CONCLUSION: The Internet thinks Lena Dunham did something awful to her sibling. Why?

the Internet producer and chief science officer Mike. Mike, thanks for being here, Thanks for having me back. So where we last left off, we were talking about Lena Dunham, the sort of pop feminist culture of the Mids that she really tapped into, and how the right wing website Truth Revolt really misrepresented what she wrote in her memoir Not That Kind of Girl. Now, if you have not listened to that episode, you definitely should pause this and

go back and listen to that. But the two long did It read is basically that actor and writer Lena Dunham wrote about things like putting pebbles and her little siblings Regina when she was seven and her sibling was one, and that the right wing website Truth Revolt misrepresented it, saying that Lena described it happening when she was seventeen, not seven. Now in this episode, we're diving into what she actually wrote the response, and why it all stuck

and what it all means. All right, bridget So getting into part two. How did Lena Dunham respond to all this? So? The day The Truth Revolt published their misleading article about her memoir, Lena responded the following day, tweeting the right wing news story that I molested my little sibling isn't just laugh out loud, it's really fucking upsetting and disgusting.

Her legal team sent a letter that was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter to Bradford Thomas, the author of the piece and The Truth Revolt, threatening to take legal action if certain statements were not removed. The letter said, the story is false, fabricated, and has the obvious tendency to

subject my client to ridicule and into her occupation. Now, the letter goes on to say that the peace caused quote actual damage to Lena's personal and professional reputation, which likely would be calculated in the millions of dollars punitive damages, which can be a multiple of up to ten times the actual damages and injunctive relief. The letter also says that the Truth Revolt story contains quote outright falsified statements

that are attributed to Lena and her book. The statements do not appear anywhere in the book, thus showing intent to harm, knowing falsity as well as reckless disregard for the truth, any one of which meets the malice requirement.

Her attorney, Charles Harder wrote in his letter to Truth Revolt Now Ben Shapiro, on behalf of Truth Revolt responded, he said, we refuse to withdraw our story and apologize for running it, because quoting a woman's book does not constitute a false story, even if she is a prominent

actress and left wing activist. Lena Dunham might not like our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that book and the First Amendment covers a good deal of material which she may not like. And I don't know. I just find Ben Shapiro and Truth Revolts response to be so wild because Truth Revolt itself admitted that it was a typo, saying that she was seventeen and not seven. They said it was a typo, and so by definition what they printed was not correct

and was a false story. I feel like Ben Shapiro's kind of, you know, popped up response really flies in the face of like what the website actually said, which was that they printed something that was not correct. Yeah, and that's not like I wouldn't call that a typo even if it was unintentional, which seems pretty unlikely, but who knows, you know, maybe it was. But even so, it's like, so it so changes the character and the nature of the story that it's beyond a typo. It's

clearly creating a false impression. That's absolutely true, and for him to not even acknowledge that in part of his apology, it just makes me wonder, you know what, Oh, he didn't apologize excuse me yet, So not an apology actually just like a continued attack. Yeah. Great, kind of kind of guy revealing with your Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. I I'm not going to speculate whether this was an intentional move or not. I will say I have my suspicions, but they said it was a typo.

I'm gonna take them at that word. You're so right that even if that was just a type of somebody to slipped the one in there, not acknowledging the way that that really charges the what you've written, and like, really, yeah, it's just it's just it's it's really stunning that he won't even like, on the one hand, at the website admits it, but on the other hand it's like, but we did nothing wrong. It's like, well, can't really be both, Yeah,

