Lena Dunham is known as a pretty open person who often over-shares. But after the backlash she’s received from her book, the Indiana Daily Student Editorial Board can only hope she’ll learn to think about what she’s saying before she publishes it.
Dunham’s problem comes from accusations that she sexually assaulted her sister, Grace Dunham, based off of passages written in Lena’s memoir, “Not that Kind of Girl.”
In the book, Lena discusses a time when she looked into her sister’s vagina, which she passed off as just being a curious child. As the sisters grew older, Dunham revealed that she would pay Grace in candy or coins to kiss her and admitted to masturbating in the same bed as her sister while Grace slept.
Though the acts Dunham describes sound sexual in nature, her mind was not developed enough yet to understand what she was actually doing. This sexual behavior is actually common among ?children.
It was the way Dunham wrote these passages that was inappropriate. While these parts of the book reveal a lot about Lena, they also delve deeply into Grace’s personal life, and Dunham has a history of exposing her sister.
In Grace’s senior year of high school, Grace came out to Dunham as a lesbian. Grace was not yet ready to tell their parents, and instead of agreeing with her sister’s wishes, Lena took it upon herself to tell Grace’s secret to their parents.
In an interview with the New York Times, Dunham told writer Meghan Duam, “Basically, it’s like I can’t keep my own secrets. And I consider Grace to be an extension of me, and therefore, I couldn’t handle the fact that she’s a very private person with her own value system and her own aesthetic and that we do different things.”
Grace expressed frustration at her sister taking her privacy into her own hands in the same interview.
“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.”
Dunham’s tendency to control her sister and this insensitive sharing of childhood experiences shows how she treats Grace as an object instead of a family member.
Aside from the over-controlling nature Dunham revealed having over Grace, Dunham also offended people with a rather tasteless joke. In her book, she jokes that she bribed her sister with candy and says, “...anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl, I was ?trying.”
By joking that she acted like a child predator, Dunham put herself in a position to receive harsh criticism. Because she was dealing with such sensitive subject manner, the joke was in poor taste.
This joke also discounts situations in which people have really been sexually assaulted. Dunham did not seem to realize at the time that the joke could be taken offensively, and she later apologized.
When writing the passage, Dunham should have considered that many of her readers might not be aware that this behavior is common among children. She should have added more explanation of her actions instead of including inappropriate jokes.
Dunham did not handle the writing of her experience seriously or sensitively. Hopefully, she learned she needs to give more clear context for sensitive subject manner in her writing.
