“Lena Dunham Opens Up About Being a Rape Survivor”

Trivializing campus rape one sexcapade at a time, from one Lena Dunham:

She then retells some events from the condom-in-a-tree night in graphic detail.

“Barry leads me to the parking lot,” she writes. “I tell him to look away. I pull down my tights to pee, and he jams a few of his fingers inside me, like he’s trying to plug me up. I’m not sure whether I can’t stop it or I don’t want to.”

The two then go back to her apartment, and Dunham — in an attempt to convince herself that she’d given consent — talks dirty to him as he forces himself on her.

The following day, when Dunham tells her roommate, Audrey, about the encounter, Audrey is horrified by her admission and tells Dunham, “You were raped.”

“I burst out laughing,” Dunham writes of her initial reaction.

Years later, while sitting in the writer’s room of HBO’s “Girls,” she pitches a “version of the Barry story” to her co-writers. She doesn’t call the incident rape, but her co-writers do.

Of course it’s rape even if you didn’t know it’s rape. But, is it rape if you didn’t think it’s rape?

Comment example number 1:

You perfectly highlighted a major feminist issue here. The rational should not be “well what else is the guy supposed to think” it should be “this guy is supposed to think”! If he had any decency and concern for Lena’s well being in the first place she wouldn’t have gone through this experience. Men need to learn not to rape and not to think that reasonable doubt about rape is acceptable. If a situation like this feels off in any way it should probably be put to a stop. Men cannot continue to take advantage of women on the technicality that verbally she never said “no”.

“This guy is supposed to think” – but the girl is absolved of any responsibility to think, or avoid engaging in an act she might regret? Just say no, don’t say dirty things to him. This incident makes her sound like an emotionally troubled individual who has probably thrown her drugged up and abused body around several times before, more than it makes him sound like a rapist.