Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and I'm doing a live Ask
Speaker 1: Me Anything over on Patreon in just a few weeks,
Speaker 1: and I need your help to prepare. Just go to
Speaker 1: patreon dot com slash tangoty and submit your burning questions
Speaker 1: and I will do my very best to answer them.
Speaker 1: You do not need to be a paying Patreon member
Speaker 1: to submit a question. So, got a burning tech or
Speaker 1: social media question, I'll do my very best to answer it.
Speaker 1: Or find somebody who can. Always wanted to know something
Speaker 1: about me or my life or my work, I will
Speaker 1: answer that too. Got questions about the business of podcasting
Speaker 1: or how the sausage gets made, let's hear it. Have
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Speaker 1: are no girls on the Internet. As a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm bridgeitat and this is there
Speaker 1: are no girls on the Internet. The movie Barbie has
Speaker 1: already racked in a very impressive one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: five million dollars at the domestic box office on opening
Speaker 1: weekend alone, and based on that success, there are even
Speaker 1: more toy franchises being turned into live action films, one
Speaker 1: of which is a live action movie version of my
Speaker 1: personal favorite toy growing up, Polypocket. You know that whole
Speaker 1: little miniature doll universe housed inside a cute little plastic compact.
Speaker 1: I loved it, and the movie Polypocket is set to
Speaker 1: be directed by none other than Lena Dunham of HBO's Girls.
Speaker 1: So Lena Dunham was trending all this week after the
Speaker 1: Polypocket movie was announced, which also means that a particularly
Speaker 1: sticky piece of misleading content about her did too. Now
Speaker 1: I have to give a little bit of a heads
Speaker 1: up here. This claim is a particularly ugly one involving
Speaker 1: sexual abuse. Last year, I did a deep dive into
Speaker 1: this particular claim, where it originated and why it's stuck
Speaker 1: around for so long. Now, I know people have a
Speaker 1: lot of strong opinions and feelings about Lena Dunham, so
Speaker 1: take a listen and let me know what you think,
Speaker 1: and we'll be back with our regular Friday newscast next week. Today,
Speaker 1: we are not trying to sort of demonstrate the way
Speaker 1: that the media unfairly maligned somebody. We are zeroing in
Speaker 1: on one specific misleading claim about none other than Lena Dunham.
Speaker 1: I am in no way making a larger point about
Speaker 1: the way that the media and society has portrayed her broadly,
Speaker 1: but I do want to zero in on this one
Speaker 1: specific claim and analyze how it became to be this
Speaker 1: very sticky, persistent lie that still endures online today and
Speaker 1: what that lies has about our culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so why why this one specific thing?
Speaker 1: Great question. So a little bit of background about how
Speaker 1: I came to be making this episode. I used to
Speaker 1: work on the social media team at MSNBC dot com,
Speaker 1: and one of our kind of tried and true digital
Speaker 1: engagement tricks was to post about someone, a public figure
Speaker 1: that we knew our audience would engage with, positive or negative.
Speaker 1: This is back in twenty fifteen, and our audience used
Speaker 1: to love to hate on Putin, and so whenever we
Speaker 1: posted something about Putin that posted that cast him in
Speaker 1: a negative light, we could always expect that people would
Speaker 1: really engage with that a lot. They'd be leaving like
Speaker 1: mean comments like yeah, we hate him. They love to
Speaker 1: hate on Putin. But hands down, no question, the public
Speaker 1: figure that got the most hate on all of our
Speaker 1: social media pages was Lena Dunham. I think, if I'm
Speaker 1: recalling correctly, I think people disliked Lena Dunham more than
Speaker 1: they disliked Putin, which is really saying something. And I
Speaker 1: used to I worked on this podcast project where Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham was one of our guests. And again, you know,
Speaker 1: we had posted episodes with all different types of public
Speaker 1: figures and celebrities, but when we posted our Lena Dunnam episode,
Speaker 1: it was instant unanimous negative feedback. And so I noticed
Speaker 1: whenever we would publish about her or post about her
Speaker 1: or feature her online, commenters would always repeat like a
Speaker 1: laundry list of reasons they don't like her. You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would be the garden variety things that you
Speaker 1: would expect, like oh, she's a spoiled brad, I hate her,
Speaker 1: or you know, oh she's gross, which is pretty much
Speaker 1: just kind of fat phobia, but by far the most
Speaker 1: common thing I would see commenters say about Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: online was this particularly persistent claim that she's a quote
Speaker 1: sexual predator who admitted to molesting her younger sibling. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always very interested in what I referred
Speaker 1: to as sticky pieces of disinformation or misinformation or lies,
Speaker 1: you know, things that really just seem to cut through
Speaker 1: and persist. You know, I'm very interested in why these
Speaker 1: things stick and to what end, and what their stickiness
Speaker 1: tells us about our culture. And in that regard, you know,
Speaker 1: this misleading claim about Lena Dunham is fascinating to me
Speaker 1: because I think it tells us a lot about the
Speaker 1: ways that our political and social climates intersect, which is
Speaker 1: particularly important in today's climate. And I just want to
Speaker 1: make it super super clear, because I can already hear
Speaker 1: people who are listening thinking, why are you defending Lena Dunham.
Speaker 1: She's awful? You know, what are you doing? Let me
Speaker 1: be very clear, there are plenty of valid reasons to
Speaker 1: not rock with Lena Dunham, some of which will be
Speaker 1: talking about in this episode. So this is not me
Speaker 1: trying to get anyone to think that Lena Dunham is good,
Speaker 1: or it is not me saying that every single claim
Speaker 1: about her is unfair or untrue, but the claim that
Speaker 1: she sexually abused her sibling, I believe is a pretty
Speaker 1: nasty thing to repeat about somebody. And I don't know
Speaker 1: that people who repeat this particularly nasty lie know that
Speaker 1: it initially started as a right wing attack on a
Speaker 1: prominent liberal voice, But because of Lena Dunham's overall I
Speaker 1: guess we'll say vibe, this claim has really taken root,
Speaker 1: not just in right wing circles, but more generally too.
Speaker 1: Like people who I believe probably have would never read
Speaker 1: a right wing blog, you know, for any legitimate reason,
Speaker 1: should probably be aware that they are repeating a lie
Speaker 1: that was really cooked up in the right wing blog
Speaker 1: a sphere. And I think that should be really concerning.
Speaker 1: I think the ways that this claim has sort of
Speaker 1: become true, that's scare quotes around that, and has persisted
Speaker 1: for so long, should really be concerning for all of us.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about how and why that happened and
Speaker 1: what it means.
Speaker 2: So for people like me who don't really know anything
Speaker 2: about this, who is Lena Dunham?
Speaker 1: So if you don't know who Lena Dunham is, I
Speaker 1: will give you kind of a quick and dirty summary
Speaker 1: of her background. Lena Dunham is an actor, producer, and writer.
Speaker 1: She's the daughter of visual art Lori Simmons, who is
Speaker 1: a very big deal in the art world because her
Speaker 1: art is incredible. Lena rose to fame after making a
Speaker 1: really strong film debut called Tiny Furniture, which is basically
Speaker 1: a semi auto biographical movie about a young woman portrayed
Speaker 1: by Lena, who disgraduated from college and is trying to
Speaker 1: navigate adulthood. Laurie Simmons, her real life mom, plays her
Speaker 1: mom in the movie, and in the movie, her mom
Speaker 1: is also a visual artist and photographer who stages these
Speaker 1: stages or pieces with tiny dollhouse furniture, just like her
Speaker 1: mom does in real life. And Lena's real life sibling,
Speaker 1: Cyrus Grace, plays Lena's character sibling in the movie too,
Speaker 1: so it's very semi auto biographical. In twenty twelve, she
Speaker 1: created and starred in HBO's Girls, which also explores kind
Speaker 1: of similar themes young white women trying to navigate young
Speaker 1: adulthood post college in Brooklyn, New York. Lena was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six, so she is what you would
Speaker 1: call a millennial and when Girls was debuting, it was
Speaker 1: kind of peak like what are the millennials up to
Speaker 1: content time? Right? And so Girls was this huge success.
Speaker 1: Pretty early on, it got a lot of criticism for
Speaker 1: how white the show was, because just like shows like
Speaker 1: Sex and the City and Friends before it, it's just
Speaker 1: for white people who are not really encountering a lot
Speaker 1: of diversity that I know that you would find in
Speaker 1: a city like Brooklyn, New York. But regardless, positive, negative,
Speaker 1: whatever you thought, it was the kind of show that
Speaker 1: people were talking about a lot like it was in
Speaker 1: the discourse, which I think creates a certain kind of
Speaker 1: gravy toss around anything. And just as a side note,
Speaker 1: in case you're curious, I actually watched and enjoyed the show.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and act like I
Speaker 1: have not seen every episode or I am not going
Speaker 1: to sit here and act like I did not immediately
Speaker 1: go to a V club to read reviews immediately after
Speaker 1: watching episodes, because, like I said, it was part of
Speaker 1: a discourse. You know, the show created discourse, and I
Speaker 1: will never deprive myself of discourse. Okay, if people are
Speaker 1: talking about something, if there's articles and reviews to be
Speaker 1: read I'm reading them, I'm engaging. So Girls explores themes
Speaker 1: of sexuality, gender, and female friendship, and its highly anticipated
Speaker 1: third season comes out in January twenty fourteen. Now, in
Speaker 1: September of that same year, Lena releases a memoir essay
Speaker 1: collection calls not that kind of girl. Lena was having
Speaker 1: a really hot moment, and so the book was a
Speaker 1: highly anticipated one. Random House purchased the rights in October
Speaker 1: twenty twelve after a big bidding war, and bidding was
Speaker 1: reported to have risen past three point five million dollars.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those very hot, very big deal
Speaker 1: book publishing projects. This was all happening against the backdrop
Speaker 1: of a particular climate politically, culturally, and socially in the
Speaker 1: mid twenty tens. If I had the ability to clear
Speaker 1: music rights on this podcast, which my producer Tari can
Speaker 1: tell you I bug her about pretty much every day,
Speaker 1: this is where we'd be playing like maybe Katie Perry's
Speaker 1: Roar or Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. You know,
Speaker 1: some other twenty ten hit to really set the scene, Mikey,
Speaker 1: what were some other like twenty ten hits, like hits
Speaker 1: of the twenty tens, Oh, Rihanna.
