Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So today we are continuing our episode looking at the
Speaker 1: claim that Lena Dunham joked about sexually abusing her sibling
Speaker 1: in her memoir Not That Kind of Girl. Quick trigger warning.
Speaker 1: We're talking about childhood, sexual abuse and sexual violence. And
Speaker 1: I am joined again by there Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet producer and chief science officer Mike. Mike, thanks
Speaker 1: for being here, Thanks for having me back. So where
Speaker 1: we last left off, we were talking about Lena Dunham,
Speaker 1: the sort of pop feminist culture of the Mids that
Speaker 1: she really tapped into, and how the right wing website
Speaker 1: Truth Revolt really misrepresented what she wrote in her memoir
Speaker 1: Not That Kind of Girl. Now, if you have not
Speaker 1: listened to that episode, you definitely should pause this and
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that. But the two long
Speaker 1: did It read is basically that actor and writer Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham wrote about things like putting pebbles and her little
Speaker 1: siblings Regina when she was seven and her sibling was one,
Speaker 1: and that the right wing website Truth Revolt misrepresented it,
Speaker 1: saying that Lena described it happening when she was seventeen,
Speaker 1: not seven. Now in this episode, we're diving into what
Speaker 1: she actually wrote the response, and why it all stuck
Speaker 1: and what it all means. All right, bridget So getting
Speaker 1: into part two. How did Lena Dunham respond to all this? So?
Speaker 1: The day The Truth Revolt published their misleading article about
Speaker 1: her memoir, Lena responded the following day, tweeting the right
Speaker 1: wing news story that I molested my little sibling isn't
Speaker 1: just laugh out loud, it's really fucking upsetting and disgusting.
Speaker 1: Her legal team sent a letter that was obtained by
Speaker 1: The Hollywood Reporter to Bradford Thomas, the author of the
Speaker 1: piece and The Truth Revolt, threatening to take legal action
Speaker 1: if certain statements were not removed. The letter said, the
Speaker 1: story is false, fabricated, and has the obvious tendency to
Speaker 1: subject my client to ridicule and into her occupation. Now,
Speaker 1: the letter goes on to say that the peace caused
Speaker 1: quote actual damage to Lena's personal and professional reputation, which
Speaker 1: likely would be calculated in the millions of dollars punitive damages,
Speaker 1: which can be a multiple of up to ten times
Speaker 1: the actual damages and injunctive relief. The letter also says
Speaker 1: that the Truth Revolt story contains quote outright falsified statements
Speaker 1: that are attributed to Lena and her book. The statements
Speaker 1: do not appear anywhere in the book, thus showing intent
Speaker 1: to harm, knowing falsity as well as reckless disregard for
Speaker 1: the truth, any one of which meets the malice requirement.
Speaker 1: Her attorney, Charles Harder wrote in his letter to Truth
Speaker 1: Revolt Now Ben Shapiro, on behalf of Truth Revolt responded,
Speaker 1: he said, we refuse to withdraw our story and apologize
Speaker 1: for running it, because quoting a woman's book does not
Speaker 1: constitute a false story, even if she is a prominent
Speaker 1: actress and left wing activist. Lena Dunham might not like
Speaker 1: our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and
Speaker 1: her attorneys, she wrote that book and the First Amendment
Speaker 1: covers a good deal of material which she may not like.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I just find Ben Shapiro and
Speaker 1: Truth Revolts response to be so wild because Truth Revolt
Speaker 1: itself admitted that it was a typo, saying that she
Speaker 1: was seventeen and not seven. They said it was a typo,
Speaker 1: and so by definition what they printed was not correct
Speaker 1: and was a false story. I feel like Ben Shapiro's
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, popped up response really flies in
Speaker 1: the face of like what the website actually said, which
Speaker 1: was that they printed something that was not correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's not like I wouldn't call that a typo
Speaker 1: even if it was unintentional, which seems pretty unlikely, but
Speaker 1: who knows, you know, maybe it was. But even so,
Speaker 1: it's like, so it so changes the character and the
Speaker 1: nature of the story that it's beyond a typo. It's
Speaker 1: clearly creating a false impression. That's absolutely true, and for
Speaker 1: him to not even acknowledge that in part of his apology,
Speaker 1: it just makes me wonder, you know what, Oh, he
Speaker 1: didn't apologize excuse me yet, So not an apology actually
Speaker 1: just like a continued attack. Yeah. Great, kind of kind
Speaker 1: of guy revealing with your Yeah, I mean, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I I'm not going to speculate whether this
Speaker 1: was an intentional move or not. I will say I
Speaker 1: have my suspicions, but they said it was a typo.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take them at that word. You're so right
Speaker 1: that even if that was just a type of somebody
Speaker 1: to slipped the one in there, not acknowledging the way
Speaker 1: that that really charges the what you've written, and like, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just it's it's really stunning that he
Speaker 1: won't even like, on the one hand, at the website
Speaker 1: admits it, but on the other hand it's like, but
Speaker 1: we did nothing wrong. It's like, well, can't really be both, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like suble missions are more important than others. If, for example,
Speaker 1: hypothetically somebody wrote somebody meant to write Ben Shapiro did
Speaker 1: not murder and eat his sister, but left out the
Speaker 1: word not, it would really change the meaning of the sentence.