Like suble missions are more important than others. If, for example, hypothetically somebody wrote somebody meant to write Ben Shapiro did not murder and eat his sister, but left out the word not, it would really change the meaning of the sentence. It would just be a typo. And how dare you insinuate that I apologize and say it with anything? But yeah, it's just it's just a typo. And also he's a

right wing activist anyway, so that's somehow relevant exactly exactly. So, an important question that I feel like it's really easy to get lost in all this is whether or not what Lena actually wrote in the book, not the way that Truth Revolt initially spun, it actually describes sexual abuse

or not. So first I believe that it is really important to listen to and center Lena dunham siblings, Cyrus Grace and their voice in this conversation and really listen to what they have to say about what this experience was like for them. Lena Dunham's sibling Cyrus Grace responded on Twitter saying head he normativity deems certain behavior is harmful and others normal. The state and media are always

invested in maintaining that. As a queer person, I'm committed to people narrating their own experiences determining for themselves what has it has not been harmful. Today, like every other day, there's a good day to think about how we police

the sexualities of young women, queer and trans people. And so yeah, I think it's important to ground, you know, the conversation of like what actually happened in how Cyrus Grace interprets it, because it's there, it's you know, it's their experience, and I have to say, you know, I want to be clear, I am no expert here. I am not a psychologist, i am not a legal scholar. I'm a little bit out of my depth when it comes to like whether or not something could be categorized

as sexual abuse. So I wanted to summarize some people who actually know what they're talking about. So first, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, touching and looking at us siblings genitals is a quote normal common behavior in kids ages two to six. Vox, Slate, and Gawker all spoke to experts who generally seem to conclude that little children being curious about the bodies of their sibling is a normal part of childhood development. Here's a couple of

those ex birds. Gawker spoke to Sam Rubinstein, a psychotherapist who specializes in childhood abuse, who said, I think you have to take into consideration her age, her history, and the idea that age, unless you've gone through severe sexual trauma, there's really almost nothing sexual about it. The same exclamination could be used for grabbing a dog's tail. It's the same type of coercion. Just because it's in the sexual venue, people want to attack something to it, but it's almost

totally different. It's an innocent type thing. Slate spoke to rich Savin Williams, developmental psychologist and the director of the Sex and Gender Lab at Cornell University, who said, quote, this is clearly not a case of abuse. Children have been doing this stuff forever and ever and ever, and

they will do it forever and ever and ever. John V. Cafarroh, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and an expert on sibling abuse, wrote in a Washington Post column quote, to be clear, sexual curiosity and children as normal. All children explore their bodies and may engage in visual and even manual exploration of a sibling at times. This is one of the ways that children discover sexual differences

between boys and girls anatomies. Even siblings of the same gender become curious about variations in shapes and sizes of their sex organs. Two small children exploring each other's bodies does not predestine them to a life of emotional suffering.

So you know, that might all kind of sound like I am absolving Lena of having done anything wrong in this situation, right, But I actually think that this is where things get a little bit tricky, And this trickiness is exactly what drove me to wanting to make an episode about this topic. So I should say, I myself am a survivor of sexual abuse, and so I know that when something can be difficult to talk about, like

most sensitive issues are. But I also know that we really really do need to talk honestly and thoughtfully about it. And you know what doesn't help us to have conversations about tough issues in a way that's honest and thoughtful and nuanced, uh adding lies to the mix. This is a deliberate tactic that bad actors and disinformers employ, seizing on hot button issues, adding lies to the mix intentionally

to derail those conversations. And honestly, this is what really kind of gets me so upset about this issue, is that we should not and cannot tolerate lies being added to conversations that are as sensitive and important as childhood sexual abuse, especially not as a way to score cheap political points the way that Shapiro and Truth Revolt did, because it really derails progress and are collective shared understanding.

There is no conversation that is made better by the injection of lies, and people deserve the truth like that is a a value that I will just like scream from the rooftops over and over again. If you are adding lies to conversation, you are doing us all a disservice. And so I also think that truth revolt really blowing up what Lena did right on her memoir with inaccurate information really makes it difficult to address a what she actually did and b how she actually wrote about it.