Speaker 2: Maybe Rihanna was in there. I feel like Tam and
Speaker 2: Paula was in there. Maybe I'm getting a little like
Speaker 2: late twenty tens.
Speaker 1: So just imagine that some kind of music from that
Speaker 1: era is playing as I paint a portrait of what
Speaker 1: it was like in the mid twenty tens. So in
Speaker 1: popular culture, the film Twelve Years of Slave won Best
Speaker 1: Picture at the Oscars in twenty fourteen, which was hosted
Speaker 1: by openly gay Ellen DeGeneres and was the most watched
Speaker 1: Oscars since the year two thousand. By twenty fourteen, waves
Speaker 1: of states are passing marriage equality legislation. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decides not to hear cases on marriage equality appeals, thus
Speaker 1: immediately legalizing marriage equality in Virginia, Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, and
Speaker 1: Wisconsin before it sent back to the courts and ultimately
Speaker 1: legalized nationwide a year later. The Black Lives Matter movement
Speaker 1: started in twenty thirteen and was really picking up. You
Speaker 1: have the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Florida, Mike
Speaker 1: Brown and Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York and
Speaker 1: the subsequent uprisings all over the country shows that this
Speaker 1: movement has real momentum, and really it creates a national
Speaker 1: conversation that is basically impossible to ignore. You'll remember that
Speaker 1: when President Obama was asked about trayvon Martin, he answered,
Speaker 1: if I had a son, he would look a lot
Speaker 1: like treyvon Martin. Obama gave a televised speech announcing his
Speaker 1: plans to use executive action to grant citizenship to about
Speaker 1: four point four million immigrants. So I have my own
Speaker 1: feelings about Obama's immigration policies, which is a podcast for
Speaker 1: another day. But the point is Republicans and right wingers
Speaker 1: absolutely fucking hated this. We also get Obamacare in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: and for the next few years, Republicans were fighting it
Speaker 1: tooth and nail, including Obamacare's birth control coverage mandate. Mike,
Speaker 1: do you remember that Georgetown law student and feminist activist
Speaker 1: Sondra Fluke?
Speaker 2: Boy, I'd forgotten, but now it's coming back to me.
Speaker 2: What was the deal with Sandra Fluke? Why do we
Speaker 2: know her name?
Speaker 1: So in twenty twelve, Sandra Fluke was barred from testifying
Speaker 1: about birth control during a hearing, and instead the only
Speaker 1: people who testified about birth control was an all male
Speaker 1: planel of clergy and then Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke
Speaker 1: a slut basically just per advocating for birth control. You know,
Speaker 1: these were the times where the phrase we were using,
Speaker 1: the phrase quote war on women a lot like that
Speaker 1: was a phrase that we were using, which I think
Speaker 1: captured something about what it was like to live through
Speaker 1: that era. But in a way, it kind of almost
Speaker 1: seems quaint now when you look at everything else that
Speaker 1: is would have going on.
Speaker 2: It does seem quaint now. I remember that war on
Speaker 2: women phrase, and boy, if we thought that was a
Speaker 2: war on women, buckle up for twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: This is a soul. It's funny because I wanted to
Speaker 1: do this episode because I thought it was like a
Speaker 1: little bit of a departure from everything happening in the news.
Speaker 1: But it's so funny how it always comes back to this,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I feel like every time I look backwards to the
Speaker 2: period like five, ten, fifteen years ago, I'm confronted with
Speaker 2: how quaint my concerns felt, and how the things I
Speaker 2: was alarmed about seems so much smaller than the things
Speaker 2: that are just like normal shit in the news today.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At our back. So we're talking about this war on women.
Speaker 1: But back in twenty fourteen, you also have Beyonce performing
Speaker 1: in front of the word feminist in giant letters like
Speaker 1: decked out in Life at the Empty vvma's paired with
Speaker 1: a sample of Chimamanda ngozio Adicia speech on feminism and
Speaker 1: expectations for women and girls. We'd teach girls to shrink themselves,
Speaker 1: to make themselves smaller.
Speaker 3: We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not
Speaker 3: too much.
Speaker 1: And this I remember this. I remember coming into work
Speaker 1: the next day after this aired, and it felt like
Speaker 1: a big cultural moment for women and feminism. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I've been I've identified like vocally as a
Speaker 1: feminist for most of my life since I was a child.
Speaker 1: But I think for a lot of people, when you
Speaker 1: were asked like are you a feminist, it was something
Speaker 1: you had to be a little bit wishy washy about.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this moment with Beyonce, it felt
Speaker 1: like a cultural moment where people wanted to say it
Speaker 1: with their whole chests. Country pop sensation Taylor Swift famously
Speaker 1: came out as a feminist in twenty fourteen in an
Speaker 1: interview with The Guardian where she credits her friend none
Speaker 1: other than Lena Dunham with her feminist awakening. And I
Speaker 1: guess my point is this, this era really feels at
Speaker 1: a time where things like progressivism and diversity and feminism
Speaker 1: are becoming increasingly mainstream, and that they're becoming attached with
Speaker 1: a kind of social currency. You know, it's not cool
Speaker 1: to be aligned with old men dragging their feet and
Speaker 1: blocking marriage equality, or calling college girls sluts for wanting
Speaker 1: to be on birth control. None of that is cool.
Speaker 1: But what is cool is being a feminist. It's cool
Speaker 1: to be a feminist, it's cool to be an ally
Speaker 1: and in twenty fourteen, Lena Dunham was a huge part
Speaker 1: of this climate. So culturally, Lena Dunham's hit show Girls
Speaker 1: and her writing explores, you know, themes of sexuality and
Speaker 1: gender in these really frank ways. So that alone, you know,
Speaker 1: creating work deposits that young women have an interiority that
Speaker 1: is worthy of serious exploration and respect, is a thing
Speaker 1: that is really taking off in the culture. You know,
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham is not a size four, and yet she
Speaker 1: is nude on screen and has these sex scenes. She
Speaker 1: does a really great job of highlight the sort of
Speaker 1: humor and awkwardness that kind a company exploring your sexuality
Speaker 1: when you're young, you know what she's doing on screen.
Speaker 1: It feels a little bit daring. After the success of Girls,
Speaker 1: Lena starts Lenny Letter, a feminist newsletter where you know,
Speaker 1: you have celebrities getting really, really raw but also talking
Speaker 1: about feminist issues. You know, you have Jennifer Lawrence writing
Speaker 1: about the gender pay gap in Hollywood and Kesha writing
Speaker 1: about her abuse at the hands of her producer, doctor Luke.
Speaker 1: This also translates politically. Lena positions herself as a vocal
Speaker 1: feminist and a champion for feminist causes another familiar trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane. Back around twenty fourteen, Planned Parenthood was
Speaker 1: facing a lot of bs political attacks. Mike Pence was
Speaker 1: not just someone who was being threatened with hanging and
Speaker 1: a gallows by his own constituents. Back then, he was
Speaker 1: the governor of Indiana, and he made attacking Planned Parenthood
Speaker 1: and threatening to defund Planned Parenthood part a big part
Speaker 1: of his whole overall thing. And we also had these
Speaker 1: deceptively edited sting videos anti abortion extremists. You know, they
Speaker 1: would do things like have somebody dress up like a
Speaker 1: pimp and then go in with women to a planned
Speaker 1: parenthood and try to get services. Basically, right wing types
Speaker 1: were really trying to make planned parenthood and abortion and
Speaker 1: the kinds of exploration of sexuality and gender that Lena
Speaker 1: really does in her work. They were really trying to
Speaker 1: brand that as something toxic that nobody would want to
Speaker 1: be affiliated with. Only it wasn't really working.
Speaker 2: Isn't it funny how Mike Tens built his whole career
Speaker 2: on like attacking people and making people seem like evil villains,
Speaker 2: and then he arguably rode out his career with members
Speaker 2: of his own party chanting to hang him. You know,
Speaker 2: isn't that funny that you reap what you sew?
Speaker 1: You know, you live by the sword, you die by
Speaker 1: the sword. What can I say?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly. You live by the jigged up outrage, you
Speaker 2: die by the gallows.
Speaker 1: So, in the wake of all these attacks on planned parenthood,
Speaker 1: Lena becomes the face of a campaign to fight back
Speaker 1: called Women Are Watching. She designs a hot pink shirt
Speaker 1: that says Lena loves Planned Parenthood in supportive planned parenthood,
Speaker 1: and she gets other aless celebrities like America, Frera and
Speaker 1: Gabrielle Union to join in. Lena made this kind of cheeky,
Speaker 1: kind of wink wink ad for the DNC in supportive
Speaker 1: Obama in twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody you want
Speaker 4: to do it with a great guy. It should be
Speaker 4: with a guy with beautiful someone who really cares about
Speaker 4: and understands women, a guy who cares whether you get
Speaker 4: health insurance and specifically whether you get birth control.
