Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past week, you’ll have read about the accusationsagainst Lena Dunham by online commenters and one website in particular, saying she basically molested her younger sister at the age of seven. The site deduced from a chapter in Lena’s memoir Not That Kind Of Girl, that Lena looking at her little sister’s vagina when they were both small kids was in fact molestation.
The bit everyone lost their shit over reads as follows: ‘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 didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina… It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there.’
As Lena said in a Tweet a few days ago: ‘And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you.’ She knew the accusation was ludicrous, but as outlets continued to report on it for days, she decided to address it in an official way by releasing a statement. It wasn’t a self defense statement, though, it was actually to make it clear that she did not intend for the chapter in her book to cause pain or trigger painful memories for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
‘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.’
Can we stop talking about it now?
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.