November 4th, 2014
Galley Friend Mark Hemingway has a fantastic piece up about Lena Dunham’s sexual . . . experimentation? . . . on her much younger sister. I can’t recommend it enough. The Dunham family has tried to put this episode to bed by having the now-adult younger Dunham sister declare the Smith College version of “no harm, no foul.” On Twitter, of course. Here’s Grace Dunham:
As a queer person: i’m committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful
— Grace Dunham (@simongdunham) November 3, 2014
This is an honest, not smart alecky, question: Where does the left draw the line on the question of people having the right to narrate their own experiences? And the specific case I’m thinking of is Ray Rice’s physical assault on his girlfriend, Janay Palmer. At the time of the assault, Palmer refused to press charges. When Rice was suspended by the NFL, Janay–who is now Rice’s wife–released a statement decrying the punishment and saying it was “a nightmare in itself.”
If you come from “queer” world, do you think that Janay Rice has the right to narrate her own experience and determine what has and has not been harmful? Is it wrong for police to charge Ray Rice with a crime and for the NFL to suspend him, since doing so places the verdict of a privileged white man (Roger Goodell) above the narrative experience of an African-American female (Janay Rice)? Or is there some sort of societal imperative which, in some cases, overrides the right of personal narration?
Again, I’m not trying to be snarky: I’m genuinely interested in how leftism squares a circle like this.
By the by, I’m so out of touch that I don’t fully understand what “queer” means anymore, though I have the sense that it doesn’t mean what it did five or six years ago. But I suspect that it’s not an accident that once you begin the cultural movement to decree that the self is infinitely plastic and that all society must celebrate such plasticity, that you wind up with the type of logic Grace Dunham exhibits here regarding the sanctity of personal experience. After all, if you and only you can determine what gender you are–which is a relatively objective fact–then it only makes sense that the individual should get to define much more subjective things, too. Like whether or not a certain behavior was normal, or abusive.
-
An interesting question but one premised on Leftist thought and reactions being driven by underlying principles instead of being a largely incoherent set of tribalist sympathies and feeling-driven impulses. That’s why there’s no answer to it.
When it’s even momentarily advantageous to have them, Leftists will cite the deep, unwavering principles to which they adhere. When it’s even momentarily advantageous to deny them, they will change any and all of them. Rather than try to discern the imaginary uniform principles driving their thought, decisions and behavior, instead try asking “who is doing what to whom?” in any given interaction and reference that against the pyramid of grievances — keeping in mind that the pyramid of grievances itself can shift at a moment’s notice if that should be perceived as beneficial in any way to the advance of Leftism.
-
When nothing means anything, you can do and say whatever you want. Standards are for the people you don’t like.
-
Turning it completely around, “rape” and “abuse” are just as open to subjective interpretation by these uber-sophisticates.
First world problems are just the best.
-
Yes, I see my first comment is a hot mess…
… or maybe it’s just queer.
ghost November 7, 2014 at 12:01 am
I’ve been asking this question myself, lately. It makes little to no sense. But I also know that if Larry Dunham wrote a book about opening up his younger sibling, bribing for kisses, or masturbating in the same bed as said younger sibling, he would rightly be ostracized from polite society. This need to baby women is sick.
A woman threw her autistic son off a bridge yesterday in Oregon, and every story is about how hard her life had been recently, damn near justifying murdering her own child.