And because of their lie, because of them starting off this conversation with such an inflammatory, big, you know, you know, defining piece of inaccurate content, Lena understandably is then put in a position where she has to defend herself against a claim that was not true that she sexually abused her sibling when she was seventeen. So I think it really turns the situation into a binary where she did it is on one side, and no, she didn't is

on the other. And that again is a classic disinformer derailing tactic, flattening out conversations and stripping them of any context or nuance that are required to have a thoughtful, substitutive conversation about something that is sensitive or a hot button topic. And so I would actually argue that this prevents us from having a public conversation about what Lena

actually did and how she wrote about it. We never really got to have that conversation because of how much oxygen truth revolts Lie took up in the room and that is by design. And further, I would argue that their injection of inaccurate information into the conversation, you know, really just adds this this, this sheen of inaccuracy. I would be willing to bet that at least some people trying to engage in a conversation probably have a misunderstanding

about the basic facts of what happened. And so I guess all of this is to say, like, this is the conversation that I wish we would have gotten to have, because if experts seem to suggest that what Lena described in her book is not abuse, I still don't think it was great or good, and I still want to talk about what actually happened without that inflammatory lie preventing us from doing that. Yeah, I totally agree with you that, you know, the injection of lies and any conversation degrades

that conversation. It makes it that much harder to have an honest conversation about whatever it is. And you know, usually when people are making up lies, they're doing it for some kind of agenda to like you said, take all the ads Genna out of the room, to prevent discussion about something else, or to discredit and smear and shame woman who they perceive as a leftist activists. And you know, I don't have any strong feelings for or against Lena Dunham, and I've actually learned so much in

just like making these episodes with you. But it is just so familiar a trope of right wing ship heads making things up to smear somebody who they perceive as an enemy and just injecting lies into the conversation exactly. So let's take a look at what she actually wrote and why you know it's still not good. First, I think it's definitely an issue with tone and framing. Childhood sexual abuse is not a joke, and I think dealing with it in this way that sort of jokey what

seriously bad on Lena Dunham's part. I would have never written about my younger sibling the way that that Dunham did in her book, and I can really see how people feel it raises some questions about boundaries. You know, did Lena see these experiences that involved her sibling as hers and hers alone to to free to freely share

in a book? You know, why would she think that having a whole section of her book dedicated to the ways that she kind of, you know, foisted herself on her baby sibling, like like, I guess like writing about that and as a way that's a kind of cute and sort of like defining her as a quirky character or like a like a jokey thing is really I think inappropriate, and I think it's fair to say that that raises some legitimate questions. You know, was that harmful

to to Lena's sibling. I actually heard from a listener after the first part of this series aired last week, and this person left an Instagram comment and they felt very strongly that what Lena described in her book was actually child like childhood sexual abuse. Remember you got that comment from that listener, and uh, it was pretty emotional and legitimate. So I'm I hope that they're listening to this second part to get a little bit more context for what we're trying to say. Yeah, me too. I'm

I'm really happy that they left that comment. And you know, I think it's one of those things where it's like, I think it's a completely valid question to ask about the behavior that Lena describes in the book and the way that she wrote about and framed that behavior Yeah, it is curious to me. You know, I I haven't read the book, but but you did. What what do you think was her intention of writing that in the book. Oh,

that's a great question. The book. So for folks who have read the book, they know that a big part of it is that Lena slowly reveals herself to be a very unreliable narrator, one who is kind of like sardonically looking at and projecting commentary onto her own experiences. And so her experience is are presented and you and you the reader sort of takes them at face value.

And then later in the book those many of those experiences are revisited in ways that reveal her to be an unreliable narrator about her own experiences and in ways that sort of present her astis like, Yeah, this sarcastic, sardonic person who is camp like kind of like critiquing and commenting on the way that she described those things. Early on. There's this piece for Vox by Alex Abod Santos that I think perfectly summarizes what I'm trying to say.

Alex writes the way Dunham wrote the incident up in her book, and the degree to which the writing style that has made her such a success may have also led her astray. Here, child molestation is an extremely sensitive topic. Kafar O, the sibling abuse expert, wrote that sibling sexual abuse is far more common than most people think, quote the most closely kept secret in the field of family violence.

