Lena Dunham denies child abuse claims stemming from new autobiography

[SHELLEE]

^Are you talking about bigben? She's been mia for a while.

[panic]

Yeah, I caught some of that Stern interview, wish I heard it all. I didn't hear any of this part cause I had to go.

Someone told me she woke up and her kid was standing there next to the bed staring at her. If I woke up and anyone was staring at me, I'd shit.

[KrisNine]

Everything about this girl just screams "I need attention". I could be wrong, but she just seems that way.

[Annika]

[panic]

Wow, thank you for posting that. I listen to this show every morning but I never watch it. I hope I get a minute to watch this sometime.

[panic]

Oh, it's only the audio. I thought it would be the video of the interview. I did miss a lot of the interview so this is still good.

[crayzeehappee]

puritanical my ass, this little girl bribed her baby sister with candy and tv time in exchange for kisses, to get the little girl to lay on top of her, body touches. What little kid does that? that is learned predator behavior. She's so dismissive in recounting all of this. Like she's reminiscing on a smashing good time or something.

once upon a time, there was a little girl of 3 who told her mommy that her 5 year old family member touched her 'down there'. it was all fine and 'experimental' until someone asked the 5 year old why did they touch the 3 year old and the 5 year old told them that an older family member touched them 'there'. When questioning the 14 year old, it came out the the father was molesting 14 year old. True story.

There's normal sexual curiosity, sure. What Lena did to her baby sister was not. And looking at her parents, specifically her father I can see why this was so 'normal' in that household. Nobody can tell me that lena wasn't re-enacting what was done to her.

'Looking at' her father leads you to believe he's a child molester?

[SHELLEE]

'Looking at' her father leads you to believe he's a child molester?

Yes, because you can ALWAYS tell a child molester just by looking at him.

[Godurugly]

Again, I have not read her actual statements so I can't have an opinion on that. Yes, it is normal and healthy for little kids to be curious and it has no basis in being sexual. In most cases, like Mel's example, it is consensual. In this case a one year old cannot consent. Do I beleieve the sister was emotionally damaged by this, NO! But I have seen cases where toddlers have been abused by older siblings with terrible outcomes.

I read an article from Rolling Stone (For realz!!) where Lena was interviewed and she spoke about a lot of this then too, and her first exposure to sex. She does not fall into the bucket of social norms, but that doesn't make one a bad person.

Lena Dunham: Girl on Top | Rolling Stone
Dunham's parents first took her to a therapist when she was seven years old, and she's pretty much been seeing one ever since. At that point, she was terrified of going to sleep, which she associated with the void of death. "The whole house was taken hostage by my nightmare sleep rituals," Dunham recalls. "I remember one night my dad was so mad, he just had to take a walk around the block, and I was like, 'Daddy's never coming back!' and my mom was like, 'No, Daddy's annoyed because you're being a shitty asshole.'"

Her parents (both successful artists – her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a photographer best known for evocative pictures of dolls and dollhouses; her father, Carroll Dunham, is an oft-phallic pop-art painter) had to tell her three fun things they were going to do the next day. Her mother would have to kiss her eyes; her dad would have to adjust the door precisely. They'd have to promise her that they'd come get her at 3 a.m. and move her to their bed. "Then I'd get up to pee, like, three times," she says, "and they'd have to do it again each time I got back into bed. Then they'd come get me at 3 a.m., and I'd sleep at the foot of my parents' bed like a dog. So it was, like, get this kid into therapy."

Dunham was soon diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which revved up around the age of nine. She went through a hypochondriacal phase: "AIDS, jaundice, you name it, I had it." Then she started counting. "I was obsessed with the number eight," she says. "I'd count eight times…. . . . I'd look on both sides of me eight times, I'd make sure nobody was following me down the street, I touched different parts of my bed before I went to sleep, I'd imagine a murder, and I'd imagine that same murder eight times."

Dunham developed an intense dread of sex as soon as she learned what it was. From the evidence presented on Girls, it's unclear whether she's ever fully gotten over it. "I'd come up with a theory that I thought made a tremendous amount of sense," she says, "which was that you'd lay next to someone you loved, you wished for a baby, and then the sperm and the egg met through the pores of your skin. My friend Amanda was like, 'No, a man puts his penis in your vagina,' and I was like, 'This is the worst thing I've ever heard; this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.' I told my little sister when she was five, so I wouldn't have to be alone with it. And now she's a lesbian. So there, we've nailed it! That and the fact that I used to make her make out with me through my grandmother's dialysis mask. No, that's not why someone's gay, but it's a funny theory."

Her parents were not entirely surprised by any of this. "Lena was kind of a weirdo," says Simmons. "But I was used to weirdos. I was one, and all the artists I know were probably weirdos when they were kids too. The funny thing is when two artists expect to have a superconventional child."

Simmons had grown up in suburban Long Island, where her own parents found her baffling. "That's a really awful feeling for a kid to think, that everything they dream up, their parents find peculiar," Simmons says. "So I just decided nothing was going to shake me up."

In the throes of her number-eight obsession, Dunham put that ethos to the test. "I remember saying to my mom when I was little, 'I just had to imagine having sex with you eight times,'" she says, "and she really took it in stride! She was like, 'Well, it's your imagination; it didn't really happen.'"

