In late October conservative news outlets Truth Revolt and the National Review accused 28-year old television star, writer, and producer Lena Dunham of sexually abusing her younger sister. The accusations were made based on accounts Dunham writes about in her recent autobiography, Not That Kind of Girl.
The National Review and Truth Revolt articles–the latter of which is entitled “Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister”–looked at several passages in which Dunham describes her youthful physical and sexual interactions with her six-year younger sister. In these passages, Dunham writes of masturbating while her sister slept next to her, spreading open her sister’s vagina, and bribing her sister with candy to get her to kiss her.
Perhaps most disturbing is when she describes her actions as “anything a sexual predator might do.”
In response to the allegations, Dunham went on a self-described “rage spiral” on Twitter, and her lawyers sent Truth Revolt a cease-and-desist letter demanding the website take down the story, warning that they could sue for “millions of dollars” if it was not. The article is still up.
Here are some of the Tweets comprising Dunham’s rage spiral:
“The right-wing news story that I molested my little sister isn’t just LOL — it’s really f*cking upsetting and disgusting.”
“Usually this is stuff I can ignore but don’t demean sufferers, don’t twist my words, back the fuck up bros.”
“I told a story about being a weird 7 year old. I bet you have some too, old men, that I’d rather not hear. And yes, this is a rage spiral.”
Among liberals and young people, Dunham is adored for her HBO series “Girls” and for her left-wing political activism, most notably with Planned Parenthood.
Recently, notable Cornell Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, Ph.D., who specializes in human development and heads the Sex and Gender Lab, was interviewed in a Slate article entitled “Lena Dunham’s Totally Normal Childhood.” In the piece, Savin-Williams is quoted saying, “Children have been doing this stuff forever and ever and ever and ever, and they will do it forever and ever and ever.”
Savin-Williams has joined the chorus of those coming to the defense of Dunham, and more broadly of the idea of adolescent sexuality. Though he is not a sexual abuse expert, he has written and researched extensively about human and child sexuality. In an interview with The Cornell Review, the professor reiterated his stance that Dunham’s behavior is in his eyes completely normal, though later admitted the language she uses—like the “sexual predator” self-description—is “a bit strange.”
“[If you think what she did was sexual assault] you would be locking up half the population,” he said. “Young children are curious. They don’t know what’s right or wrong… [The] fault is on parents for not talking about sex. It’s the silence.”
He also suggested that parents should begin talking to children about sexuality and erogenous zones of the human body when they are 3 years old.
Even if childhood sexual curiosity is in fact the norm and in itself completely normal, what of Dunham’s attitude toward her actions 20 years later? Is proudly thinking of oneself as a “sexual predator” normal, too? Savin-Williams contended that while he disagrees with the language used, he believes Dunham’s feelings about her past aren’t uncommon, and that it is not right to feel ashamed or guilty of childhood sexual acts or curiosity.
Dunham did recently issue an apology, after having already cancelled book tour dates across Europe:
I am dismayed over the recent interpretation of events described in my book Not That Kind of Girl. First and foremost, I want to be very clear that I do not condone any kind of abuse under any circumstances. Childhood sexual abuse is a life-shattering event for so many, and I have been vocal about the rights of survivors. If the situations described in my book have been painful or triggering for people to read, I am sorry, as that was never my intention. I am also aware that the comic use of the term “sexual predator” was insensitive, and I’m sorry for that as well. As for my sibling, Grace, she is my best friend, and anything I have written about her has been published with her approval.
This whole case is rather astounding, not so much because of the—to put it nicely—unusual accounts in Dunham’s memoirs, but because of how the rhetoric and arguments usually demonized by left-wingers are now being used to defend Dunham. In particular, Dunham’s defenders are often using the very arguments demonized and basically outlawed in the rape culture and sexual assault debates to justify their starlet’s behavior.
Take the Slate article linked above for example. In between arguing that child sexual curiosity and exploring is normal, which to a certain degree makes sense, writer Melinda Moyer tries to distinguish between real and trivial sexual abuse–isn’t all sexual abuse the same, regardless of intensity? That’s the standard I believe in, and the standard used in discussion about rape and sexual assault, but it’s curiously disregarded here. Furthermore, there is discussion of how the younger sister doesn’t hold anything against Dunham–as if to say this legitimizes Dunham’s behavior. There is no discussion of the younger sister’s possible past reluctance to speak out, any sense of shame she might have felt, and Stockhold Syndrom-like symptoms that are so often discussed regarding rape and sexual assault.
Clearly, there is a double-standard. It’s rather safe to assume that many who are defending Dunham would not if she was not a liberal-progressive television star.
Savin-Williams and others have suggested instead that there could have been a political motive behind the National Review and Truth Revolt’s pieces, since both are conservative publications. The professor also agreed that it was valid to criticize, as many others have, the National Review and Truth Revolt writers for being straight white males, a line of criticism that ultimately suggests the male criticizers are sexually aroused by Dunham’s accounts.
When asked whether he and other writers and academics would have defended, say, Bill O’Reilly if he wrote a tell-all book detailing childhood sexual acts with younger siblings, the professor said “That’s out of my area of expertise.”
The Cornell Review earnestly waits for the day Ms. Dunham visits campus.
