Skip to Content

The stars of Girls are opening about their experiences as women. 

Recently, Jemima Kirke spoke about her abortion in a public service announcement.

On Friday, Lena Dunham, creator and writer of the HBO hit, was recognized at Variety’s Power of Women for her work with GEMS, an organization that helps empower girls who were victims of human trafficking.

The Hollywood Gossip Logo

During her acceptance speech, Dunham opened up about her own sexual assault.

"When I was raped, I felt powerless. 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," said Dunham.

She added, "It took years to recognize my personal worth was not tied to my assault. The voices telling me I deserved this were phantoms, they were liars."

Dunham is using her personal experience and celebrity ethos to help others.

"As a feminist and 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," she stated. 

At the event, Dunham also spoke about the sigma human trafficking victims face and the need for a new consciousness about the commercial sex industry: 

She affirmed, ”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. We call these girls names and judge them and write pop songs celebrating their assailants and their fancy sneakers.”

Dunham then asked her audience to reconsider how they think about sex trafficking victims:

“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 victimization, ignoring the disenfranchisement that comes with being poor, from being a child, from being a girl of color, from being a homeless LGBT youth, from being a kid in foster care," Dunham said. 

She continued, ”We ignore what it must be like to be bought and sold by adult men and to spend your adolescence that this is what you’re worth, that your voice doesn’t matter, that you have no power." 

Lena Dunham discussed her sexual assault in her book, Not That Kind of Girl.

"[Speaking out] was about exposing my shame, letting it dry out in the sun," Dunham wrote in a December Buzzfeed post. 

Dunham is a leading voice in Hollywood for women’s issues.  In 2014, Lena Dunham slammed a photo hacker for posting nude photos of her celebrity colleagues, calling the hacker a sex offender.