Speaker 1: It was funny, yeah, so it's playful, it's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: it's a little edgy. So probably unsurprisingly, right wing types
Speaker 1: did not like this ad. Ben Shapiro, who remember that
Speaker 1: name because he will be important, later said that the
Speaker 1: ad mocked versions. His whole screed about the ad is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, so he writes in Breibert. So Lena chose
Speaker 1: to do it for the first time with Barack Obama
Speaker 1: since he quote cares about and understands women. In fact,
Speaker 1: he understands them so well that he exploits them for
Speaker 1: insane commercials, comparing losing your virginity with voting. Obama has
Speaker 1: young daughters, but that didn't stop him from releasing this
Speaker 1: commercial because This is what Obama thinks of your daughters.
Speaker 1: This is Obama's official campaign ad, paid for with his
Speaker 1: campaign money, distributed by his campaign. If this ad were
Speaker 1: any more demeaning to women who apparently care only about
Speaker 1: having sex, if you listen to Lena you want to
Speaker 1: do it, Dunham, it should be produced by Bill Maher
Speaker 1: and star Bill Clinton. Oh wait, that's Obama's actual care campaign.
Speaker 1: According to Barack Obama, this campaign isn't about the economy
Speaker 1: or foreign policy. It's about free birth control as advocated
Speaker 1: by unbelievably wealthy celebrities. If Obama goes any smaller in
Speaker 1: this campaign, we're gonna need a microscope to find him.
Speaker 2: Ugh, it's so over the top. I just need a
Speaker 2: minute to choke down this vomit. It comes up at
Speaker 2: any time Ben Shapiro's words appear. It's you mentioned that
Speaker 2: he's going to be important later. When is that, like,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, twenty thirty, When will he be important?
Speaker 1: We're still waiting. I'm sure he's still waiting. I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's been waiting his whole life to feel important. So
Speaker 1: they did not like Lina's Obama ad in twenty twelve
Speaker 1: and it. Actually, I find it so interesting how Shapiro
Speaker 1: uses Lina's involvement to really shrink the issue of birth
Speaker 1: control coverage, Like it is simultaneously a small issue that
Speaker 1: is so small that it's unbecoming Obama to align himself with,
Speaker 1: and it is also an issue that the right wing
Speaker 1: was actively exploding and melting down over, you know, holding
Speaker 1: hearings about it and making it a huge deal. So
Speaker 1: you know, the math isn't really mathing on that one,
Speaker 1: Like which one is Is it so inconsequential that nobody
Speaker 1: should ever care about it? Or is it this huge
Speaker 1: issue that you need to hold a million hearings about,
Speaker 1: you know which one?
Speaker 2: That's such a good observation. I ever thought about it
Speaker 2: like that. But you're absolutely right. It's like so consistent
Speaker 2: with their whole hypocrisy thing. We're on the one hand
Speaker 2: when they're on the attack, like, oh, it's so inconsequential,
Speaker 2: it's insulting to even bring up the concept of birth control.
Speaker 2: And then you know, flip the screen and the only
Speaker 2: thing that matters is abortion restrictions and preventing women from
Speaker 2: having abortions. It's like two sides of the same coin,
Speaker 2: but like one side is life or death for society,
Speaker 2: and the other side is like trivial and brass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like some of these folks are not
Speaker 1: genuine actors. It sounds like some of them are completely disingenuous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does seem almost like that. I mean, like
Speaker 2: that can't be it. There's got to be something more.
Speaker 2: I'll keep thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Keep thinking on it. Anyway. So at this point, Lena
Speaker 1: is really proving herself to be somebody with a certain
Speaker 1: kind of cultural cachet with millennial young women, and somebody
Speaker 1: who seems to really know how to leverage it for
Speaker 1: you know, big d democratic causes in a way that
Speaker 1: actually cuts through. Like even though right wingers did not
Speaker 1: like that ad, people talked about it, people wrote about it.
Speaker 1: So lover or hater, Lena Dunham knows how to wield
Speaker 1: her own specific kind of political, social, and cultural power.
Speaker 1: And the vibe around that is that it's cool to
Speaker 1: care about politics and it's cool to care about feminism. Importantly,
Speaker 1: this is actually largely a phenomenon on the left. There
Speaker 1: aren't really a lot of cool, young, culturally relevant political
Speaker 1: celebrities on the right in the same kind of way.
Speaker 1: Not to go on too much of a tangent. But
Speaker 1: for a long time, people myself included, assumed that Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift was a silent right winger because she pretty much
Speaker 1: never spoke up about politics in interviews. When she was
Speaker 1: asked if she was a feminist, she would say things like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't call myself a feminist because I never believed
Speaker 1: in men versus women. But her friendship with Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: gets tailored to be this loud and proud feminist who
Speaker 1: actually speaks up about politics after a decade of staying quiet.
Speaker 1: And it's basically almost like a right wing bogeyman come
Speaker 1: to life. You know, your sweet blonde, conservative, country loving
Speaker 1: young woman will become corrupted by a tattooed feminist with
Speaker 1: green hair and will be pulled into identifying as a
Speaker 1: liberal feminist. So you know, say what you will about
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham. That is a certain type of cultural power,
Speaker 1: and Homegirld knows how to use it. And you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the culture, it was people like
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham who had the relevance. And I can see
Speaker 1: how this would be really threatening to write wing types
Speaker 1: who historically have had a lot of political power. But
Speaker 1: they aren't cool, They're not young or hip, and that
Speaker 1: is a problem for them. So all of this is
Speaker 1: the backdrop on which a website called Truth Revolt comes
Speaker 1: to exist. And to understand this misleading claim that Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham sexually abused her sibling and where it comes from,
Speaker 1: we have to first start by talking about Truth Revolt.
Speaker 2: Wait, so I was following along the whole way, but
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, now we're talking about a website
Speaker 2: called truth Revolt. What is truth Revolt?
Speaker 1: Truth Revolt is a right wing website that was launched
Speaker 1: on October seventh, twenty thirteen. According to c SPAN, Truth
Speaker 1: Revolt is a politically conservative media watchdog and activist group
Speaker 1: founded by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz of
Speaker 1: the d Horror Its Freedom Center as a counterpoint to
Speaker 1: the politically progressive media Matters for America. Yes, Ben Shapiro
Speaker 1: is the same person who wrote that breathless piece about
Speaker 1: Lena's twenty twelve ad for Obama. And side note, a
Speaker 1: lot of y'all probably know Ben Shapiro. He is pretty
Speaker 1: famous for being you know, he's young. I think he's
Speaker 1: thirty eight now. He's pretty famous for being this right
Speaker 1: wing media figure, and he's been at it since he
Speaker 1: was seventeen. I personally just find him awful. Like the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm even talking about him on this show
Speaker 1: is slightly annoying to me, because I just like don't
Speaker 1: like talking about him. You know. I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I dislike him so much is because
Speaker 1: his whole thing is culture war stuff, right, And so
Speaker 1: he's the guy with a huge platform complaining about Disney
Speaker 1: making a woke remake or something like that, or you know,
Speaker 1: he's the person who's always complaining about culture because culture
Speaker 1: tends to be a space where, you know, people who
Speaker 1: are traditionally marginalized can have a little power and have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a voice. And so he's constantly
Speaker 1: complaining about culture. The thing that always comes to mind
Speaker 1: when I think about Ben Shapiro, I will always associate
Speaker 1: him with trying to lead a moral crusade against Megan
Speaker 1: thee Stallion and Cardi B's song of the Summer Wet
Speaker 1: Ass Pussy, and kind of self owning himself by saying
Speaker 1: that the only reason so he says, Oh, I'm married
Speaker 1: to a doctor I talked to my doctor wife, and
Speaker 1: she assures me that the only reason that a woman
Speaker 1: would have a WAP is if she had a vaginal infection,
Speaker 1: which is just hysterical. I think about it all the
Speaker 1: time and laugh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the funniest thing about him. It's the only
Speaker 2: thing I think about when I think about him. It's
Speaker 2: like perfectly summarizes his whole culture war thing where there
Speaker 2: was like a video I don't even think it was
Speaker 2: really edited of him like doing spoken word of the
Speaker 2: lyrics of that WAP song and then him like commenting about, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: you said to his wife, who apparently is a medical doctor,
Speaker 2: saying that the only reason it might happen is because
Speaker 2: of an affection. It was sad and shocking, and I
Speaker 2: almost feel like like he was setting us up. But
Speaker 2: like it's just too much humility. I think it just
Speaker 2: truly is that embarrassing for him?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I if folks have not seen so the video
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, I definitely watched it one hundred times.
Speaker 1: He is reading the lyrics on his show in disgust,
Speaker 1: and so he's reading the lyrics to wet Ass Pussy.
Speaker 1: But then somebody and I think he's trying to demonstrate
Speaker 1: like this song is so immoral and like this is
Speaker 1: what our girls are listening to, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: But then to a beat, somebody puts it to the
Speaker 1: WAP beat and it kind of slaps lie. It's hilarious,
Speaker 1: Like look it up. I I'll link it in the
Speaker 1: show notes because I watch it. It's given me great joy.