Speaker 1: It would just be a typo. And how dare you
Speaker 1: insinuate that I apologize and say it with anything? But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just a typo. And also he's a
Speaker 1: right wing activist anyway, so that's somehow relevant exactly exactly. So,
Speaker 1: an important question that I feel like it's really easy
Speaker 1: to get lost in all this is whether or not
Speaker 1: what Lena actually wrote in the book, not the way
Speaker 1: that Truth Revolt initially spun, it actually describes sexual abuse
Speaker 1: or not. So first I believe that it is really
Speaker 1: important to listen to and center Lena dunham siblings, Cyrus
Speaker 1: Grace and their voice in this conversation and really listen
Speaker 1: to what they have to say about what this experience
Speaker 1: was like for them. Lena Dunham's sibling Cyrus Grace responded
Speaker 1: on Twitter saying head he normativity deems certain behavior is
Speaker 1: harmful and others normal. The state and media are always
Speaker 1: invested in maintaining that. As a queer person, I'm committed
Speaker 1: to people narrating their own experiences determining for themselves what
Speaker 1: has it has not been harmful. Today, like every other day,
Speaker 1: there's a good day to think about how we police
Speaker 1: the sexualities of young women, queer and trans people. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think it's important to ground, you know,
Speaker 1: the conversation of like what actually happened in how Cyrus
Speaker 1: Grace interprets it, because it's there, it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: their experience, and I have to say, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to be clear, I am no expert here. I
Speaker 1: am not a psychologist, i am not a legal scholar.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit out of my depth when it
Speaker 1: comes to like whether or not something could be categorized
Speaker 1: as sexual abuse. So I wanted to summarize some people
Speaker 1: who actually know what they're talking about. So first, according
Speaker 1: to the American Academy of Pediatrics, touching and looking at
Speaker 1: us siblings genitals is a quote normal common behavior in
Speaker 1: kids ages two to six. Vox, Slate, and Gawker all
Speaker 1: spoke to experts who generally seem to conclude that little
Speaker 1: children being curious about the bodies of their sibling is
Speaker 1: a normal part of childhood development. Here's a couple of
Speaker 1: those ex birds. Gawker spoke to Sam Rubinstein, a psychotherapist
Speaker 1: who specializes in childhood abuse, who said, I think you
Speaker 1: have to take into consideration her age, her history, and
Speaker 1: the idea that age, unless you've gone through severe sexual trauma,
Speaker 1: there's really almost nothing sexual about it. The same exclamination
Speaker 1: could be used for grabbing a dog's tail. It's the
Speaker 1: same type of coercion. Just because it's in the sexual venue,
Speaker 1: people want to attack something to it, but it's almost
Speaker 1: totally different. It's an innocent type thing. Slate spoke to
Speaker 1: rich Savin Williams, developmental psychologist and the director of the
Speaker 1: Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University, who said, quote,
Speaker 1: this is clearly not a case of abuse. Children have
Speaker 1: been doing this stuff forever and ever and ever, and
Speaker 1: they will do it forever and ever and ever. John V. Cafarroh,
Speaker 1: a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and
Speaker 1: an expert on sibling abuse, wrote in a Washington Post
Speaker 1: column quote, to be clear, sexual curiosity and children as normal.
Speaker 1: All children explore their bodies and may engage in visual
Speaker 1: and even manual exploration of a sibling at times. This
Speaker 1: is one of the ways that children discover sexual differences
Speaker 1: between boys and girls anatomies. Even siblings of the same
Speaker 1: gender become curious about variations in shapes and sizes of
Speaker 1: their sex organs. Two small children exploring each other's bodies
Speaker 1: does not predestine them to a life of emotional suffering.
Speaker 1: So you know, that might all kind of sound like
Speaker 1: I am absolving Lena of having done anything wrong in
Speaker 1: this situation, right, But I actually think that this is
Speaker 1: where things get a little bit tricky, And this trickiness
Speaker 1: is exactly what drove me to wanting to make an
Speaker 1: episode about this topic. So I should say, I myself
Speaker 1: am a survivor of sexual abuse, and so I know
Speaker 1: that when something can be difficult to talk about, like
Speaker 1: most sensitive issues are. But I also know that we
Speaker 1: really really do need to talk honestly and thoughtfully about it.
Speaker 1: And you know what doesn't help us to have conversations
Speaker 1: about tough issues in a way that's honest and thoughtful
Speaker 1: and nuanced, uh adding lies to the mix. This is
Speaker 1: a deliberate tactic that bad actors and disinformers employ, seizing
Speaker 1: on hot button issues, adding lies to the mix intentionally
Speaker 1: to derail those conversations. And honestly, this is what really
Speaker 1: kind of gets me so upset about this issue, is
Speaker 1: that we should not and cannot tolerate lies being added
Speaker 1: to conversations that are as sensitive and important as childhood
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, especially not as a way to score cheap
Speaker 1: political points the way that Shapiro and Truth Revolt did,
Speaker 1: because it really derails progress and are collective shared understanding.
Speaker 1: There is no conversation that is made better by the
Speaker 1: injection of lies, and people deserve the truth like that
Speaker 1: is a a value that I will just like scream
Speaker 1: from the rooftops over and over again. If you are
Speaker 1: adding lies to conversation, you are doing us all a disservice.
Speaker 1: And so I also think that truth revolt really blowing
Speaker 1: up what Lena did right on her memoir with inaccurate
Speaker 1: information really makes it difficult to address a what she
Speaker 1: actually did and b how she actually wrote about it.
