^ Actually that is a very good point.
The world is a strange place.
Even if I'm not entirely sure who Lena Dunham is. I assume she's popular in the states, but has yet to make any significant impact in the UK?
She's an eccentric writer, creator, and star of a popular show called
Girls, and her entire brand is essentially based upon being subversive, uninhibited, and provocative. She is popular in the UK but mainly amongst 20 and 30 somethings. I personally think she's obnoxious and crude, but not a child molester. In her autobiography she described how when she was seven years old her mother explained what uteruses were, how all females had them, and how they contained eggs that one day would be used to make babies. Lena wanted to know if her toddler-aged sister had eggs already inside her, and was astonished when her mom explained that she did. She wrote that she imagined they'd look like the spider eggs in Charlotte's Web, and that her sister's uterus would be the size of a thimble. Later on while out in the driveway of their house playing together Lena wrote that her curiosity got the best of her and she looked inside her sister's vagina. She discovered that her sister had stuffed pebbles inside herself, and yelled for their mom to come. That's the most scandalous part of the "sexual abuse" allegation. A blogger wrote a post focusing on this incident titled "Lena Dunham Describes Sexually Abusing Her Little Sister," that then went viral. He initially wrote that Lena was 17 at the time. Though he later made a correction, there were already Tweets and posts all over the internet repeating that she was 17 rather than 7. With both ages floating around it led to the erroneous belief that the abuse had transpired over a decade long period between ages 7 and 17 instead of being an isolated incident that occurred when she was a child. The blogger also ripped a tongue-in-cheek comment about how "anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying" completely out of its context below the title and manipulated it into something far more sinister-seeming.
Her sister was outraged by the accusations that she'd been abused and lashed out at the media for it in a series of Tweets.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/05/lena-dunham-statement-abuse-claims
It was widely predicted on social media that within 4 days of the news breaking Lena Dunham would be brought up as a diversionary tactic to detract or other minimize Josh Duggar. I don't know how you can reasonably compare a
teenager molesting five girls, one of whom was only 4 and 5 at the time, in multiple incidences of increasing severity over a period of time to an isolated incidence of a 7-year-old peering into her sister's vagina wanting to see what her eggs looked like, while they were on their driveway in broad-day. It was still inappropriate and bizarre behavior, and incredibly vile to have written about, but it wasn't with sexually motivated intent, and the moral and cognitive development of a 7 year old is incomparable to a 14-year-old's.
Lena Dunham also wasn't attempting to conceal anything since she made her mother aware of it immediately, wrote about it in her book, and seems to be verbally incontinent. I'm not an apologist of hers and I think she's a self-possessed, crass, and insufferable, and the actions unacceptable, but still incomparable to Josh Duggars's as described in the graphic police report.
ETA: Apparently this was perceived as being a "incomplete" or generous since, as described in the link posted above, she also as a child "bribed" her sister with pieces of candy for a few seconds of kissing, and touched herself in the bed she shared with her sister. It should be noted that her sister requested they share the bed, for over a decade of time, because she was comforted by her sister's presence, and remains her staunchest defender. I think some of Lena's actions were nevertheless narcissistic and disgusting, but it's an offense to reason to compare those actions to a teenager who on multiple occasions intruded into the bedrooms of five prepubescent girls and molested them as they slept, and continued with the behavior even after being caught and punished. It's also demeaning to authentic sufferers of child abuse to insist that Grace Dunham, Lena's sister, is a victim, contrary to her vehement insistence that she is not.
Also - there have been some vile insinuations here that if you view the two as a false equivalency "you don't care about sexual abuse victims whose perpetrators were females." That is preposterous. Child molestation is abhorrent and wrong regardless of the genders involved of the perpetrators and victims. I've been volunteering with abused and at-risk children for the past four years. It's
because I see the potential for harm of declaring the actions equivalent, that I've put effort into posts here. Otherwise I would not invest much time on an internet forum thread. They're both wrong, for separate reasons, and are not commensurate. Lena Dunham is an insufferable and vile person, and I'm certainly not an admirer much less an apologist for her. I am disturbed by some of her childhood behavior. I simply do not view her inappropriate actions as equivalent to Josh Duggar's when the facts are lined up.
. I just don't seem to recognise her, at all.