Speaker 1: I'll put it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's the best way to really
Speaker 2: understand Ben Shapiro as a person and as.
Speaker 1: A man exactly. And obviously this is it sounds so silly,
Speaker 1: and it is silly, but it's also really important to
Speaker 1: this particular story because turning culture into a political battleground
Speaker 1: is a big part of how we got here With
Speaker 1: this one persistent claim about Lena Dunham, so, Truth Revolt's
Speaker 1: mission page states that its goals are to quote unmasked
Speaker 1: leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their
Speaker 1: credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding basis.
Speaker 1: So essentially, truth Revolt was created, per the co creator
Speaker 1: David Horbert's own mission statement, to manipulate media for political means.
Speaker 1: Here's what he wrote on gon say the media win
Speaker 1: elections for the left. It's not the left's competence in office.
Speaker 1: Leftists have demonstrated none. It's not the left's ideas. Leftist
Speaker 1: ideas have failed everywhere they've been tried. The left wins
Speaker 1: for one simple reason. Leftists control the information distribution system
Speaker 1: in the United States, and they use that system to
Speaker 1: pillary conservatives, heartless bigots intent on harming the poor and
Speaker 1: targeting minorities. The media must be destroyed where they stand.
Speaker 1: That is our mission at Truth Revolt. The goal of
Speaker 1: truth Revolt is simple, unmasked leftists in the media for
Speaker 1: who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public,
Speaker 1: and devastate their funding basis, Truth Revolt focuses on high
Speaker 1: profile media members and holding them accountable. Truth Revolt also
Speaker 1: seeks to stop the left dead in its tracks when
Speaker 1: it comes to training the next generation on our college campuses.
Speaker 1: Truth Revolt works to make advertisers and funders aware of
Speaker 1: the leftist propaganda they sponsor and bringing social consequences to
Speaker 1: bear to create pressure on such advertisers and funders. So
Speaker 1: pretty obviously from their own statement, Truth Revolt specifically is
Speaker 1: looking to quote unmasked leftists and target specific leftist public
Speaker 1: figures in them media to make them toxic for brands
Speaker 1: and funders to be associated with. And they're kind of
Speaker 1: modeling themselves after places like Media Matters for America, who
Speaker 1: monitor disinformers and bad actors and extremists like Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: and Steve Bannon to pressure advertisers to drop them. They're
Speaker 1: also specifically focused around winning over young people like college students,
Speaker 1: who we know are Lena Dunham's biggest audience demographic. So obviously,
Speaker 1: I think it goes about saying that truth Revolt is
Speaker 1: not just some you know, run of the mill media
Speaker 1: outlet reporting the facts from their own statement. They are
Speaker 1: a right wing outlet with a political acts to grind.
Speaker 1: They are out for vengeance, they are out to dismantle
Speaker 1: people take them down by their own admission.
Speaker 2: This idea that like leftists are supported by this great
Speaker 2: funding appreatus. I know so many broke ass leftists she.
Speaker 1: Checking out of me.
Speaker 2: Separating from their funding is like not even the thing,
Speaker 2: like so many of them are broke, you know, Like
Speaker 2: where what is this like big leftist funding in the
Speaker 2: media that they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Like, I mean, nothing that they say is accurate. You know,
Speaker 1: they say that like, oh, the media is a tool.
Speaker 1: Like the media, like the idea that that that that
Speaker 1: mainstream media is a tool propping up leftist agendas. It's
Speaker 1: just I gets such an unseerious claim. I don't find
Speaker 1: it worthy of a retort. It's just it's just like
Speaker 1: you can just read the newspaper in the wake of
Speaker 1: the fall of Row, read the newspaper in the New
Speaker 1: York Times today they I mean, I don't even want
Speaker 1: to get into it, but yes, it's it's such an
Speaker 1: unseerious claim that it's not even worthy of a response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like ludicrous. It's like who who owns
Speaker 2: the media? We've got you know, NBC, you know, Jeff
Speaker 2: Bezos owns the Washington Post. Like, these are not leftist people.
Speaker 1: No, it's it's horseshit. Okay, So you might be wondering,
Speaker 1: this website sounds sketchy as hell, But what does it
Speaker 1: have to do with Lena Dunham. Well, the claim that
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham admitting to molesting her younger sibling was initially
Speaker 1: started on Truth Revolt.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, so that's the connection here. This Truth Revolt
Speaker 2: started this claim about Lena Dunham. I should have seen
Speaker 2: it coming, but somehow they snuck it in on me.
Speaker 1: It's true, and I should probably say that something that
Speaker 1: we know about disinformation and the way that it spreads
Speaker 1: oftentimes it contains some element or nugget of truth that
Speaker 1: can be easily manipulated or taken out of context. And
Speaker 1: that is definitely what's happening here. So let's look at
Speaker 1: the facts. In September twenty fourteen, Lena Dunham released her
Speaker 1: memoir Not That Kind of Girl. Now. I have read
Speaker 1: the memoir a couple of times, so like I'm pretty
Speaker 1: well versed on what it says and what it doesn't say.
Speaker 1: And it does include passages of Lena describing sexual situations
Speaker 1: around her younger sibling. I should say right now, Lina's
Speaker 1: sibling is called Cyrus Grace Dunham and uses they them pronouns.
Speaker 1: According to a twenty nineteen Atlantic profile of Cyrus, Cyrus
Speaker 1: uses they them pronouns in professional contexts, and he him
Speaker 1: pronouns with friends. But that was not the case when
Speaker 1: this memoir was published. But as I read some quotes
Speaker 1: from the memoir, I'm going to amend the quotes to
Speaker 1: reflect that, so Lena writes about trying to get her
Speaker 1: younger sibling to kiss her on the mouth and lay
Speaker 1: on top of her. As Cyrus Grace grew, I took
Speaker 1: to bribing them for time and affection. One dollar in quarters,
Speaker 1: if I could do their makeup like a motorcycle chick,
Speaker 1: three pieces of candy, if I could kiss them on
Speaker 1: the lips for five seconds, whatever they wanted to watch
Speaker 1: on TV. If they would just relax on me, basically
Speaker 1: anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small
Speaker 1: suburban girl I was trying. The memoir also includes this passage.
Speaker 1: Do we all have uteruses? I asked my mother when
Speaker 1: I was seven. Yes, she told me. We're born with
Speaker 1: them and with all of our eggs, But they start
Speaker 1: out very small, and they aren't ready to make babies
Speaker 1: until we're older. I look at my Cyrus Grace, now
Speaker 1: a slim, tough one year old, and at their tiny belly.
Speaker 1: I imagine eggs inside of them, like the sack of
Speaker 1: spider eggs and Charlotte's web, and their uterus the size
Speaker 1: of a thimble. Does their vagina look like mine? I
Speaker 1: guess so, my mother said, just smaller. One day as
Speaker 1: I sat out on our driveway in Long Island, playing
Speaker 1: with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me.
Speaker 1: Cyrus Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I
Speaker 1: leaned down between them and I leaned down between their
Speaker 1: legs and carefully spread open their vagina. They didn't resist,
Speaker 1: and when I saw what was inside, I shrieked. My
Speaker 1: mother came running, Mama, Mama, Cyrus Grace has something in there.
Speaker 1: My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened cyrus
Speaker 1: Grace's vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that
Speaker 1: I did. She just got on her knees and looked
Speaker 1: for herself. It quickly became apparent that Cyrus Grace had
Speaker 1: stuck six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed
Speaker 1: them patiently, while Cyrus Grace cackled thrilled that their prank
Speaker 1: had been a success. So the book actually does contain
Speaker 1: content that involves her describing these sexual situations with their sibling.
Speaker 1: That is true, but she writes about doing this at
Speaker 1: age seven with her sibling who was age one. On
Speaker 1: October twenty ninth, twenty fourteen, about a month after her
Speaker 1: book had come out, Truth Revolt published the passage that
Speaker 1: I just read about the pebbles and the vagina under
Speaker 1: the headline Lena Dunham described sexually abusing her little sibling. Now,
Speaker 1: as Box points out, truth Revolt did two very misleading
Speaker 1: things in their post, calling Donham a sexual abuser. One,
Speaker 1: they really keyed in on this phrase they didn't resist,
Speaker 1: which obviously becomes a lot more loaded when paired with
Speaker 1: the headline about sexually abusing her sibling. Two, and this
Speaker 1: is really important. Truth Revolt article originally stated that Dunham
Speaker 1: was seventeen at the time, when Dunham in actuality said
Speaker 1: that she was seven. So obviously, if you have a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old describing these kinds of interactions with a
Speaker 1: one year old, it is a very different situation than
Speaker 1: if you have a seven year old, which she actually
Speaker 1: says was her age doing them with someone who is one.
Speaker 2: Yes, seventeen and seven are pretty different there.
