Lena Dunham, the writer/director of HBO’s “Girls,” is not happy with people who read her memoir, “Not That Type Of Girl,” and took it seriously. Dunham, a child of privilege whose family is “old money” from Manhattan, has constructed an image of herself as a struggling artist who shops at thrift stores and understands the trails and tribulations of average “girls.” But reality is something different entirely.
National Review’s Kevin Williamson dissected Dunham’s book, detailing her use of rhetorical tricks to avoid directly making an accusation of rape against a former schoolmate, while using “others” to do it for her.
Williamson also highlights what would get anyone from a non-moneyed, non-connected family rightly removed from their home and placed in a facility for troubled children – the gleeful sexual abuse of her infant sister, Grace.
As Williamson points out, Dunham freely admits much of her memoir is a lie, much more is full of direct contradictions with other parts of the tome. But the casualness with which Dunham writes of predatorily violating her sister has passed with little notice from the embarrassingly fawning entertainment media.
From Williamson:
Dunham writes of casually masturbating while in bed next to her younger sister, of bribing her with “three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds . . . anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” At one point, when her sister is a toddler, Lena Dunham pries open her vagina — “my curiosity got the best of me,” she offers, as though that were an explanation. “This was within the spectrum of things I did.”
Since, by her own admission, her memoir contains stories that are either not true or were taken from someone else, this could have conceivably fallen into one of those categories.
However, Lena Dunham took to Twitter Saturday to verify the truthfulness of those stories, and to attempt to justify them.
She blames her admitted sexual abuse on “being a weird 7 year old.”
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 been very active promoting progressive politicians and is a big supporter of President Barack Obama. She is currently on vacation in Europe.