and i smooched lots when we were little. i was right into tongue kissing at 5)

[Palermo]

Truth Revolt is a disgusting blog with an agenda. They originally "mistakenly" wrote that Lena was seventeen at the time, rather than seven.

Gawker printed the relevant excerpt and it didn't seem like a big deal to me. Her mom had just taught her about vaginas and penises and she was playing outside with her little sister, thought, "I wonder if Grace has a vagina too" so she looked. Then she screamed because she saw her sister had put some pebbles in her crotch, so their mom came out of the house and dealt with it. To try and portray it as "sexual abuse" is an offense to those who've genuinely suffered.

I saw comments on another site that she would bribe the girl with candy to kiss her for a long time and she also masturbated next to her sister. (per the book, beats me if it's true)

[sluce]

Nono - no idea about the blogger, but I do hope they have blown it out of context. Still, Lena herself wrote: anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying Very poor choice of words if she was not intended to stir the pot.

[MohandasKGanja]

So, sometime last week, Dunham puts out a t-shirt supporting Planned Parenthood and gets a bunch of celebrities to Tweet themselves wearing it, and then this hit piece comes out. Fuck that.

[KrisNine]

I'm not sure of what she wrote in her book, I'm guessing it's not exactly what the blogger has written, but I have to wonder a bit about Lena's story. How old was she when this happened? Sounds like she was quite a bit older than the younger sister. When I was about 5, a family friend that was just a couple of years older than me, corned me and pulled his pants down. He wanted me to do the same and got mad at me when I wouldn't. This was in a storage shed in the back of a farmhouse property. He told me that I would be in big trouble if I told my mom and dad. So, sometimes, what seems innocent to one, isn't necessarily so to the other.

[eeyore0101]

Do I think she's a 7 year old is a child molester? No. Do I think it's an inappropriate thing to publish, yeah, probably. Do I think this is a chick who is milking her 15 minutes of fame, who had nothing particularly interesting to write about, yet wrote a book about it anyway, while her attempt at "funny! edgy! shocking!" girl falls flat - 100%. She had to know the "sexual predator" comment would be offensive, and she probably loves that that's what people are focusing on, rather than the fact that her book sucks. She has such a "look at me! Look at me!" personality that I wouldn't be surprised if she exaggerated or downright made the whole thing up to be "shocking".

Is it obvious I am not a fan?

[panic]

Horny bastard.

[sputnik]

“This was within the spectrum of things I did,” she writes. Uh, if this were a boy opening his sister's vulva what would people be saying. I have always thought she is a nut, this doesn't change my mind.

no, it would still be normal behaviour by children. kids experiment, they're curious about everything around them, including their bodies. there is nothing sexual about it and whether it's a boy or girl doesn't change anything when you're talking about a 7 year-old. and take into account the context - this is a 7 year-old whose mother had just told her about vaginas. of course she was going to be curious. and they might do inappropriate stuff like this, but i would think that any sane parent who caught their kids doing something like this would just explain that you don't go around touching other people's privates, but not in a way that's going to make the kid feel dirty or ashamed.

Truth Revolt is a disgusting blog with an agenda. They originally "mistakenly" wrote that Lena was seventeen at the time, rather than seven.

Gawker printed the relevant excerpt and it didn't seem like a big deal to me. Her mom had just taught her about vaginas and penises and she was playing outside with her little sister, thought, "I wonder if Grace has a vagina too" so she looked. Then she screamed because she saw her sister had put some pebbles in her crotch, so their mom came out of the house and dealt with it. To try and portray it as "sexual abuse" is an offense to those who've genuinely suffered.

this.
i have very vivid memories of my cousins and i (two boys, one is the exact same age as me and the other 2 years older) stripping down to our underwear and showing each other our privates. one time they touched mine, and i touched theirs too. and there was nothing sexual about it, it was touching in the way you touch something as a kid when it's the first time you see it.

[NickiDrea]

She was 7? People should be ashamed to label a 7 year old as a child molester. I would call that curiousity and not abuse. From the original excerpt posted, I thought she was like 14 or something.

I agree that I wouldn't have published this though.

[sputnik]

i don't think there's anything wrong with publishing it. yes, lena's an attention whore but i think it's also good to have this out there so people can be told that it's normal childhood curiosity, that theres's nothing sexual about it and they're the ones with issues if they think this is in any way pervy or abuse.

[SHELLEE]

My issue with ner publishing it is about the sister. I just hope she had her approval first.

[sputnik]

From what I've heard, the sister finds the story hilarious.

[NoNoRehab]

Reddit commenters discovered (via cached pages) that Truth Revolt originally published the story and had her age down as seventeen rather than seven three times, including changing the age in the actual quotes from the book from seven to seventeen. Definitely not a mistake and that was why it originally went viral - the website changed it to the correct ago only after it made the rounds of the interwebs.

I saw comments on another site that she would bribe the girl with candy to kiss her for a long time and she also masturbated next to her sister. (per the book, beats me if it's true)

She wrote that she rubbed one out under the covers when she shared a bed with her sister in childhood. (Her sister was asleep at the time.) Big whoop. Just about any kid who shared a bed with a sibling did that. It's not like she did it because she had the hots for her sister.

And again, the kissing story wasn't like she French kissed her sister. She may be guilty of a bad joke but this is pretty standard kids stuff. They do shit like that trying to figure out the grown up world. It's like my nephew saying he wants to marry me.

[MohandasKGanja]

It's a story that was being pushed mostly by conservative sites. Now, it's caught fire and apparently she has even cancelled book appearances while trying to deal with this.

[SHELLEE]

Now, it's caught fire and apparently she has even cancelled book appearances while trying to deal with this.

Well at least some good has come from this.