Speaker 1: Pretty different. So truth Revolt eventually does say that it
Speaker 1: was a typo. I guess that's fine. The story is
Speaker 1: then linked to by the Drudge Report, which, if you
Speaker 1: don't know what that is because you're not older like myself,
Speaker 1: it's basically a right wing news aggregator that can really
Speaker 1: blow up stories. It was the first place to publish
Speaker 1: the Bill Clinton scandal involving interna Monica Lewinsky back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight. Once it's picked up by the drudge
Speaker 1: the story gets a ton more traction. It makes the
Speaker 1: rounds on you know, Truth for Both is kind of
Speaker 1: a niche site. It makes the rounds on the wider
Speaker 1: right wing blog and infosphere, and much bigger right wing
Speaker 1: outlets begin to pick it up. The National Reviews Kevin Williamston,
Speaker 1: for instance, declared there is no non horrific interpretation of
Speaker 1: this episode, and The Daily Caller, another conservative outlet, rights
Speaker 1: Dunham had admitted to the quote gleeful sexual abuse of
Speaker 1: her infant sibling. Now that is initially really what seeded
Speaker 1: the whole Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling narrative. And
Speaker 1: now it's out in the wider right wing blogosphere infosphere,
Speaker 1: and now it is a thing.
Speaker 2: It's so salacious it almost feels like Taylor made for
Speaker 2: these kind of right wing outrage aggregators.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is such a commonality of disinformation, and
Speaker 1: it's something that I have to remember myself quite a bit,
Speaker 1: it's not just folks on the right. I'm speaking about everybody.
Speaker 1: Myself very much included that when you have these stories
Speaker 1: that seem almost tailor made to trigger certain things inside
Speaker 1: you or outrage you in a certain kind of way,
Speaker 1: those are always stories that you should be a little
Speaker 1: bit wary of because it's not a coincidence that they
Speaker 1: are hitting you in this particular way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And you've mentioned that. Guests have mentioned that on
Speaker 2: the show talking about ways to combat disinformation, Like when
Speaker 2: you're feeling that emotional reaction, that should almost be a
Speaker 2: signal to step back and evaluate, like who is writing this?
Speaker 2: Where am I reading this? Is this something that I
Speaker 2: want to share exactly?
Speaker 1: And that's one of the elements about this that I
Speaker 1: find so fascinating is how, obviously, if you are Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro or a right winger who has endured the last
Speaker 1: few years where it seems like progressivism and diversity and
Speaker 1: feminism and sexuality are all things that are becoming more
Speaker 1: and more salient, and you're feeling less and less in
Speaker 1: control and less and less relevant, and these things are
Speaker 1: becoming more and more relevant. I could see why that
Speaker 1: would prime somebody who is a right winger who feels
Speaker 1: kind of threatened by this. I could see how that
Speaker 1: would prime them to believe and amplify and spread this
Speaker 1: particularly damaging lie about Lena Dunham. However, what I find
Speaker 1: so fascinating about this is the way that didn't just
Speaker 1: stay in right wing circles. It made the rounds, and
Speaker 1: it still persists today.
Speaker 3: More after a quick break.
Speaker 1: Let's get right back into it. So the day that
Speaker 1: Truth published their misleading article about her memoir, Lena responded
Speaker 1: the following day, tweeting the right wing news story that
Speaker 1: I molested my little sibling isn't just laugh out loud,
Speaker 1: it's really fucking upsetting and disgusting. Her legal team sent
Speaker 1: a letter that was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter to
Speaker 1: Bradford Thomas, the author of the Peace and a Truth Revolt,
Speaker 1: threatening to take legal action if certain statements were not removed.
Speaker 1: The letter said, the story is false, fabricated, and has
Speaker 1: the obvious tendency to subject my client to ridicule and
Speaker 1: to injure her occupation. Now, the letter goes on to
Speaker 1: say that the piece caused quote actual damage to Lena's
Speaker 1: personal and professional reputation, which likely would be calculated in
Speaker 1: the millions of dollars, punitive damages which can be a
Speaker 1: multiple of up to ten times the actual damages, and
Speaker 1: injunctive relief. The letter also says that the Truth Revolt
Speaker 1: story contains quote outright falsified statements that are attributed to
Speaker 1: Lena and her book. The statements do not appear anywhere
Speaker 1: in the book, thus showing intent to harm, knowing falsity
Speaker 1: as well as reckless disregard for the truth, any one
Speaker 1: of which meets the malice requirement. Her attorney, Charles Harder
Speaker 1: wrote in his letter to Truth Revolt Now. Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 1: on behalf of Truth Revolt responded, he said, we refuse
Speaker 1: to withdraw our story and apologize for running it, because
Speaker 1: quoting a woman's book does not constitute a false story,
Speaker 1: even if she is a prominent actress and left wing activist.
Speaker 1: Lena Dunna might not like our interpretation of her book,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that
Speaker 1: book and the First Amendment covers a good deal of
Speaker 1: material which she may not like. And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just find Ben Shapiro and Truth Revolt's response to
Speaker 1: be so wild because Truth Revolt itself admitted that it
Speaker 1: was a typo, saying that she was seventeen and not seven.
Speaker 1: They said it was a typo, and so by definition
Speaker 1: what they printed was not correct and was a false story.
Speaker 1: I feel like Ben Shapiro's kind of, you know, puffed
Speaker 1: up response really flies in the face of like what
Speaker 1: the website actually said, which was that they printed something
Speaker 1: that was not correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's not like I wouldn't call that a
Speaker 2: typo even if it was uninten which seems pretty unlikely,
Speaker 2: but who knows, you know, maybe it was. But even so,
Speaker 2: it's like, so it so changes the character and the
Speaker 2: nature of the story that it's beyond a typo. It's
Speaker 2: clearly creating a false impression that's absolutely true, and for
Speaker 2: him to not even acknowledge that in part of his apology,
Speaker 2: it just makes me wonder.
Speaker 1: You know what, Oh, he didn't apologize, Oh right.
Speaker 2: Excuse me. Yeah, so not an apology actually, just like
Speaker 2: a continued attack. Yeah, that's great, the kind of kind
Speaker 2: of guy we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: Your Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to speculate whether this was an intentional move or not.
Speaker 1: I will say I have my suspicions, but they said
Speaker 1: it was a typo. I'm gonna take them at that word.
Speaker 1: You're so right that even if that was just a typo,
Speaker 1: somebody to slip the one in there, not acknowledging the
Speaker 1: way that that really charges the what you've written, and like, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really stunning that he won't even like on
Speaker 1: the one hand that the website admits it, but on
Speaker 1: the other hand it's like, well, we did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, can't really be both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, some omissions are more important than others. If,
Speaker 2: for example, hypothetically, somebody wrote somebody meant to write Ben
Speaker 2: Shapiro did not murder and eat his sister, but left
Speaker 2: out the word not, it would really change the meaning
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 2: But yeah, right, it's just it's just a typo. And
Speaker 2: also he's a right wing activist anyway, so that's somehow
Speaker 2: relevant exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So an important question that I feel like is really
Speaker 1: easy to get lost in all this is whether or
Speaker 1: not what Lena actually wrote in the book not the
Speaker 1: way that Truth Revolt initially spun it actually describes sexual
Speaker 1: abuse or not. So first, I believe that it's really
Speaker 1: important to listen to and center Lena Dunham's siblings Cybris
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 siblings Cybris Grace responded
Speaker 1: on Twitter saying heateronormativity deem certain behaviors harmful and others normal.
Speaker 1: The state and media are always invested in maintaining that.
Speaker 1: As a queer person, I'm committed to people narrating their
Speaker 1: own experiences determining for themselves what has it has not
Speaker 1: been harmful. Today, like every other day, it's a good
Speaker 1: day to think about how we police the sexualities of
Speaker 1: young women, queer and trans people. And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to ground, you know, the conversation of
Speaker 1: like what actually happened in how Cyrus Grace interprets it,
Speaker 1: because it's their it's you know, it's their experience, and
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I am no expert here. I am not a psychologist,
Speaker 1: I am not a legal scholar. I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: out of my depth when it comes to like whether
Speaker 1: or not something could be categorized as sexual abuse. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to summarize some people who actually know what
Speaker 1: they're talking about. So first, according to the American Academy
Speaker 1: of Pediatrics, touching and looking at a siblings genitals is
Speaker 1: a quote normal common behavior in kids ages two to six. Vox, Slate,
Speaker 1: and Gawker all spoke to experts who generally seem to
Speaker 1: conclude that little children being curious about the bodies of
Speaker 1: their sibling is a normal part of childhood development. Here's
Speaker 1: a couple of those experts. Gawker spoke to Sam Rubinstein,
Speaker 1: a psychotherapist who specializes in childhood abuse, who said, I
Speaker 1: think you have to take into consideration her age, her history,
Speaker 1: and the idea that age, unless you've gone through severe
Speaker 1: sexual trauma, there's really almost nothing sexual about it. The
Speaker 1: same explanation could be used for grabbing a dog's tail.
Speaker 1: It's the same type of coercion. Just because it's in
Speaker 1: the sexual venue, people want to attach something to it,
Speaker 1: but it's almost totally different. It's an innocent type thing.
Speaker 1: Slate spoke to Rich Savin Williams developmental psychologist and the
Speaker 1: director of the Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University,
Speaker 1: who said, quote, this is clearly not a case of abuse.