But one study finding that at least two point three percent of children have been sexually victimized by us a ling. Dunham's treatment of this very serious topic was not exactly sensitive, something she herself is acknowledged to some degree that is of a piece with Dunham's greatest strength and weaknesses as a writer, she has a reputation for leaning into weird, awkward situations on her HBO show Girls, and she's a master at creating scenes, sexual or not, that make viewers cringe.

This is a book about Lena Dunham's coming of age in a society that does not normally tell stories of girls becoming women, and it highlights quite well how uncomfortable and difficult growing up as a girl can be. And so I think that piece really summarizes and I think that she was trying to lean into the fact the ways that sexual experiences and physical experiences can be so

cringe e, so awkward, so uncomfortable. Um, And she does that really well in other parts of her writing, but I think that that same inclination I think really led her astray here and I think it like it opens up such such valid criticisms of the way that she handled it. Let's take a quick break at our back. One of my big questions as did that bit of the book contribute to a culture where sexual abuse is

further normalized? Again, I'm not an expert in this field, but I think they're all valid questions, and I think that's the bottom line. When we allow disinformers to flatten out entire conversations with an accurate information, we don't really get to have the real conversation about what actually happens. And I think it creates the conditions that lead to Lena not really having to be held accountable for what she actually wrote, because the only thing anybody is really

talking about is the lie about what she wrote. And I think that Lena would probably agree that, you know, how she handled this incident in her memoir wasn't great because she apologized, she wrote, quote, if the situation is described in my book, have been painful or triggering for people to read. I am sorry. That was never my intention. I am also aware that my comic use of the term sexual predator wasn't sensitive, and I'm sorry for that

as well. She also went on to say that her sibling is her best friend and quote, anything I have ever written about has been published with approval. Yeah, that's I mean, it's hard to argue with that that it

was not very sensitive. And you know, her apology is a reminder of how serious talking about sexual abuse is, you know, and so yeah, you probably shouldn't have written that, but it is so notable that the whole controversy and apparently allegations that you know, people can continue to hold against her being a seventeen year old sexual predator were did not come from the alleged victim her sibling, did not come from survivor justice advocates, but instead came from

Ben Shapiro, like avowed and an open right wing activist, you know, like, you're not gonna convince me that he gives a ship about uh really anyone? Yeah, and uh right wing activist who explicitly said that the intention of his media outlet was to attack prominent left wing folks, prominent liberal voices. Lena Dunham is a propinab a prominent liberal voice that she certainly was when when this all happened.

And so I think that I also want to really lift up what you just said about these allegations not coming from Lena's sibling. I think the thing that really sticks with me about this whole situation is the way that Lena dunham sibling, their voice is almost universally ignored. And so I just really believe in centering, survivors, centering, giving people space to be the experts of their own experiences.

And so, yeah, the thing that really just really bumps me out is that Cyrus Grace's voice is almost entirely erased when people talk about this, When people repeat, you know, oh, Lena Dunham did this to their to her sibling, I just feel like we just don't know. It's it's so easy to not make space for Cyrus's voice, and I think what you said really helps us see how problematic

that is. Yeah, Like having this conversation, I'm sort of wondering, is this a conversation about childhood sexual abuse or is it a conversation about a celebrity. Well, I would argue that, like I think, for a lot of people, because they don't like Lena Dunham for whatever reason, and some of

those reasons are valid. The the the actual meat of the conversation, caring about and believing and uplifting survivors of sexual abuse, that kind of gets pushed to the sideline because the real thing is finding a way to talk about how much we don't likely have done them and how awful she is, you know what I mean? Yeah, totally,