Speaker 1: And because of their lie, because of them starting off
Speaker 1: this conversation with such an inflammatory, big, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: defining piece of inaccurate content, Lena understandably is then put
Speaker 1: in a position where she has to defend herself against
Speaker 1: a claim that was not true that she sexually abused
Speaker 1: her sibling when she was seventeen. So I think it
Speaker 1: really turns the situation into a binary where she did
Speaker 1: it is on one side, and no, she didn't is
Speaker 1: on the other. And that again is a classic disinformer
Speaker 1: derailing tactic, flattening out conversations and stripping them of any
Speaker 1: context or nuance that are required to have a thoughtful,
Speaker 1: substitutive conversation about something that is sensitive or a hot
Speaker 1: button topic. And so I would actually argue that this
Speaker 1: prevents us from having a public conversation about what Lena
Speaker 1: actually did and how she wrote about it. We never
Speaker 1: really got to have that conversation because of how much
Speaker 1: oxygen truth revolts Lie took up in the room and
Speaker 1: that is by design. And further, I would argue that
Speaker 1: their injection of inaccurate information into the conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: really just adds this this, this sheen of inaccuracy. I
Speaker 1: would be willing to bet that at least some people
Speaker 1: trying to engage in a conversation probably have a misunderstanding
Speaker 1: about the basic facts of what happened. And so I
Speaker 1: guess all of this is to say, like, this is
Speaker 1: the conversation that I wish we would have gotten to have,
Speaker 1: because if experts seem to suggest that what Lena described
Speaker 1: in her book is not abuse, I still don't think
Speaker 1: it was great or good, and I still want to
Speaker 1: talk about what actually happened without that inflammatory lie preventing
Speaker 1: us from doing that. Yeah, I totally agree with you that,
Speaker 1: you know, the injection of lies and any conversation degrades
Speaker 1: that conversation. It makes it that much harder to have
Speaker 1: an honest conversation about whatever it is. And you know,
Speaker 1: usually when people are making up lies, they're doing it
Speaker 1: for some kind of agenda to like you said, take
Speaker 1: all the ads Genna out of the room, to prevent
Speaker 1: discussion about something else, or to discredit and smear and
Speaker 1: shame woman who they perceive as a leftist activists. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have any strong feelings for or
Speaker 1: against Lena Dunham, and I've actually learned so much in
Speaker 1: just like making these episodes with you. But it is
Speaker 1: just so familiar a trope of right wing ship heads
Speaker 1: making things up to smear somebody who they perceive as
Speaker 1: an enemy and just injecting lies into the conversation exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's take a look at what she actually wrote
Speaker 1: and why you know it's still not good. First, I
Speaker 1: think it's definitely an issue with tone and framing. Childhood
Speaker 1: sexual abuse is not a joke, and I think dealing
Speaker 1: with it in this way that sort of jokey what
Speaker 1: seriously bad on Lena Dunham's part. I would have never
Speaker 1: written about my younger sibling the way that that Dunham
Speaker 1: did in her book, and I can really see how
Speaker 1: people feel it raises some questions about boundaries. You know,
Speaker 1: did Lena see these experiences that involved her sibling as
Speaker 1: hers and hers alone to to free to freely share
Speaker 1: in a book? You know, why would she think that
Speaker 1: having a whole section of her book dedicated to the
Speaker 1: ways that she kind of, you know, foisted herself on
Speaker 1: her baby sibling, like like, I guess like writing about
Speaker 1: that and as a way that's a kind of cute
Speaker 1: and sort of like defining her as a quirky character
Speaker 1: or like a like a jokey thing is really I
Speaker 1: think inappropriate, and I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: that raises some legitimate questions. You know, was that harmful
Speaker 1: to to Lena's sibling. I actually heard from a listener
Speaker 1: after the first part of this series aired last week,
Speaker 1: and this person left an Instagram comment and they felt
Speaker 1: very strongly that what Lena described in her book was
Speaker 1: actually child like childhood sexual abuse. Remember you got that
Speaker 1: comment from that listener, and uh, it was pretty emotional
Speaker 1: and legitimate. So I'm I hope that they're listening to
Speaker 1: this second part to get a little bit more context
Speaker 1: for what we're trying to say. Yeah, me too. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm really happy that they left that comment. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where it's like,
Speaker 1: I think it's a completely valid question to ask about
Speaker 1: the behavior that Lena describes in the book and the
Speaker 1: way that she wrote about and framed that behavior Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is curious to me. You know, I I haven't
Speaker 1: read the book, but but you did. What what do
Speaker 1: you think was her intention of writing that in the book. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. The book. So for folks who
Speaker 1: have read the book, they know that a big part
Speaker 1: of it is that Lena slowly reveals herself to be
Speaker 1: a very unreliable narrator, one who is kind of like
Speaker 1: sardonically looking at and projecting commentary onto her own experiences.
Speaker 1: And so her experience is are presented and you and
Speaker 1: you the reader sort of takes them at face value.
Speaker 1: And then later in the book those many of those
Speaker 1: experiences are revisited in ways that reveal her to be
Speaker 1: an unreliable narrator about her own experiences and in ways
Speaker 1: that sort of present her astis like, Yeah, this sarcastic,
Speaker 1: sardonic person who is camp like kind of like critiquing
Speaker 1: and commenting on the way that she described those things.
Speaker 1: Early on. There's this piece for Vox by Alex Abod
Speaker 1: Santos that I think perfectly summarizes what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: Alex writes the way Dunham wrote the incident up in
Speaker 1: her book, and the degree to which the writing style
Speaker 1: that has made her such a success may have also
Speaker 1: led her astray. Here, child molestation is an extremely sensitive topic.
Speaker 1: Kafar O, the sibling abuse expert, wrote that sibling sexual
Speaker 1: abuse is far more common than most people think, quote
Speaker 1: the most closely kept secret in the field of family violence.