Speaker 1: Children have been doing this stuff forever and ever and ever,
Speaker 1: and they will do it forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 1: John V. Cafero, a professor at the California School of
Speaker 1: Professional Psychology and an expert on sibling abuse, wrote in
Speaker 1: a Washington Post column quote, to be clear, sexual curiosity
Speaker 1: in children is normal. All children explore their bodies and
Speaker 1: may engage in visual and even manual exploration of a
Speaker 1: sibling at times. This is one of the ways that
Speaker 1: children discover sexual differences between boys and girls, anatomies. Even
Speaker 1: siblings of the same gender become curious about variations in
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes of their sex organs. Two small children
Speaker 1: exploring each other's bodies does not predestine them to a
Speaker 1: life of emotional suffering. So you know, that might all
Speaker 1: kind of sound like I am abssolving Lena of having
Speaker 1: done anything wrong in this situation, right, But I actually
Speaker 1: think that this is where things get a little bit tricky,
Speaker 1: and this trickiness is exactly what drove me to wanting
Speaker 1: to make an episode about this topic. So I should say,
Speaker 1: I myself am a survivor of sexual abuse, and so
Speaker 1: I know that when something can be difficult to talk about,
Speaker 1: like most sensitive issues are, but I also know that
Speaker 1: we really really do need to talk honestly and thoughtfully
Speaker 1: about it. And you know what doesn't help us to
Speaker 1: have conversations about tough issues in a way that's honest
Speaker 1: and thoughtful and nuanced adding lies to the mix. This
Speaker 1: is a deliberate tactic that bad actors and disinformers employ,
Speaker 1: seizing on hot button issues, adding lies to the mix,
Speaker 1: intentionally to derail those conversations. And honestly, this is what
Speaker 1: really kind of gets me so upset about this issue,
Speaker 1: is that we should not and cannot tolerate lies being
Speaker 1: added to conversations that are as sensitive and important as
Speaker 1: childhood sexual abuse, especially not as a way to score
Speaker 1: cheap 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 converse that is made better by the
Speaker 1: injection of lies, and people deserve the truth like that
Speaker 1: is a value that I will just like scream from
Speaker 1: the rooftops over and over again. If you are adding
Speaker 1: lies to a 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 write 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 tech, flattening out conversations and stripping them of any
Speaker 1: context or nuance that are required to have a thoughtful,
Speaker 1: substantive 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 sine of inaccuracy. I would
Speaker 1: be willing to bet that at least some people trying
Speaker 1: to engage in a conversation probably have a misunderstanding about
Speaker 1: the basic facts of what happened. And so I guess
Speaker 1: all of this is to say, like, this is the
Speaker 1: 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 with out that inflammatory lie
Speaker 1: preventing us from doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Then, you know, the
Speaker 2: injection of lies into any conversation degrades that conversation. It
Speaker 2: makes it that much harder to have an honest conversation
Speaker 2: about whatever it is. And you know, usually when people
Speaker 2: are making up lies, they're doing it for some kind
Speaker 2: of agenda. To like you said, take all the oxygen
Speaker 2: out of the room to prevent discussion about something else,
Speaker 2: or to discredit and smear and shame a woman who
Speaker 2: they perceive as a leptist activists. And you know, I
Speaker 2: don't have any strong feelings for or against Lena Dunham,
Speaker 2: and I've actually learned so much and just like making
Speaker 2: these episodes with you. But it is just so familiar
Speaker 2: a trope of right wing shitheads making things up to
Speaker 2: smear somebody who they perceive as an enemy and just
Speaker 2: 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 was
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 freely share in a book
Speaker 1: you know, why would she think that having a whole
Speaker 1: section of her book dedicated to the ways that she
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, foisted herself on her baby sibling, Like, like,
Speaker 1: I guess like writing about that and as a way,
Speaker 1: that's a kind of cute and sort of like defining
Speaker 1: her as like a quirky character or like a jokey
Speaker 1: thing is really I think inappropriate, and I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that that raises some legitimate questions, you know,
Speaker 1: was that harmful to Lena's sibling. I actually heard from
Speaker 1: a listener after the first part of this series aired
Speaker 1: last week, and this person left an Instagram comment and
Speaker 1: they felt very strongly that what Lena described in her
Speaker 1: book was actually child like childhood sexual abuse.
Speaker 2: I remember you got that comment from that listener, and
Speaker 2: it was pretty emotional and legitimate, And so I hope
Speaker 2: that they're listening to this second part to get a
Speaker 2: little bit more context for what we're trying to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too. I'm really happy that they left that comment.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it's like, I think it's a completely valid question
Speaker 1: to ask about the behavior that Lena describes in the
Speaker 1: book and the way that she wrote about and framed
Speaker 1: that behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is curious to me. You know, I haven't
Speaker 2: read the book, but you did. What do you think
Speaker 2: was her intention of writing that in the book?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question. The book. So for folks
Speaker 1: who have read the book, they know that a big
Speaker 1: part of it is that Lena slowly reveals herself to
Speaker 1: be a very unreliable narrator, one who is kind of
Speaker 1: like sardonically looking at and projecting commentary onto her her
Speaker 1: own experiences. And so her experiences are presented and you
Speaker 1: and 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 as this like, yeah, this sarcastic,
Speaker 1: sardonic person who is kind of like critiquing and commenting
Speaker 1: on the way that she described those things. Early on.
Speaker 1: There's this piece for Vox by Alex abad Santos that
Speaker 1: I think perfectly summarizes what I'm trying to say. Alex
Speaker 1: writes the way Dunham wrote the incident up in her book,
Speaker 1: and the degree to which the writing style that has
Speaker 1: made her such a success may have also led her astray. Here,
Speaker 1: child molestation is an extremely sensitive topic. Kafaro, the sibling
Speaker 1: abuse expert, wrote that sibling sexual abuse is far more
Speaker 1: common than most people think, quote the most closely kept
Speaker 1: secret in the field of family violence, but one study
Speaker 1: finding that at least two point three percent of children
Speaker 1: have been sexually victimized by a sibling. Dunham's treatment of
Speaker 1: this very serious topic was not exactly sensitive, something she
Speaker 1: herself has acknowledged to some degree. That is of a
Speaker 1: piece with Dunham's greatest strengths and weaknesses as a writer.
Speaker 1: She has a reputation for leaning into weird, awkward situations
Speaker 1: on her HBO show Girls, and she's a master at
Speaker 1: creating scenes, sexual or not, that make viewers cringe. This
Speaker 1: is a book about Lena Dunham's coming of age and
Speaker 1: a society that does not normally tell stories of girls
Speaker 1: becoming women, and it highlights quite well how uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: difficult growing up as a girl can be. And so
Speaker 1: I think that piece really summarizes it. I think that
Speaker 1: she was trying to lean into the fact the ways
Speaker 1: that sexual experiences and physical experiences can be so cringey,
Speaker 1: so awkward, so uncomfortable, And she does that really well
Speaker 1: in other parts of her writing, but I think that
Speaker 1: that same inclination I think really led her astray here
Speaker 1: and I think it like it opens up such valid
Speaker 1: criticisms of the way that she handled it. One of
Speaker 1: my big questions as did that bit of the book
Speaker 1: contribute to a culture where sexual abuse is further normalized. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in this field, but I think
Speaker 1: they're all valid questions, And I think that's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: When we allow disinformers to flatten out entire conversations with
Speaker 1: inaccurate information, we don't really get to have the real
Speaker 1: conversation about what actually happens. And I think it creates
Speaker 1: the conditions that lead to Lena not really having to
Speaker 1: be held accountable for what she actually wrote, because the
Speaker 1: only thing anybody is really talking about is the lie
Speaker 1: about what she wrote. And I think that Lena would
Speaker 1: probably agree that, you know, how she handled this incident
Speaker 1: in her memoir wasn't great because she apologized. She wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: if the situation is described in my book have been
Speaker 1: painful or triggering for people to read. I am sorry,
Speaker 1: that was never my intention. I am also aware that
Speaker 1: my comic use of the term sexual predator was insensitive,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry for that as well. She also went
Speaker 1: on to say that her sibling is her best friend
Speaker 1: and quote, anything I have ever written about has been
Speaker 1: published with approval.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I mean, it's hard to argue with that
Speaker 2: that it was not very sensitive. And you know, her
Speaker 2: apology is a reminder of how serious talking about sexual
Speaker 2: abuse is, you know, and so yeah, you probably shouldn't
Speaker 2: have written that, But it is so notable that this
Speaker 2: whole controversy and apparently allegations that you know, people can
Speaker 2: continue to hold against her of being a seventeen year
Speaker 2: old sexual predator did not come from the alleged victim
Speaker 2: her sibling, did not come from survivor justice advocates, but
Speaker 2: instead came from Ben Shapiro, like a vowed and an
Speaker 2: open right wing activist, you know, like you're not gonna
Speaker 2: convince me that he gives a shit about really anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a right wing activist who explicitly said that
Speaker 1: the intention of his media outlet was to attack prominent
Speaker 1: left wing folks, prominent liberal voices. Lena Dunnam is a
Speaker 1: prominent liberal voice that she certainly was 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 Lina'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's sibling, their voice is almost universally ignored.
Speaker 1: You know, people often repeat this claim Lena Dunham's sexually
Speaker 1: abused her sibling, and when they do so, they often
Speaker 1: misgender Cyrus. And Cyrus has their own memoir called A
Speaker 1: Year Without a Name, where they talk about this specific
Speaker 1: claim and how hurtful it is to them, yet it
Speaker 1: never goes away. So I have a hard time believing
Speaker 1: that these people online actually care about centering or listening
Speaker 1: to Cyrus's experience or meaningfully amplifying the experiences of survivors.
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 bums
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 the to her sibling, I
Speaker 1: just feel like we just don't. It's it's so easy
Speaker 1: to not make space for Cyrus's voice, and I think
Speaker 1: what you said really helps us see how problematic that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like having this conversation, I'm sort of wondering, is
Speaker 2: this a conversation about childhood sexual abuse or is it
Speaker 2: a conversation about a celebrity.