Like I'm no stranger to add hominin attacks. You know, like if there's somebody I don't like, I'll happily you know, sign up for piling on for something shitty or stupid that they did. But it does feel very different when that piling on involves allegations of sexual abuse about some third person who's not even part of the conversation. Uh,

and is built on lies. And you know, like you said earlier, just sucking the air out of valid conversations in the space not valid, I don't mean valot, I mean truthful, you know, right, So you know that's exactly what I think is happening here. So now that you know what actually happened versus the lie that truth revolts amplified about it. Let's talk about exactly that, Like what

is it that made this such a sticky narrative? And that's the thing that really, I don't know, it fascinates me about this claim because it has had real staying power. So question for you, Mike. Have you seen that meme where it's a black hand and a white hand, like grasping hands and a gesture of unity and something that they agree about, like a shared commonality is written on the middle of their hands. Yeah, of course, it's a beautiful meme about coming together. So that meme pretty much

explains what I think is going on here. Basically. On the black hand, you have you know, feminists, people of color just generally, like just general people. On the white hand, maybe I got right wing folks and the thing that they're uniting over is that they all agreed they hate Lena Dunham. That's kind of what I think is going

on here. Because even though the claim that Lena Dunham sexually abused her one year old sibling when she was seventeen, we know, started in the right wing blogosphere, it has really traveled out of those spaces and become a fairly widely accepted claim. And that's because Lena Dunham is just like a controversial figure, She's a lightning rod. Yeah, it really highlights how we can all come together to just

like shoot on women about ship that isn't true. Absolutely, to put it bluntly, a lot of people just don't like Lena Dunham and so in that way, I think it was really easy for folks to project an inaccurate claim against her and have it really stick. And this also tells us something kind of interesting about the way that inaccurate information works online. It can often speak to

something that is already inside of us. And so if you're already primed to really hate Lena Dunham, when somebody comes along and tells you something that really squares what they're already held belief, it can really stick. Because our brains love information, even inaccurate information or false information, that

validates opinions or values that we already hold. So if your opinion is that Lena Dunham sucks, it sort of doesn't matter if she actually did joke about abusing her one year old sibling when she was seventeen or not. It will stick because it squares with are are already held belief. That's just how our brains as humans work. And another truism about disinformation is that it often sees as on legitimate existing tensions and and and pressure points

and fractures that already exist, particularly within marginalized communities. If you listen to the episode that we did about and Father's Day or Vanessa again, this will probably sound familiar to you. It pits black women against white women, or the Latino community against the Black community. And I think Lena Dunham is a really interesting case study for this, because people, especially people of color, really do have some

valid reasons to dislike Lena Dunham. And these reasons are often reflected in the kinds of tensions that I was just naming above. You know, a lot of the tensions occur along racial lines. Yeah, So I want to talk about some of the valid reasons that folks have to sort of be predisposed to not like Lena Dunham and thus have this you know, inaccurate claim really have a

little bit of staying power. So one I think that Lena Dunham has really come to represent a kind of I guess I'll call it white girl cluelessness, that a lot of feminists of color were frankly sick of seeing amplified as the voice of feminism. You know, when the Show Girls first premiere in HBO, there was so much fanfare cementing Lena Dunham, you know, as this voice of

a generation, the voice of young women. And I think there was some resentment around who we amplify and who we give lots and lots and lots of chances to. I often heard black feminists saying things like, oh, a black woman would never get as many chances to mess

up like Lena Dunham has. Uh side note, Lena Dunham has had to apologize for so many things that there is actually a Twitter meme account called Lena Dunham apologizes that just creates randomly generated apologies for fictional Lena Dunnam missteps. And I actually went to go look one up because I was like, oh, I should read one here on the podcast. I would be funny, And so I googled Lena Dunham apology Twitter and I found the tweet. Lena Dunham issued an apology for her new HBO Max series

Generation using real cat corpses in a classroom scene. But that apology tweet was actually real, that was actually her apologizing for something that actually happened. Wow, So we're just living in a universe where there's just one can't tell what is true. Lena Dunham apologies or disinformation, Lenda Dunham apologies. It's just a miasma of Lena Dunham uncertainty exactly exactly is it? Is it art imitating life or is it life imitating art or is it art imitating cat corpses?