Speaker 1: But one study finding that at least two point three
Speaker 1: percent of children have been sexually victimized by us a ling.
Speaker 1: Dunham's treatment of this very serious topic was not exactly sensitive,
Speaker 1: something she herself is acknowledged to some degree that is
Speaker 1: of a piece with Dunham's greatest strength and weaknesses as
Speaker 1: a writer, she has a reputation for leaning into weird,
Speaker 1: awkward situations on her HBO show Girls, and she's a
Speaker 1: master at creating scenes, sexual or not, that make viewers cringe.
Speaker 1: This is a book about Lena Dunham's coming of age
Speaker 1: in a society that does not normally tell stories of
Speaker 1: girls becoming women, and it highlights quite well how uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and difficult growing up as a girl can be. And
Speaker 1: so I think that piece really summarizes and I think
Speaker 1: that she was trying to lean into the fact the
Speaker 1: ways that sexual experiences and physical experiences can be so
Speaker 1: cringe e, so awkward, so uncomfortable. Um, And she does
Speaker 1: that really well in other parts of her writing, but
Speaker 1: I think that that same inclination I think really led
Speaker 1: her astray here and I think it like it opens
Speaker 1: up such such valid criticisms of the way that she
Speaker 1: handled it. Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: One of my big questions as did that bit of
Speaker 1: the book contribute to a culture where sexual abuse is
Speaker 1: further normalized? Again, I'm not an expert in this field,
Speaker 1: but I think they're all valid questions, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the bottom line. When we allow disinformers to flatten
Speaker 1: out entire conversations with an accurate information, we don't really
Speaker 1: get to have the real conversation about what actually happens.
Speaker 1: And I think it creates the conditions that lead to
Speaker 1: Lena not really having to be held accountable for what
Speaker 1: she actually wrote, because the only thing anybody is really
Speaker 1: talking about is the lie about what she wrote. And
Speaker 1: I think that Lena would probably agree that, you know,
Speaker 1: how she handled this incident in her memoir wasn't great
Speaker 1: because she apologized, she wrote, quote, if the situation is
Speaker 1: described in my book, have been painful or triggering for
Speaker 1: people to read. I am sorry. That was never my intention.
Speaker 1: I am also aware that my comic use of the
Speaker 1: term sexual predator wasn't sensitive, and I'm sorry for that
Speaker 1: as well. She also went on to say that her
Speaker 1: sibling is her best friend and quote, anything I have
Speaker 1: ever written about has been published with approval. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to argue with that that it
Speaker 1: was not very sensitive. And you know, her apology is
Speaker 1: a reminder of how serious talking about sexual abuse is,
Speaker 1: you know, and so yeah, you probably shouldn't have written that,
Speaker 1: but it is so notable that the whole controversy and
Speaker 1: apparently allegations that you know, people can continue to hold
Speaker 1: against her being a seventeen year old sexual predator were
Speaker 1: did not come from the alleged victim her sibling, did
Speaker 1: not come from survivor justice advocates, but instead came from
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro, like avowed and an open right wing activist,
Speaker 1: you know, like, you're not gonna convince me that he
Speaker 1: gives a ship about uh really anyone? Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: right wing activist who explicitly said that the intention of
Speaker 1: his media outlet was to attack prominent left wing folks,
Speaker 1: prominent liberal voices. Lena Dunham is a propinab a prominent
Speaker 1: liberal voice that she certainly was when when this all happened.
Speaker 1: And so I think that I also want to really
Speaker 1: lift up what you just said about these allegations not
Speaker 1: coming from Lena's sibling. I think the thing that really
Speaker 1: sticks with me about this whole situation is the way
Speaker 1: that Lena dunham sibling, their voice is almost universally ignored.
Speaker 1: And so I just really believe in centering, survivors, centering,
Speaker 1: giving people space to be the experts of their own experiences.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, the thing that really just really bumps
Speaker 1: me out is that Cyrus Grace's voice is almost entirely
Speaker 1: erased when people talk about this, When people repeat, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham did this to their to her sibling, I
Speaker 1: just feel like we just don't know. It's it's so
Speaker 1: easy to not make space for Cyrus's voice, and I
Speaker 1: think what you said really helps us see how problematic
Speaker 1: that is. Yeah, Like having this conversation, I'm sort of wondering,
Speaker 1: is this a conversation about childhood sexual abuse or is
Speaker 1: it a conversation about a celebrity. Well, I would argue that,
Speaker 1: like I think, for a lot of people, because they
Speaker 1: don't like Lena Dunham for whatever reason, and some of
Speaker 1: those reasons are valid. The the the actual meat of
Speaker 1: the conversation, caring about and believing and uplifting survivors of
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, that kind of gets pushed to the sideline
Speaker 1: because the real thing is finding a way to talk
Speaker 1: about how much we don't likely have done them and
Speaker 1: how awful she is, you know what I mean? Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: Like I'm no stranger to add hominin attacks. You know,
Speaker 1: like if there's somebody I don't like, I'll happily you know,
Speaker 1: sign up for piling on for something shitty or stupid
Speaker 1: that they did. But it does feel very different when
Speaker 1: that piling on involves allegations of sexual abuse about some
Speaker 1: third person who's not even part of the conversation. Uh,
Speaker 1: and is built on lies. And you know, like you
Speaker 1: said earlier, just sucking the air out of valid conversations
Speaker 1: in the space not valid, I don't mean valot, I
Speaker 1: mean truthful, you know, right, So you know that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I think is happening here. So now that you
Speaker 1: know what actually happened versus the lie that truth revolts
Speaker 1: amplified about it. Let's talk about exactly that, Like what
Speaker 1: is it that made this such a sticky narrative? And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that really, I don't know, it fascinates
Speaker 1: me about this claim because it has had real staying power.