Dunham didn't have sex until college, though she did kiss a grand total of four guys in high school – two of them during a very eventful "humanitarian" trip to Cuba. "Cuban guys were really aggressive," she says. "One put his tongue in my ear and it was exciting and traumatizing, and then as I was leaving, I was like, 'What if he was the love of my life and I left him in Cuba?' and my friends were like, 'He didn't speak English, he was maybe a street person…. . . . '"

By high school, Dunham had gotten control of her OCD symptoms, but she was "drugged like a big horse" on massive doses of antidepressants. "I was so exhausted all the time, night sweats," she recalls. "I was pretty fat in high school if I look at it, because it just slows down your metabolism. My mom would always be like, 'I think you're having a lot of side effects,' and I'd be like, 'You're such a bitch; you just want me to be skinny!' and my mom was like, 'No, you're just sleeping all the time and sweaty.'" (There were some food issues, too – until recently, Dunham would ask for hotels to remove the mini-bar so she wouldn't eat everything in it.)

She weaned of meds toward the end of college, and has been frantically productive ever since. As of last March, though, she started taking a small dose of the anti-depressant Lexapro, just enough to dampen her anxiety. She keeps Klonopin in her bag, but she's afraid of it. "Don't ever Google a drug," she says, "because it's all psychos being like, 'This blinded me, it killed my husband.' I once flushed all my Klonopin down the toilet, because I was so scared by what I read. But if I feel I'm in the Tower of Terror, a little piece will just let me breathe."

Poor Lena. She's not a pedo, she's just super fucked up. I like her. I've never seen her show Girls, but I've seen her in a movie called Tiny Furniture, and she was really good. Her mom is in it, too. She also did a skit on Jimmy Fallon, maybe?, where she acted out the song Chandelier by Sia. It was pretty amazing. I hate that she's getting this bad publicity, knowing all of her mental issues she had as a child. Hopefully, it won't send her down a bad spiral.

[panic]

I've been wanting to see Tiny Furniture. Didn't know her mom was in it.

[ConstanceSpry]

^^^^
ever wonder why people don't talk about it, even though there's nothing wrong with it?
because of people's knee-jerk, puritanical reactions that see things through the lens of their adult, sexually repressed and warped minds, and not the way a child would, which doesn't even have a sexual element to it.
kids do weird and inappropriate things at that age when they're learning about bodies and boundaries and what's ok and not ok to do in public or to other people. most people forget about it or don't talk about it (because repression and taboo and it makes people uncomfortable) but that's not to say that there's anything wrong it it. which is why, even if she is an attention whore, there's something refreshing about the fact that she's putting all of that stuff in her book so that at least the discussion can take place. maybe not all kids do stuff like that but a lot of them do, and nothing she describes is exceptional or abnormal.

this is the passage in question:



there was nothing sexual about her intentions. it was only a child expressing curiosity about a part of her sister's anatomy. most kids have a moment where they wonder if other kids have a vagina like they do, or a penis if it's a boy. there's nothing pervy or abusive about it, it's just children exploring theirs and other kids' bodies and sure, you have to explain to your kid that they can't go around touching other kids' genitals because that's not how you act in polite society but what kids are doing isn't sexual in any way, and to see it that way means that you're projecting your own, adult viewpoint onto what is nothing more than childhood curiosity.
and of course the fact that conservatives are the ones having a field day about this, is relevant. they're the ones obsessed with sex, who's having it, who's not, why, who can and can't have it, how much you can tell kids about it without running the risk of knowledge and information making them gay or slutty, and they're obsessed with sexualising things which aren't even sexual in the first place.

Yes, I see your point, but honestly, is anyone really interested in hearing about her (or anyone else) experimenting, whether as kids or adults? That's just TMI, in my opinion.

[czb]

^^^ maybe, but i think the people who would buy an autobiography of lena's realize she overshares.

[rollo]

That's my beef as well. Come on, she is not trying to be "educational" in the least. She's just trying to ramp up her book with lurid details. Maybe the publishers even told her to sex it up and she spewed forth.

[czb]

but that's who she is. so she is consistent. i can't imagine buying her book but i'm sure someone among her 50 fans will.

[sputnik]

Yes, I see your point, but honestly, is anyone really interested in hearing about her (or anyone else) experimenting, whether as kids or adults? That's just TMI, in my opinion.

then don't read it. it's really very simple. i don't understand why people think they get to decide what people should and shouldn't write about. a lot of memoirs are full of stuff a lot of people aren't interested in heared about and and so they just don't read it. they aren't telling other people not to write it, unless it's 'TMI' by which of course they mean it's about sex or something that makes people uncomfortable, like little kids touching each others' genitals.

That's my beef as well. Come on, she is not trying to be "educational" in the least. She's just trying to ramp up her book with lurid details. Maybe the publishers even told her to sex it up and she spewed forth.

again, who cares? is being educational the only reason to write about something? also, it's only lurid to you because you're reading into it with your adult eyes and making it lurid. same as those conservative bloggers and writers projecting their adult, sexualised viewpoint onto children.

and besides, i think it's been established at this point that lena's an attention whore, but at least she's an attention whore who got famous by writing and starring in her own movie, and then tv show, by the time she was 25, and not by starring in a 'leaked' sex tape or because she banged someone famous.