So this is a little bit of a tangent, but I just have to mention it because I think it's It was such a weird thing that happened along the kind of race, race and gender intra community tensions that I was just talking about before, and that is the whole thing that went down between Lena Dunham and Odell Beckham. Uh,

it was just really weird. So if you don't remember what happened a few years ago at the met gala, Lena Dunham attended and she was wearing a tuxedo and she would see it next to the professional athlete Odell Beckham Jr. And I guess Lena felt that he was ignoring her or not paying an appropriate amount of attention to her or something, and so after the event, Lena wrote in her newsletter, Lenny Letter, I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr. And it was so amazing, and

because it was like he looked at me and determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, that's a marshmallow, that's a child, that's a dog. It wasn't mean, he just seemed confused. The vibe was very much do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing Yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm gonna go back to my cell phone. It was like we were forced to be together and he was literally scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, this should be called

the Metropolitan Museum of getting rejected by athletes. Um so, yeah, that is a lot of projecting your own negative fantasies and perhaps insecurities onto someone who sounded like was just like minding their business on their phone at dinner. You know.

Added the fact that Beckham is a black man, and it kind of sounds like she is responding to this like perceived projection of a hyper sexualized black man onto her, like she was like disappointed or felt some type of way that he was not behaving in a way, like an over sexualized manner toward her. And yeah, it just feels like she like really projected a lot onto him.

She eventually apologized on Instagram. But it was just a very weird thing that happened along very specific race and gender fault lines that we know sometimes can be legitimate tension points in our society. Yeah, yikes, Like to remind me of what you were talking about from her book where she establishes herself as an unreliable narrator and somebody who is dwelling in negative fantasies all the time, a

that has to suck and be uh. Yeah, it does establish them as an unreliable narrator who is probably gonna say some ship that they regret, yeah, over and over and over again and have to apologize for it endlessly to the point where it becomes a meme. Yeah. Those did the cat corpses accept the apology? I wasn't able to find a response from the cat corps community, but I will keep looking, Okay, I'll check in with some negwrom answers that I know more after a quick break,

let's get right back into it. So I mentioned how Lena had a newsletter called Lenny Letter. Zenz Men's with a black woman and a writer worked with Lena on this letter and she publicly quit, citing Lena's quote well

known racism as the reason why. Clement said that she went to college with Dunham and her friends and that they kind of were in the same circles when they were in college, and that she would call their strain of racism quote hipster racism, which usually uses sarcasm as a cover, which, boy, do I know a little something about that from my own days in college. Clemens encouraged other women of color to stop working with Lenda Dunham, saying it is time for women of color, black women

in particular, to divest from Lena Dunham. She cannot have our words if she cannot respect us. Boy oh boy, is right, and coming from an old friend or somebody who's known her since college and has worked with her, that seems like a pretty damning charge with more substance to it than out of context typo from her autobiography. I completely agree, and you can really see how again this you know, you're having a black woman writer say

this about Lena. You can see again how like these things really do pop up along certain pre existing tension points, you know, that really fall along racialized lines. And so another, probably the biggest, deepest example for myself personally, is the way that Lena handled a sexual assault allegation made against writer and executive producer of Girls, Murray Miller, that happened

on the set. Basically what happened. Actress Aurora Parano, who's mixed race, filed a police report accusing Girls writer and executive producer Murray Miller of raping her on the set of Girls in when she was seventeen years old. Now, Miller said that she was making it up to extort him and try to get money from him, and Lena

and her showrunner Jenny Kohner published this statement quote. While our first instinct is to listen to every woman's story, our insider knowledge of Murray's situation makes us confident that, sadly, this accusation is one of the three percent of assault cases that are misreported every year. It is a true shame to add to that number as outside of Hollywood, women still struggle to be believed. We stand by Murray, and this is all we will be saying about this issue.