Speaker 1: Well, I would argue that, like I think, for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, because they don't like Lena Dunham for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, and some of those reasons are valid. The
Speaker 1: actual meat of the conversation caring about and believing and
Speaker 1: uplifting survivors of sexual abuse, that kind of gets pushed
Speaker 1: to the sideline because the real thing is finding a
Speaker 1: way to talk about how much we don't like Lena
Speaker 1: Dunnam and how awful she is, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Like I'm no stranger to add hominin attacks.
Speaker 2: You know, like if there's somebody I don't like, I'll
Speaker 2: happily you know, sign up for piling on for something
Speaker 2: shitty or stupid that they did. But it does feel
Speaker 2: very different when that piling on involves allegations of sexual
Speaker 2: abuse about some third person who's not even part of
Speaker 2: the conversation and is built on lies, and you know,
Speaker 2: like you said earlier, just sucking the air out of
Speaker 2: valid conversations in the space. Not valid, I don't mean valid,
Speaker 2: I mean truthful, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, So you know that's exactly what I think is
Speaker 1: happening here. So now that you know what actually happened
Speaker 1: versus the lie that truth revolt amplified about it, let's
Speaker 1: talk about exactly that. Like what is it that made
Speaker 1: this such a sticky narrative? And that's the thing that really,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it fascinates me about this claim because
Speaker 1: it has had real staying power. So question for you, Mike.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that meme where it's a black hand
Speaker 1: and a white hand like grasping hands and a gesture
Speaker 1: of unity and something that they agree about, like a
Speaker 1: shared commonality is written on the middle of their hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, it's a beautiful meme about coming together.
Speaker 1: So that meme pretty much explains what I think is
Speaker 1: going on here. Basically. On the black hand, you have
Speaker 1: you know, feminists, people of color, just general people on
Speaker 1: the white hand. Maybe I got right wing folks, and
Speaker 1: the thing that they're uniting over is that they all
Speaker 1: agree they hate Lena Dunham. That's kind of what I
Speaker 1: think is going on here, because even though the claim
Speaker 1: that Lena Dunham sexually abused her one year old sibling
Speaker 1: when she was seventeen, we know, started in the right
Speaker 1: wing blogosphere, it has really traveled out of those spaces
Speaker 1: and become a fairly widely accepted claim. And that's because
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham is just like a controversial figure. She's a
Speaker 1: lightning rod. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It really highlights how we can all come together to
Speaker 2: just like shit on women about shit that isn't true.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, to put it bluntly, a lot of people just
Speaker 1: don't like Lena Dunham. And so in that way, I
Speaker 1: think it was really easy for folks to project an
Speaker 1: inaccurate claim against her and have it really stick. And
Speaker 1: this also tells us to think kind of interesting about
Speaker 1: the way that inaccurate information works online. It can often
Speaker 1: speak to something that is already inside of us. And
Speaker 1: so if you're already primed to really hate Lena Dunham,
Speaker 1: when somebody comes along and tells you something that really
Speaker 1: squares what they're already held belief. It can really stick
Speaker 1: because our brains love information, even inaccurate information or false
Speaker 1: information that validates opinions or values that we already hold.
Speaker 1: So if your opinion is that Lena Dunham sucks, it
Speaker 1: sort of doesn't matter if she actually did joke about
Speaker 1: abusing her one year old sibling when she was seventeen
Speaker 1: or not. It will stick because it squares with our
Speaker 1: are already held belief. That's just how our brains as
Speaker 1: humans work. And another truism about disinformation is that it
Speaker 1: often seizes on legitimate existing tensions and pressure points and
Speaker 1: fractures that already exist, particularly within marginalized communities. If you
Speaker 1: listen to the episode that we did about and Father's
Speaker 1: Day or Vanessa Gien, this will probably sound familiar to you.
Speaker 1: It pits black women against white women, or the Latino
Speaker 1: community against the Black community. And I think Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: is a really interesting case study for this, because people,
Speaker 1: especially people of color, really do have some valid reasons
Speaker 1: to dislike Lena Dunham, and these reasons are often reflected
Speaker 1: in the kinds of tensions that I was just naming above.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the tensions occur along racial lines.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I want to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: valid reasons that folks have to sort of be predisposed
Speaker 1: to not like Lena Dunham and thus have this, you know,
Speaker 1: inaccurate claim really have a little bit of staying power.
Speaker 1: So one, I think that Lena Dunham has really come
Speaker 1: to represent a kind of I guess i'll call it
Speaker 1: white girl cluelessness that a lot of feminists of color
Speaker 1: were frankly sick of seeing amplified as the voice of feminism.
Speaker 1: You know, when the show Girls first premiered at HBO,
Speaker 1: there was so much fanfare cementing Lena Dunham, you know,
Speaker 1: as this voice of a general, the voice of young women,
Speaker 1: and I think there was some resentment around who we
Speaker 1: amplify and who we give lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of chances to. I often heard black feminists saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: a black woman would never get as many chances to
Speaker 1: mess up like Lena Dunham has. Side note, Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: has had to apologize for so many things that there
Speaker 1: was actually a Twitter meme account called Lena Dunham apologizes
Speaker 1: that just creates randomly generated apologies for fictional Lena Dunham 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. That'll be funny, And so I googled Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham apology Twitter and I found the tweet. Lena Dunham
Speaker 1: issued an apology for her new HBO Max series Generation
Speaker 1: using real cat corpses in a classroom scene. But that
Speaker 1: apology tweet was actually real, that was actually her apologizing
Speaker 1: for something that actually happened.
Speaker 2: Wow, So we're just living in a universe where there's
Speaker 2: just one can't tell what is true Lena Dunham apologies
Speaker 2: or disinformation Lena Dunham apologies. It's just a miasma of
Speaker 2: Lena Dunham uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly is it art imitating life or is it
Speaker 1: life imitating art, or.
Speaker 2: Is it art imitating tech 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
Speaker 1: was such a weird thing that happened along the kind
Speaker 1: of race and gender intra community tensions that I was
Speaker 1: just talking about before, and that is the whole thing
Speaker 1: that went down between Lena Dunham and Odell Beckham. It
Speaker 1: was just really weird. So if you don't remember what
Speaker 1: happened a few years ago at the met Gala, Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham attended and she was wearing a tuxedo and she
Speaker 1: would see it next to the professional athlete Odell Beckham Junior,
Speaker 1: and I guess Lena felt that he was ignoring her
Speaker 1: or not paying an appropriate amount of attention to her
Speaker 1: or something. And so after the event, Lena wrote in
Speaker 1: her newsletter, Lenny Letter, I was sitting next to Odell
Speaker 1: Beckham Junior and it was so amazing, and because it
Speaker 1: was like he looked at me and determined I was
Speaker 1: not the shape of a woman by his standards. He
Speaker 1: was like, that's a marshmallow, that's a child, that's a dog.
Speaker 1: It wasn't mean, he just seemed confused. The vibe was
Speaker 1: very much do I want to fuck it? Is it
Speaker 1: wearing yup, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: back to my cell phone. It was like we were
Speaker 1: forced to be together and he was literally scrolling Instagram
Speaker 1: rather than have to look at a woman in a
Speaker 1: bow tie. I was like, this should be called the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of getting rejected by athletes. So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is a lot of projecting your own negative fantasies and
Speaker 1: perhaps insecurities on to someone who sounded like was just
Speaker 1: like minding their business on their phone at dinner. You know.
Speaker 1: Add to the fact that Beckham is a black man,
Speaker 1: and it kind of sounds like she is responding to
Speaker 1: this like perceived projection of a hyperst sexualized black man
Speaker 1: onto her, like she was like disappointed or felt some
Speaker 1: type of way that he was not behaving in a
Speaker 1: way like an over sexualized manner toward her. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it just feels like she like really projected a lot
Speaker 1: onto him. She eventually apologized on Instagram, but it was
Speaker 1: just a very weird thing that happened along very specific
Speaker 1: race and gender fault lines that we know sometimes can
Speaker 1: be legitimate tension points in our society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yikes. That kind of remind me of what you
Speaker 2: were talking about from her book, where she establishes herself
Speaker 2: as an unreliable narrator and somebody who is dwelling in
Speaker 2: negative fantasies all the time. A. That has to suck,
Speaker 2: and B yeah, it does establish them as an unreliable
Speaker 2: narrator who is probably going to say some shit that
Speaker 2: they regret.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, over and over and over again and have
Speaker 1: to apologize for it endlessly, to the point where it
Speaker 1: becomes a meme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those did the cat corpses accept the apology?
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find a response from the cat
Speaker 1: corpse community, but I will keep looking.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll check in with some necromancers that.
Speaker 3: I know more.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned how Lena had a newsletter called Lenny Letter.
Speaker 1: Zenzi Clemens, with a black woman and a writer, worked
Speaker 1: with Lena on this letter and she publicly quit, citing
Speaker 1: Lena's quote well known racism as the reason why. Clemens
Speaker 1: said that she went to college with Dunham and her
Speaker 1: friends and that they kind of were in the same
Speaker 1: circles when they were in college, and that she would
Speaker 1: call their strain of racism quote hipster racism, which usually
Speaker 1: uses sarcasm as a cover, which, boy, do I know
Speaker 1: a little something about that from my own days in college.
Speaker 1: Clement's encouraged other women of color to stop working with
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham, saying it is time for women of color,
Speaker 1: black women in particular to divest from Lena Dunham. She
Speaker 1: could not have our words if she cannot respect us.