Speaker 1: So question for you, Mike. Have you seen that meme
Speaker 1: where it's a black hand and a white hand, like
Speaker 1: grasping hands and a gesture of unity and something that
Speaker 1: they agree about, like a shared commonality is written on
Speaker 1: the middle of their hands. Yeah, of course, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful meme about coming together. So that meme pretty much
Speaker 1: explains what I think is going on here. Basically. On
Speaker 1: the black hand, you have you know, feminists, people of
Speaker 1: color just generally, like just general people. On the white hand,
Speaker 1: maybe I got right wing folks and the thing that
Speaker 1: they're uniting over is that they all agreed they hate
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham. That's kind of what I think is going
Speaker 1: on here. Because even though the claim that Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: sexually abused her one year old sibling when she was seventeen,
Speaker 1: we know, started in the right wing blogosphere, it has
Speaker 1: really traveled out of those spaces and become a fairly
Speaker 1: widely accepted claim. And that's because Lena Dunham is just
Speaker 1: like a controversial figure, She's a lightning rod. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really highlights how we can all come together to just
Speaker 1: like shoot on women about ship that isn't true. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: to put it bluntly, a lot of people just don't
Speaker 1: like Lena Dunham and so in that way, I think
Speaker 1: it was really easy for folks to project an inaccurate
Speaker 1: claim against her and have it really stick. And this
Speaker 1: also tells us something kind of interesting about the way
Speaker 1: that inaccurate information works online. It can often speak to
Speaker 1: something that is already inside of us. And so if
Speaker 1: you're already primed to really hate Lena Dunham, when somebody
Speaker 1: comes along and tells you something that really squares what
Speaker 1: they're already held belief, it can really stick. Because our
Speaker 1: brains love information, even inaccurate information or false information, that
Speaker 1: validates opinions or values that we already hold. So if
Speaker 1: your opinion is that Lena Dunham sucks, it sort of
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if she actually did joke about abusing her
Speaker 1: one year old sibling when she was seventeen or not.
Speaker 1: It will stick because it squares with are are already
Speaker 1: held belief. That's just how our brains as humans work.
Speaker 1: And another truism about disinformation is that it often sees
Speaker 1: as on legitimate existing tensions and and and pressure points
Speaker 1: and fractures that already exist, particularly within marginalized communities. If
Speaker 1: you listen to the episode that we did about and
Speaker 1: Father's Day or Vanessa again, this will probably sound familiar
Speaker 1: to you. It pits black women against white women, or
Speaker 1: the Latino community against the Black community. And I think
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham is a really interesting case study for this,
Speaker 1: because people, especially people of color, really do have some
Speaker 1: valid reasons to dislike Lena Dunham. And these reasons are
Speaker 1: often reflected in the kinds of tensions that I was
Speaker 1: just naming above. You know, a lot of the tensions
Speaker 1: occur along racial lines. Yeah, So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the valid reasons that folks have to
Speaker 1: sort of be predisposed to not like Lena Dunham and
Speaker 1: thus have this you know, inaccurate claim really have a
Speaker 1: little bit of staying power. So one I think that
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham has really come to represent a kind of
Speaker 1: I guess I'll call it white girl cluelessness, that a
Speaker 1: lot of feminists of color were frankly sick of seeing
Speaker 1: amplified as the voice of feminism. You know, when the
Speaker 1: Show Girls first premiere in HBO, there was so much
Speaker 1: fanfare cementing Lena Dunham, you know, as this voice of
Speaker 1: a generation, the voice of young women. And I think
Speaker 1: there was some resentment around who we amplify and who
Speaker 1: we give lots and lots and lots of chances to.
Speaker 1: I often heard black feminists saying things like, oh, a
Speaker 1: black woman would never get as many chances to mess
Speaker 1: up like Lena Dunham has. Uh side note, Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: has had to apologize for so many things that there
Speaker 1: is actually a Twitter meme account called Lena Dunham apologizes
Speaker 1: that just creates randomly generated apologies for fictional Lena Dunnam missteps.
Speaker 1: And I actually went to go look one up because
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I should read one here on
Speaker 1: the podcast. I would be funny, And so I googled
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham apology Twitter and I found the tweet. Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham issued an apology for her new HBO Max series
Speaker 1: Generation using real cat corpses in a classroom scene. But
Speaker 1: that apology tweet was actually real, that was actually her
Speaker 1: apologizing for something that actually happened. Wow, So we're just
Speaker 1: living in a universe where there's just one can't tell
Speaker 1: what is true. Lena Dunham apologies or disinformation, Lenda Dunham apologies.
Speaker 1: It's just a miasma of Lena Dunham uncertainty exactly exactly
Speaker 1: is it? Is it art imitating life or is it
Speaker 1: life imitating art or is it art imitating cat corpses?
