Lena Dunham Responds to Right-Wing Claim of Sibling "Sexual Abuse"
Author and director Lena Dunham took to Twitter today to call the claims that she'd "sexually abus[ed]" her little sister—made most prominently in article called "Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister," which appeared on the right-wing news website TruthRevolt—"fucking upsetting and disgusting."
The Truth Revolt article, published Thursday, aggregates columnist Kevin D. Williamson's article "Pathetic Privilege" from the November 3rd issue of the National Review, in which Williamson pulls out an "especially suspicious" passage from Dunham's book Not That Kind of Girl (published in September), about which he says there is "no non-horrific explanation."
"Do we all have uteruses?" I asked my mother when I was seven.
"Yes," she told me. "We're born with them, and with all our eggs, but they start out very small. And they aren't ready to make babies until we're older." I look at my sister, now a slim, tough one-year-old, and at her tiny belly. I imagined her eggs inside her, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte's Webb, and her uterus, the size of a thimble.
"Does her vagina look like mine?"
"I guess so," my mother said. "Just smaller."
One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn't resist and when I saw what was inside I shrieked.
My mother came running. "Mama, Mama! Grace has something in there!"
My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened Grace's vagina. This was within the spectrum of things I did. She just on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been a success.
The Truth Revolt blog post, currently in wide circulation in Dunham-hating circles on the right and the left, is punctuated with quite a correction:
Correction note: This article has been modified to correct a typo in the book excerpt incorrectly listing Dunham's age as seventeen.
Dunham took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon:
The right wing news story that I molested my little sister isn't just LOL- it's really fucking upsetting and disgusting.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 1, 2014
And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid's vagina, well, congrats to you.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 1, 2014
Usually this is stuff I can ignore but don't demean sufferers, don't twist my words, back the fuck up bros.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 1, 2014
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.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 1, 2014
Sometimes I get so mad I burn right up. Also I wish my sister wasn't laughing so hard.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) November 1, 2014
Dunham has an unfortunate history of making her sister's actual life personal-experience fodder for her memoirs: Grace told the New York Times Magazine that "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."
[Image via AP]