Speaker 2: Ooh boy, oh boy is right, and coming from an
Speaker 2: old friend or somebody who's known her since college and
Speaker 2: has worked with her, that seems like a pretty damning
Speaker 2: charge with more substance to it than out of context
Speaker 2: typo from her autobiography.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. And you can really see how again
Speaker 1: this you know, you 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 and made
Speaker 1: against writer and executive producer of Girls, Murray Miller that
Speaker 1: happened on the set. Basically what happened. Actress Aurora Parrino,
Speaker 1: whose mixed race, filed a police report accusing Girls writer
Speaker 1: and executive producer Murray Miller of raping her on the
Speaker 1: set of Girls in twenty twelve, when she was seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. Now, Miller said that she was making it
Speaker 1: up to extort him and try to get money from him,
Speaker 1: and Lena and her showrunner Jenny Kohner published this statement quote.
Speaker 1: While 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 2: Jesus Christ, it's bad, so bad. There's so many things
Speaker 2: wrong with that.
Speaker 1: Well, it gets worse, so obviously this statement makes it
Speaker 1: seem like, you know, Lena and her team have some
Speaker 1: kind of inside information that proves that this assault never happened,
Speaker 1: but come to find out that was all a lie.
Speaker 1: She made that up because in a twenty eighteen follow
Speaker 1: up piece called two Aurora an Apology, Dunham rights quote.
Speaker 1: When someone I knew, someone I had loved as a brother,
Speaker 1: was accused, I did something inexcusable. I publicly spoke up
Speaker 1: in his defense. There are a few acts I could
Speaker 1: ever regret more in my life. I didn't have the
Speaker 1: insider information, I claimed, rather blind faith in a story
Speaker 1: that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to me
Speaker 1: nothing at all. So Yeah, Lena basically smeared a woman
Speaker 1: who said that she had been sexually assaulted by someone
Speaker 1: that she met on Lena's set, the set of her
Speaker 1: hit show. She lied about this woman for a long
Speaker 1: time and then eventually admitted that lie in this piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think it's really horrible and personally, this was
Speaker 1: the time, like I, as I said in the last episode,
Speaker 1: like I was a casual watcher of girls. I like
Speaker 1: a lot of Len Dunham's writing. But this is when
Speaker 1: she lost me for good because I just felt like
Speaker 1: it was such a calculate like when you when you
Speaker 1: call a woman of color a liar in public, you
Speaker 1: are doing something that is like you can't take that back.
Speaker 1: It's it's such a I don't even know how to
Speaker 1: put it, like it's it's such a big claim that
Speaker 1: is so because of we live in 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 that 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 this with
Speaker 1: Aurora's mom Brittany, at a women in Hobbywood event to
Speaker 1: publicly apologize again last November.
Speaker 4: When Britney's beautiful daughter Aurora accused a friend of mine
Speaker 4: of sexual assault, I denied her experience publicly.
Speaker 1: So I remember this moment so viscerally watching it and
Speaker 1: thinking this is a capital B, capital M bad moment
Speaker 1: for women. Lena lied about a woman of color who
Speaker 1: opened up about her experience of sexual violence and just
Speaker 1: essentially publicly smeared her. Then a few years later, she
Speaker 1: brings this woman's mom on stage and performs contrition in
Speaker 1: this kind of like, oh gee, I'm just a kid
Speaker 1: with a lot to learn kind of way, when in
Speaker 1: reality she was the very powerful creator and showrunner of
Speaker 1: a highly successful business with her HBO show. So this
Speaker 1: idea that she was just like a kid who had
Speaker 1: a lot to learn, that's completely incorrect, and that framing
Speaker 1: is is so's so clearly self serving. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: could make the argument that it was a genuine moment
Speaker 1: of you know, apology that she wanted to happen in public.
Speaker 1: But I just it just really made me feel weird
Speaker 1: and I really didn't like it, and yeah, it just
Speaker 1: lost me forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and why her mom? Why not the woman herself?
Speaker 2: Like that just seems weird. I'm sure people have answers
Speaker 2: to that, but it seems weird to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can really see how all the different
Speaker 1: controversies with Lena Dunham that I just laid out really
Speaker 1: do exist along pre existing political, racial, and social tensions.
Speaker 1: You know, white women versus women of color, white women
Speaker 1: versus black men, these tensions that really do already exist
Speaker 1: in our society and always have, like way before Lena Dunnam.
Speaker 1: It's not like she created these things, but that tensions
Speaker 1: that we have already have a kind of a tough
Speaker 1: time talking honestly about. And when those tensions are present,
Speaker 1: it's just the textbook conditions for inaccurate or misleading information
Speaker 1: to fester and spread. And in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I feel like Lena Dunnam is like a walking embodiment
Speaker 1: of all of these tensions. And so it's not really
Speaker 1: surprising that a particular misleading claim about her would then sick.
Speaker 1: And I think that is why we see this claim
Speaker 1: have such stickiness, you know, this claim that she molested
Speaker 1: her sibling when she was seventeen. I think that is
Speaker 1: the reason why we see it being, you know, having
Speaker 1: such staying power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's so sad that, you know, all those
Speaker 2: societal tensions of racism, sexism, misogyn war just gets shoved
Speaker 2: through the side and it becomes a conversation about a
Speaker 2: single like a specific white woman and is she good
Speaker 2: or is she bad? And like, what a useless conversation exactly.
Speaker 1: That's exactly my point, Like, we don't have the conversation of,
Speaker 1: like was this harmful to survivors of sexual violence? Was
Speaker 1: this a harmful experience for Lena Dunhams sibling? Should what
Speaker 1: does it mean that she wrote about it in this
Speaker 1: jokey way. We don't have to get to have a
Speaker 1: conversation of like what can we offer survivors of childhood
Speaker 1: sexual assault? Or like how can we support them? Or
Speaker 1: how can we create the conditions to eliminate sexual abuse
Speaker 1: in our world? But those conversations are too big, too
Speaker 1: thorny two meety, we don't have the conversation of like, well,
Speaker 1: why would black feminists or black women have a bone
Speaker 1: to pick with white womanhood or white feminism, or in
Speaker 1: what ways have white women historically, you know, attacked black
Speaker 1: men or you know, like projected things onto black men
Speaker 1: that were harmful to them. Those are all the big, thorny,
Speaker 1: systemic conversation that's hard to have and that frankly, we
Speaker 1: are not equipped to have. We're not having it, and
Speaker 1: so that just gets conflated into Lena Dunham bad, Lena
Speaker 1: Dunham did this or Lena Dunham not bad Lena, 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, substantive, 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 Dunnam 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: we'll 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.
Speaker 2: Damn. Yeah, but I think you're you're right. I think
Speaker 2: we've seen time and again that's their goal, to create
Speaker 2: just the miasma of unspecific negativity and lies and not
Speaker 2: just spread lies, but reduce confidence in there being any
Speaker 2: sort of truth exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's so it's like creating the conditions where it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the conversation is so muddled and difficult to follow that
Speaker 1: like what is the truth anyway? And so I think
Speaker 1: the further we get away from that where things that
Speaker 1: are not true can sort of become true, the worse
Speaker 1: off we all are. And I have to say, you know,
Speaker 1: this all happened back in twenty fourteen. 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
Speaker 1: June twenty third, and the top comments were all some
Speaker 1: iteration of the claim that she sexually abused her sibling,
Speaker 1: like it will never go away. It basically is true.
Speaker 1: Now whether or not it actually happened is just sort
Speaker 1: of a non issue at this point.
Speaker 2: That is grim all right, Well, so, so bridget what
Speaker 2: is the point of you telling us all of this?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad you asked. So here we are
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, and we have seen more and
Speaker 1: more right wing extremists using very similar tactics, not just
Speaker 1: 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 inflamed, and it creates a situation where
Speaker 1: the sexual abuse of kids is a topic that is
Speaker 1: easily exploited and inflamed and can be weaponized against political opponents.
Speaker 1: And so ultimately, I guess in conclusion, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of reasons to not like Lena Dunham, including what she
Speaker 1: wrote about her sibling and her memoir. We don't need
Speaker 1: to add lies on it to talk about it. We're
Speaker 1: not better served when we add lies into a conversation
Speaker 1: as important and as sensitive as childhood sexual violence. And
Speaker 1: when we do that, we do a disservice to issues
Speaker 1: like sexual abuse that are so important and critical that
Speaker 1: we talk about. And ultimately, it's very concerning that we
Speaker 1: have a kind of media climate and ecosystem that create
Speaker 1: the conditions for this kind of damaging lie to persist
Speaker 1: for years and essentially become true even if it's not.
Speaker 2: It's a scary sentiment to end on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's that's all I got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, let's all try to stick to the truth.
Speaker 2: Huh Is that so hard? Is that going to kill us?
Speaker 1: Is that so hard? Ben Shapiro, Let's just stick to
Speaker 1: the truth, shall we? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Seriously?
Speaker 1: And so I know this is a controversial topic, I
Speaker 1: started the series talking about out the fact that I
Speaker 1: knew this 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. Please
Speaker 1: don't come for me though I'm a baby. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like be cool about it, but like, I want to
Speaker 1: know what you think. You know, what are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on Elina Dunham, her memoir, all the things that we
Speaker 1: laid out today. I really want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So please you can email me, you can find me
Speaker 1: on social media. I want to hear what y'all think.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Toad.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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