Yahoo Lifestyle Lena Dunham Gives Powerful Speech On Sexual Assault
Lena Dunham. Photo: Getty Images.
Lena Dunham has bravely spoken out about being sexually assaulted when she was younger.
The 28-year-old attended Variety's 'Women of Power' luncheontarget=_blank in Hollywood, where she described her experience and said it had driven her to help young victims.
"When I was raped I felt powerless," Dunham said. "I felt my value had been determined by someone else. Someone who sent me the message that my body was not my own, and my choices were meaningless.
"It took years to recognise my personal worth was not tied to my assault; the voices telling me I deserved this were phantoms, they were liars. So as a feminist, as a sexual assault survivor, my ultimate goal is to use my experience, my platform, and yes, my privilege, to reverse stigma and give voice to other survivors."
Dunham, who is an advocate for Gems (Girls Educational & Mentoring Services), a nonprofit organisation that helps victims of commercial sexual exploitation in New York, said in her speech it was time for society to stop shaming young girls who fell victim to the sex industry.
"Despite this clear lack of agency, we as a society somehow think that 14-year-old runaways make a choice to be in the commercial sex industry," Dunham said. "We call these girls names and judge them and write pop songs celebrating their assailants and their fancy sneakers. We think that locking them up will help them make better choices.
"We look at youth in the commercial sex industry in America as willing participants in their own victimisation, ignoring the disenfranchisement that comes with being poor, from being a child, from being a girl of colour, from being a homeless LGBT youth, from being a kid in foster care."
Dunham was one of five honourees at the event alongside Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Rachel Weisz and Kim Kardashian West.