Jesus Christ, it's bad, so bad. There's so many things wrong with that. Well, it gets worse. So obviously this statement makes it seem like, you know, Lena and her team have some kind of inside information that proves that this assault never happened, but come to find out that was all a lie. She made that up because in follow up piece called to Aurora an apology Dune him rights quote. When someone I knew, someone I had loved as a brother, was accused, I did something inexcusable. I

publicly spoke up in his defense. There are a few acts I could ever regret more in my life. I didn't have the insider in form nation. I claimed rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to me nothing at all. Um. So yeah, Lena basically smeared a woman who said that she had been sexually assaulted by someone that she met on Lena's set,

the set of her hit show. She lied about this woman for a long time and then eventually admitted that lie in this piece, Um, yeah, I just think it's really horrible and personally, this was the time, like I, as I said in the last episode, like I was a casual watcher of girls. I like a lot of Lena Dunham's writing, but this is when she lost me for for good, because I just felt like it was such a calculum like when you when you call a woman of color a liar in public, you are doing

something that is like, you can't take that back. It's it's such a I don't even know how to put it, like it's it's such a big claim that is so because of we live in a like a racist, sexist, misogynistic society. When you say a woman of color is lying about being abused or sexually assaulted in public, you are just making a big claim that is going to get a lot of attention, but you can't take back. And so for me, that was the moment that Lena

Dunham lost me forever. So Lena eventually took the stage with Aurora's mom Brittany at a Woman in Hollywood event to publicly apologize again. Last November, when Brittany's beautiful daughter Aurora accused a friend of mine of sexual assault I denied her experience publicly. So I remember this moment so viscerally watching it and thinking, this is a capital B, capital M bad moment for women. Lena lied about a woman of color who opened up about her experience of

sexual violence and just essentially publicly smeared her. Then a few years later, she brings this woman's mom on Stay Age and performs contrition in this kind of like, oh gee, I'm just a kid with a lot to learn kind of way, when in reality, she was the very powerful creator and showrunner are the highly successful business with her HBO show. So this idea that she was just like a kid who had a lot to learn, that's completely incorrect,

and that framing is so clearly self serving. I'm sure you could make the argument that it was a genuine moment of you know, apology that she wanted to happen in public. But I just it just really made me feel weird and I really didn't like it, and yeah, it just lost me forever. Yeah, and why her mom, why not the woman herself? Like that just seems weird. I'm sure people have answers to that, but it seems

weird to me. Yeah, And you can really see how all the different controversies with Leada Donham that I just laid out really do exist along pre existing political, racial and so tensions. You know, white women versus women of color, white women versus black men, these tensions that really do already exist in our society and always have like way before Lena Dunham. It's not it's not like she created these things, but that tensions that we have already have

a kind of a tough time talking honestly about. And when those tensions are present, it's just the textbook conditions for inaccurate or misleading information to fester and spread. And in a lot of ways, I feel like Lena Dunham is like a walking embodiment of all of these tensions, and so it's not really surprising that a particular misleading

claim about her would then sick. And I think that is why we see this claim have such stickiness, you know, this claim that she molested her sibling when she was seventeen. I think that is the reason why we see it being, you know, having such staying power. Yeah, and it's so said that, you know, all those societal tensions of racism, set ism, misogyn war just get shoved to the side, and it becomes a conversation about a single like a specific white woman and is she good or is she bad?

And like what a useless conversation? Exactly That's exactly my point, Like we don't have the conversation of, like, was this harmful to survivors of sexual violence? Was this a harmful experience for Lena dunham sibling should what does it mean that she wrote about it in this jokey way, Or we don't have to get to have a conversation of like what can we offer survivors of childhood sexual assault?

