http://sourcefed.com/lena-dunham-goes-on-rage-spiral-after-responding-to-sexual-abuse-claims/ Discuss. Personally, I don't find the idea of exploring ones own body/sexuality at all 'wrong', nor perhaps being interested in the opposite sex at a fairly young age ( relatively speaking, not talking about massive age gaps and grooming as such ), but some of the stuff this woman has written about doing & the manner she talks about it... ugh, hell no, that's extremely wrong. Her reaction to people discussing it is also very interesting, the fact she is so angry seems to indicate ( to me at least ) she is trying to defend herself even though she has realised what she has written has extremely serious implications, and not good ones. it's not exactly something you could defend, and the way she dismisses it as though it's nothing wrong and perfectly normal, not acceptable in my mind. Considering how the world feels about sexual predators right now ( and for the last several years ), it probably wasn't the best idea to write those things down in a book as pass it off in such a casual manner...
I doubt that a seven-year old girl has much sense of sex and sexual acts, much less of sexually abusing someone or being a 'sexual predator' --unless she was being sexually abused herself. The rest sounds more like an emotionally very needy girl. Disturbed? Yes. Disturbing? I think you are reading too much in this. She may well have written about this in a casual manner because in her family it was treated as a casual state of affairs. Then suddenly the outside world tells her it's all very weird. So yeah, she's going to be rattled and defensive.
I don't believe that she is some kind of sexual predator either, but the nature of her 'explorations' are highly objectionable & questionable- I find it hard to believe she wasn't aware that what she was doing was wrong or inappropriate in some manner. Not sure disturbing ( behaviour ) is the right word, though it isn't too far off the mark surely- certainly the exception rather than the norm when it comes to how children interact with their much younger siblings.
If we're going to start condemning people for things they did as 7 year old children (particularly when no lasting harm was done) then we're on a dangerous and IMO disturbing path. You wouldn't encourage her behaviour by any means, but to say that it amounts to child abuse is ludicrous. People try to make the law too black and white. It's not, it's full of grey.
Have any of you seen 'Tiny Furniture' ? It's a strange movie about a strange family, made even more strange because the mother, daughter, daughter trio at the heart of the movie is played by mother, daughter, daughter. We liked it, but learned from it the three of them must all be more a bit odd in real life. 'Odd' Mom ended up raising some 'odd' girls. Odd because they don't conform to social norms, are happy being themselves and don't consider the things they did as messed up teenagers to be so shameful they can't talk about them. She's now on permanent meds to control her thoughts and actions to some degree or other. As a seven year old she couldn't have been a sexual predator... although I find it VERY unlikely a 1yo would have hidden stones like that... So did she as a 7yo do that? Only she knows I guess. As to the 'manipulation'. Doesn't sound a very nice thing to do, but people do crazy things for love and her (maybe messed up) actions were committed from a need to be loved from those she loved. My thoughts are that she came from a non conventional family, and like her (openly gay) sister is now loved and accepted by those closest to her. If her Mom and Sister love her, and don't judge her for what she did or didn't do, or did or didn't write about... Then I'm not about to judge her either!
Dunno. I grew up a boy in a family with only one brother, so I don't know from personal experience what little girls get up to in their physical self-exploration (although female psychology colleagues have corroborated some surprising things from the textbooks). I do think that most of us interpret this from an adult male perspective. For a seven-year old girl to be curious about vaginas is a very natural thing. Even as a boy I remember at that age wondering about girls' vaginas because they were different from boys' penises (in the Netherlands it is not unusual for boys and girls at that age to play naked on e.g. the beach, and casually note their anatomical differences even if they are not yet aware of sex and sexuality, and not yet self-conscious about their bodies). If a girl had invited me to, I think I would certainly have taken a closer look. Similarly I recall that girls were curious about boys' penises, again because they were different.
