In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham, who—of course!—attended Oberlin College, details a bumbling sexual experience with a male “campus Republican” that occurred smack-dab in the midst of the Bush II era. By her own account she offered zero resistance, either physically or verbally, up until the point where she realizes her one-night-paramour isn’t wearing a condom, whereupon she dismounts and tells him to leave, at which point he dutifully leaves.
Now, nearly a decade later, she has solemnly decided that this seemingly consensual encounter was, in fact, RAPE. For modern feminists, claiming to have been raped, whether it actually happened or not, is the equivalent of achieving the rank of Eagle Scout. As a result of this highly dubious “revelation,” Dunham raked in a wheelbarrow full of invisible feminist-hero poker chips to spend at her discretion.
Unfortunately for Dunham, last week the other Rape Shoe fell with an ugly thud, and now she’s being portrayed as a sexual predator who performed some highly skeevy acts with her younger sister Grace.
The term “sexual predator” is crucial here, because in Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham used it to describe her own behavior, but now she’s backpedaling and claiming she’s not that kind of sexual predator. Facing a backlash not only from conservative sites but also among her intersectional feminist allies and comrades and sisters, she now insists her use of the term was a poorly concocted joke that flew right over the balding heads of rapidly aging right-wing dudebros.