Speaker 1: So this is a little bit of a tangent, but
Speaker 1: I just have to mention it because I think it's
Speaker 1: It was such a weird thing that happened along the
Speaker 1: kind of race, race and gender intra community tensions that
Speaker 1: I was just talking about before, and that is the
Speaker 1: whole thing that went down between Lena Dunham and Odell Beckham. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was just really weird. So if you don't remember
Speaker 1: what happened a few years ago at the met gala,
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham attended and she was wearing a tuxedo and
Speaker 1: she would see it next to the professional athlete Odell
Speaker 1: Beckham Jr. And I guess Lena felt that he was
Speaker 1: ignoring her or not paying an appropriate amount of attention
Speaker 1: to her or something, and so after the event, Lena
Speaker 1: wrote in her newsletter, Lenny Letter, I was sitting next
Speaker 1: to Odell Beckham Jr. And it was so amazing, and
Speaker 1: because it was like he looked at me and determined
Speaker 1: I was not the shape of a woman by his standards.
Speaker 1: He was like, that's a marshmallow, that's a child, that's
Speaker 1: a dog. It wasn't mean, he just seemed confused. The
Speaker 1: vibe was very much do I want to fuck it?
Speaker 1: Is it wearing Yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back to my cell phone. It was like we
Speaker 1: were forced to be together and he was literally scrolling
Speaker 1: Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in
Speaker 1: a bow tie. I was like, this should be called
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Museum of getting rejected by athletes. Um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a lot of projecting your own negative fantasies
Speaker 1: and perhaps insecurities onto someone who sounded like was just
Speaker 1: like minding their business on their phone at dinner. You know.
Speaker 1: Added the fact that Beckham is a black man, and
Speaker 1: it kind of sounds like she is responding to this
Speaker 1: like perceived projection of a hyper sexualized black man onto her,
Speaker 1: like she was like disappointed or felt some type of
Speaker 1: way that he was not behaving in a way, like
Speaker 1: an over sexualized manner toward her. And yeah, it just
Speaker 1: feels like she like really projected a lot onto him.
Speaker 1: She eventually apologized on Instagram. But it was just a
Speaker 1: very weird thing that happened along very specific race and
Speaker 1: gender fault lines that we know sometimes can be legitimate
Speaker 1: tension points in our society. Yeah, yikes, Like to remind
Speaker 1: me of what you were talking about from her book
Speaker 1: where she establishes herself as an unreliable narrator and somebody
Speaker 1: who is dwelling in negative fantasies all the time, a
Speaker 1: that has to suck and be uh. Yeah, it does
Speaker 1: establish them as an unreliable narrator who is probably gonna
Speaker 1: say some ship that they regret, yeah, over and over
Speaker 1: and over again and have to apologize for it endlessly
Speaker 1: to the point where it becomes a meme. Yeah. Those
Speaker 1: did the cat corpses accept the apology? I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find a response from the cat corps community, but
Speaker 1: I will keep looking, Okay, I'll check in with some
Speaker 1: negwrom answers that I know more after a quick break,
Speaker 1: let's get right back into it. So I mentioned how
Speaker 1: Lena had a newsletter called Lenny Letter. Zenz Men's with
Speaker 1: a black woman and a writer worked with Lena on
Speaker 1: this letter and she publicly quit, citing Lena's quote well
Speaker 1: known racism as the reason why. Clement said that she
Speaker 1: went to college with Dunham and her friends and that
Speaker 1: they kind of were in the same circles when they
Speaker 1: were in college, and that she would call their strain
Speaker 1: of racism quote hipster racism, which usually uses sarcasm as
Speaker 1: a cover, which, boy, do I know a little something
Speaker 1: about that from my own days in college. Clemens encouraged
Speaker 1: other women of color to stop working with Lenda Dunham,
Speaker 1: saying it is time for women of color, black women
Speaker 1: in particular, to divest from Lena Dunham. She cannot have
Speaker 1: our words if she cannot respect us. Boy oh boy,
Speaker 1: is right, and coming from an old friend or somebody
Speaker 1: who's known her since college and has worked with her,
Speaker 1: that seems like a pretty damning charge with more substance
Speaker 1: to it than out of context typo from her autobiography.
Speaker 1: I completely agree, and you can really see how again
Speaker 1: this you know, you're having a black woman writer say
Speaker 1: this about Lena. You can see again how like these
Speaker 1: things really do pop up along certain pre existing tension points,
Speaker 1: you know, that really fall along racialized lines. And so another,
Speaker 1: probably the biggest, deepest example for myself personally, is the
Speaker 1: way that Lena handled a sexual assault allegation made against
Speaker 1: writer and executive producer of Girls, Murray Miller, that happened
Speaker 1: on the set. Basically what happened. Actress Aurora Parano, who's
Speaker 1: mixed race, filed a police report accusing Girls writer and
Speaker 1: executive producer Murray Miller of raping her on the set
Speaker 1: of Girls in when she was seventeen years old. Now,
Speaker 1: Miller said that she was making it up to extort
Speaker 1: him and try to get money from him, and Lena
Speaker 1: and her showrunner Jenny Kohner published this statement quote. While
Speaker 1: our first instinct is to listen to every woman's story,
Speaker 1: our insider knowledge of Murray's situation makes us confident that, sadly,
Speaker 1: this accusation is one of the three percent of assault
Speaker 1: cases that are misreported every year. It is a true
Speaker 1: shame to add to that number as outside of Hollywood,
Speaker 1: women still struggle to be believed. We stand by Murray,
Speaker 1: and this is all we will be saying about this issue.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, it's bad, so bad. There's so many things
Speaker 1: wrong with that. Well, it gets worse. So obviously this
Speaker 1: statement makes it seem like, you know, Lena and her
Speaker 1: team have some kind of inside information that proves that
Speaker 1: this assault never happened, but come to find out that
Speaker 1: was all a lie. She made that up because in
Speaker 1: follow up piece called to Aurora an apology Dune him
Speaker 1: rights quote. When someone I knew, someone I had loved
Speaker 1: as a brother, was accused, I did something inexcusable. I
Speaker 1: publicly spoke up in his defense. There are a few
Speaker 1: acts I could ever regret more in my life. I
Speaker 1: didn't have the insider in form nation. I claimed rather
Speaker 1: blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing
Speaker 1: and revealed itself to me nothing at all. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Lena basically smeared a woman who said that she had
Speaker 1: been sexually assaulted by someone that she met on Lena's set,
Speaker 1: the set of her hit show. She lied about this
Speaker 1: woman for a long time and then eventually admitted that
Speaker 1: lie in this piece, Um, yeah, I just think it's
Speaker 1: really horrible and personally, this was the time, like I,
Speaker 1: as I said in the last episode, like I was
Speaker 1: a casual watcher of girls. I like a lot of
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham's writing, but this is when she lost me
Speaker 1: for for good, because I just felt like it was
Speaker 1: such a calculum like when you when you call a
Speaker 1: woman of color a liar in public, you are doing
Speaker 1: something that is like, you can't take that back. It's
Speaker 1: it's such a I don't even know how to put it,
Speaker 1: like it's it's such a big claim that is so
Speaker 1: because of we live in a like a racist, sexist,
Speaker 1: misogynistic society. When you say a woman of color is
Speaker 1: lying about being abused or sexually assaulted in public, you
Speaker 1: are just making a big claim that is going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention, but you can't take back.