Or like how can we support them? Or how can we create the conditions to eliminate sexual abuse in our world? But those conversations are two big, two thorny, too meaty. We don't have the conversation of like, well, why would black feminists or black women have a bone to pick with white womanhood or white feminism, or in what ways have white women historically, you know, attacked black men, or you know, like projected things onto black and that we're

harmful to them. Those are all the big, thorny, systemic conversation that's hard to have and that frankly, we are not equipped to have we're not having it, and so that just gets conflated into Lena Dunham bad, Lena Dunham did this, or Lena Dunham not bad, Lenda Didham, Lena Dunham not did this right, Like, it just completely flattens the conversation so that we're not really able to have

it be a thoughtful, substitutive, nuanced conversation. And some lingering questions that I still have about this are whether or not people who say that Lena Dunham abused her sibling do they know they're talking about incidents that happened when she was seven and not seventeen. Like how much did that particular specific lie seep into people's actual consciousness and their understanding of what happened? And maybe the answer is

will never know? And I think that is ultimately the reason why this is such a big tactic for disinformers, liars and bad actors, just creating enough negativity around someone or something so that it ultimately doesn't really matter what actually happened at all, because all anybody remembers or thinks about when it comes up is the lie. Damn. Yeah,

but I think you're you're right. I think we've seen time and again that's their goal, to create just a miasma of unspecific negativity and and lies and uh not just spread lies, but reduce confidence in there being any sort of truth exactly right. It's what's like creating the conditions where it's like, oh, well the conversation is so muddled and difficult to follow that, like, what is the truth? Anyway?

As I think, the further we get away from that where things that are not true can sort of become true, the worst off we all are. And I have to say, you know this all happened back in here we are nearly ten years later, and just last week a V club published an article about Lena's new film project on June, and the top comments were all some iteration of the claim that she sexually abused her sibling, like it will

never go away. It basically is true now whether or not it actually happened, it's just sort of a non issue at this point. That is grim alright, Well, so so bridget what is the point of view telling us all of this? Oh I'm so glad you asked. So here we are in two and we have seen more and more right wing extremist using very similar tactics, not just on public figures, but on more and more regular people.

You know, look at things like libs of TikTok, that page on Twitter, where people are regularly labeled as quote groomers or basically accused of some kind of like vague sexual impropriety against children. It's really gross and sad because we actually do have a sexual abuse problem in our society. So many of us are survivors of sexual violence or sexual abuse, and bad actors and liars who spread damaging

lies and inaccurate content. They know this is a trigger and attention for so many of this, Like this is a pressure point in us that can be you know, poked at and and inflamed, and it creates a situation where the sexual abuse of kids as a topic that is easily exploited and inflamed and can be weaponized against political opponents. And so ultimately, I guess in conclusion, there are plenty of reasons to not like Lynda Dunham, including

what she wrote about her sibling and her memoir. We don't need to add lies on it to talk about it. We're not better served when we add lies into a conversation as important and as sensitive as childhood sexual violence, and when we do that, we do a disservice to issues like sexual abuse that are so important and critical

that we talk about. And ultimately, it's very concerning that we have a kind of media climate and ecosystem that create the conditions for this kind of damaging lie to persist for years and essentially become true, even if it's not. Two scary sentiment to end on. Yeah, I mean, that's that's all I got. Well, let's all try to stick to the truth. Huh Is that so hard? Is that gonna kill us? Is that so hard? Ben Shapiro? Let's just stick to the truth, shall we? Yeah? Seriously? And

so I know this is a controversial topic. I started the series talking about the fact that I knew this was going to be something people had opinions on, feelings, on thoughts on. I welcome those thoughts. I really really really want to hear what people have to say. Uh, please don't come from me though I'm a baby. I don't know. I'd like be be cool about it, but like,

I want to know what you think. You know, what do you what are your thoughts on Lena Dunham, her memoir all the things that we lay at out today. I really want to hear your thoughts, so please you can email me, you can find me on social media. I want to hear what you'll think. And Mike, thank you so much for taking this journey with us. Yeah, thanks for bringing me on it. You know, I has

been great hearing from listeners about this. Who have you know, feelings about it and thoughts about it, and that's great. That really uh we this is actually the second time that we've recorded this second part because we wanted to incorporate speed that that we heard from listeners. And so yeah, please email us it Hello at tanodi dot com. And thanks Bridget for having me on. It's always a pleasure of talking. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech.

I just want to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of I Heeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help

us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcast from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. H