Speaker 1: And so for me, that was the moment that Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham lost me forever. So Lena eventually took the stage
Speaker 1: with Aurora's mom Brittany at a Woman in Hollywood event
Speaker 1: to publicly apologize again. Last November, when Brittany's beautiful daughter
Speaker 1: Aurora accused a friend of mine of sexual assault I
Speaker 1: denied her experience publicly. So I remember this moment so
Speaker 1: viscerally watching it and thinking, this is a capital B,
Speaker 1: capital M bad moment for women. Lena lied about a
Speaker 1: woman of color who opened up about her experience of
Speaker 1: sexual violence and just essentially publicly smeared her. Then a
Speaker 1: few years later, she brings this woman's mom on Stay
Speaker 1: Age and performs contrition in this kind of like, oh gee,
Speaker 1: I'm just a kid with a lot to learn kind
Speaker 1: of way, when in reality, she was the very powerful
Speaker 1: creator and showrunner are the highly successful business with her
Speaker 1: HBO show. So this idea that she was just like
Speaker 1: a kid who had a lot to learn, that's completely incorrect,
Speaker 1: and that framing is so clearly self serving. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you could make the argument that it was a genuine
Speaker 1: moment of you know, apology that she wanted to happen
Speaker 1: in public. But I just it just really made me
Speaker 1: feel weird and I really didn't like it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it just lost me forever. Yeah, and why her mom,
Speaker 1: why not the woman herself? Like that just seems weird.
Speaker 1: I'm sure people have answers to that, but it seems
Speaker 1: weird to me. Yeah, And you can really see how
Speaker 1: all the different controversies with Leada Donham that I just
Speaker 1: laid out really do exist along pre existing political, racial
Speaker 1: and so tensions. You know, white women versus women of color,
Speaker 1: white women versus black men, these tensions that really do
Speaker 1: already exist in our society and always have like way
Speaker 1: before Lena Dunham. It's not it's not like she created
Speaker 1: these things, but that tensions that we have already have
Speaker 1: a kind of a tough time talking honestly about. And
Speaker 1: when those tensions are present, it's just the textbook conditions
Speaker 1: for inaccurate or misleading information to fester and spread. And
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, I feel like Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: is like a walking embodiment of all of these tensions,
Speaker 1: and so it's not really surprising that a particular misleading
Speaker 1: claim about her would then sick. And I think that
Speaker 1: is why we see this claim have such stickiness, you know,
Speaker 1: this claim that she molested her sibling when she was seventeen.
Speaker 1: I think that is the reason why we see it being,
Speaker 1: you know, having such staying power. Yeah, and it's so
Speaker 1: said that, you know, all those societal tensions of racism,
Speaker 1: set ism, misogyn war just get shoved to the side,
Speaker 1: and it becomes a conversation about a single like a
Speaker 1: specific white woman and is she good or is she bad?
Speaker 1: And like what a useless conversation? Exactly That's exactly my point,
Speaker 1: Like we don't have the conversation of, like, was this
Speaker 1: harmful to survivors of sexual violence? Was this a harmful
Speaker 1: experience for Lena dunham sibling should what does it mean
Speaker 1: that she wrote about it in this jokey way, Or
Speaker 1: we don't have to get to have a conversation of
Speaker 1: like what can we offer survivors of childhood sexual assault?
Speaker 1: Or like how can we support them? Or how can
Speaker 1: we create the conditions to eliminate sexual abuse in our world?
Speaker 1: But those conversations are two big, two thorny, too meaty.
Speaker 1: We don't have the conversation of like, well, why would
Speaker 1: black feminists or black women have a bone to pick
Speaker 1: with white womanhood or white feminism, or in what ways
Speaker 1: have white women historically, you know, attacked black men, or
Speaker 1: you know, like projected things onto black and that we're
Speaker 1: harmful to them. Those are all the big, thorny, systemic
Speaker 1: conversation that's hard to have and that frankly, we are
Speaker 1: not equipped to have we're not having it, and so
Speaker 1: that just gets conflated into Lena Dunham bad, Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: did this, or Lena Dunham not bad, Lenda Didham, Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham not did this right, Like, it just completely flattens
Speaker 1: the conversation so that we're not really able to have
Speaker 1: it be a thoughtful, substitutive, nuanced conversation. And some lingering
Speaker 1: questions that I still have about this are whether or
Speaker 1: not people who say that Lena Dunham abused her sibling
Speaker 1: do they know they're talking about incidents that happened when
Speaker 1: she was seven and not seventeen. Like how much did
Speaker 1: that particular specific lie seep into people's actual consciousness and
Speaker 1: their understanding of what happened? And maybe the answer is
Speaker 1: will never know? And I think that is ultimately the
Speaker 1: reason why this is such a big tactic for disinformers,
Speaker 1: liars and bad actors, just creating enough negativity around someone
Speaker 1: or something so that it ultimately doesn't really matter what
Speaker 1: actually happened at all, because all anybody remembers or thinks
Speaker 1: about when it comes up is the lie. Damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think you're you're right. I think we've seen
Speaker 1: time and again that's their goal, to create just a
Speaker 1: miasma of unspecific negativity and and lies and uh not
Speaker 1: just spread lies, but reduce confidence in there being any
Speaker 1: sort of truth exactly right. It's what's like creating the
Speaker 1: conditions where it's like, oh, well the conversation is so
Speaker 1: muddled and difficult to follow that, like, what is the truth? Anyway?
Speaker 1: As I think, the further we get away from that
Speaker 1: where things that are not true can sort of become true,
Speaker 1: the worst off we all are. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: you know this all happened back in here we are
Speaker 1: nearly ten years later, and just last week a V
Speaker 1: club published an article about Lena's new film project on June,
Speaker 1: and the top comments were all some iteration of the
Speaker 1: claim that she sexually abused her sibling, like it will
Speaker 1: never go away. It basically is true now whether or
Speaker 1: not it actually happened, it's just sort of a non
Speaker 1: issue at this point. That is grim alright, Well, so
Speaker 1: so bridget what is the point of view telling us
Speaker 1: all of this? Oh I'm so glad you asked. So
Speaker 1: here we are in two and we have seen more
Speaker 1: and more right wing extremist using very similar tactics, not
Speaker 1: just on public figures, but on more and more regular people.
Speaker 1: You know, look at things like libs of TikTok, that
Speaker 1: page on Twitter, where people are regularly labeled as quote
Speaker 1: groomers or basically accused of some kind of like vague
Speaker 1: sexual impropriety against children. It's really gross and sad because
Speaker 1: we actually do have a sexual abuse problem in our society.
Speaker 1: So many of us are survivors of sexual violence or
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, and bad actors and liars who spread damaging
Speaker 1: lies and inaccurate content. They know this is a trigger
Speaker 1: and attention for so many of this, Like this is
Speaker 1: a pressure point in us that can be you know,
Speaker 1: poked at and and inflamed, and it creates a situation
Speaker 1: where the sexual abuse of kids as a topic that
Speaker 1: is easily exploited and inflamed and can be weaponized against
Speaker 1: political opponents. And so ultimately, I guess in conclusion, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of reasons to not like Lynda Dunham, including
Speaker 1: what she wrote about her sibling and her memoir. We
Speaker 1: don't need to add lies on it to talk about it.
Speaker 1: We're not better served when we add lies into a
Speaker 1: conversation as important and as sensitive as childhood sexual violence,
Speaker 1: and when we do that, we do a disservice to
Speaker 1: issues like sexual abuse that are so important and critical
Speaker 1: that we talk about. And ultimately, it's very concerning that
Speaker 1: we have a kind of media climate and ecosystem that
Speaker 1: create the conditions for this kind of damaging lie to
Speaker 1: persist for years and essentially become true, even if it's not.
Speaker 1: Two scary sentiment to end on. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's all I got. Well, let's all try to stick
Speaker 1: to the truth. Huh Is that so hard? Is that
Speaker 1: gonna kill us? Is that so hard? Ben Shapiro? Let's
Speaker 1: just stick to the truth, shall we? Yeah? Seriously? And
Speaker 1: so I know this is a controversial topic. I started
Speaker 1: the series talking about the fact that I knew this
Speaker 1: was going to be something people had opinions on, feelings,
Speaker 1: on thoughts on. I welcome those thoughts. I really really
Speaker 1: really want to hear what people have to say. Uh,
Speaker 1: please don't come from me though I'm a baby. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'd like be be cool about it, but like,
Speaker 1: I want to know what you think. You know, what
Speaker 1: do you what are your thoughts on Lena Dunham, her
Speaker 1: memoir all the things that we lay at out today.
Speaker 1: I really want to hear your thoughts, so please you
Speaker 1: can email me, you can find me on social media.
Speaker 1: I want to hear what you'll think. And Mike, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking this journey with us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for bringing me on it. You know, I has
Speaker 1: been great hearing from listeners about this. Who have you know,
Speaker 1: feelings about it and thoughts about it, and that's great.
Speaker 1: That really uh we this is actually the second time
Speaker 1: that we've recorded this second part because we wanted to
Speaker 1: incorporate speed that that we heard from listeners. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: please email us it Hello at tanodi dot com. And
Speaker 1: thanks Bridget for having me on. It's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: of talking. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech.
Speaker 1: I just want to say hi. You can reach us
Speaker 1: at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of I Heeart Radio and Unboss creative
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our
Speaker 1: producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more podcast from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: H