The internet thinks Lena Dunham did something awful to her sibling. Why? Part 1

the Internet. As a production of My Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I wanted to talk to a topic that I've been dying to cover for a very long time. It's also a little bit controversial. You know. I have made episodes about everything involving white supremacists, quan O cultists, big name companies who have asked me to

cease and desist talking about them, you name it. However, this is still one of the only topics that I've been a little bit worried about diving into because I know folks have really strong opinions about it. So to help me talk through today's topic, I am joined by There Are No Goes on the Internet producer and chief Science Officer, Mike. Producer, Mike, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm glad I can be here to help make this episode. Me too,

Me too. Did you do anything fun for Fourth of July? It doesn't too exciting, just hanging out in my apartment listening to the constant fireworks outside. I feel it's like a new thing the past couple of years that fireworks just start around nude and then go until midnight, and uh, and I'm here for it. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, pretty exciting. Not the best conditions for recording a podcast, but we'll

make it work. So I know that you are a fan of podcasts where the hosts kind of revisit a story about a public figure, usually a woman like Mondaklinsky or Courtney Love, and point out all of the unfair ways that this person has been maligned by society and the media, and we all kind of have this public recomming about the ways that the media can be unfair or sexist or all around harmful. I love podcasts like that, and Mike, I know that you do as well. It's true.

I think it's a great format. I think, uh it really works well with the classic podcast dynamic of like one person explaining, one person listening. And I also thinks that it's uh a format for which there's many great examples because uh, you know, society just loves to smear and orch a woman. So I love podcasts like that

as well. But I want to be very clear this episode is not going to be one of those podcast episodes, even though I am the person who's did all the research and I will be explaining the situation to you, Mike. So it's a little bit like those, But today we are not trying to sort of demonstrate the way that the media unfairly maligned somebody. We are zeroing in on one specific misleading claim about none other than Lena Dunham.

I am in no way making a larger point about the way that the media and society has portrayed her broadly, but I do want to zero in on this one specific claim and analyze how it became to be this very sticky, persistent lie that still endures online today and what that lie says about our culture? Yes, So why Lena Dunham, Why this one specific thing? Great question. So a little bit of background about how I came to

be making this episode. I used to work on the social media team at m s NBC dot com and one of our kind of tried and true digital engagement tricks was to post about someone, a public figure that we knew our audience would engage with, positive or negative. This is back In, and our audience used to love to hate on Putin, and so whenever we posted something about Putin that posted that cast him in a negative light,

we could always expect that people would really engage. Without a lot they'd be leaving like mean comments like yeah we hate him. They they love to hate on Putin. But hands down, no question, the public figure that got the most hate on out all of our social media pages was Lena Dunham. I think, if I'm recalling correctly, I think people disliked Lena Dunham more than they disliked Putin, which is really saying something. And I used I worked on this podcast project where Lena Dunham was one of

our guests. And again, you know, we had posted episodes with all different types of public figures and celebrities, but when we posted our Lenda Dunham episode, it was instant unanimous negative feedback. And so I noticed whenever we would publish about her, or post about her or feature her online, commenters would always repeat, like a laundry list of reasons

they don't like her. You know. Sometimes they would be the garden variety of things that you would expect, like oh, she's a spoiled brad, I hate her, or you know, oh she's gross, which is pretty much just kind of fat phobia. But by far the most common thing I would see commenters say about Lenda Dunam online was this particularly persistent claim that she's a quote sexual predator who

admitted to molesting her younger sibling. And you know, I'm always very interested in what I referred to as sticky pieces of disinformation or misinformation or lies, you know, things that really just seemed to cut through and persist. You know, I'm very interested in why these things stick and to what end, and what their stickiness tells us about our culture.

And in that regard, you know, this misleading claim about Lenda Dunham is fast it into me because I think It tells us a lot about the ways that are political and social climates intersect, which is particularly important in today's climate. And I just want to make it super super clear because I can already hear people who are listening thinking, why are you defending Lena Dunham. She's awful?

You know, what are you doing? Let me be very clear, there are plenty of valid reasons to not rock with Lena Dunham, some of which will be talking about in this episode. So this is not me trying to get anyone to think that Lynda Dunham is good, or it is not me saying that every single claim about her is unfair or untrue. But the claim that she sexually abused her sibling, I believe is a pretty nasty thing

to repeat about somebody. And I don't know that people who repeat this particularly nasty lie know that it initially started as a right wing attack on a prominent liberal voice, but because of Lena Dunham's overall I guess we'll say vibe, this claim has really taken route, not just in right

wing circles but more generally too. Like people who I believe probably have would never read a right wing blog, you know, for any legitimate reason should probably be aware that they are repeating a lie that was really cooked up in the right wing blog is sphere, And I think that should be really concerning. I think the ways that this claim has sort of become true, that's scare quotes around that, and has persisted for so long, should

really be concerning for all of us. So let's talk about how and why that happened and what it means. So for people like me who don't really know anything about this, who is Lena Dunham? So if you don't know who Lena Dunham is, I will give you kind of a quick and dirty summary of her background. Lena Dunham is an actor, producer, and writer. She's the daughter of visual artist Laurie Simmons, who is a very big deal in the art world because her art is incredible.

Lena rose to fame after making a really strong film debut called Tiny Furniture, which is basically a semi autobiographical movie about a young woman portrayed by Lena, who disgraduated from college and is trying to navigate adulthood. Laurie Simmons, her real life mom, plays her mom in the movie and in the movie, her mom is also a visual artist and photographer who stages these uh stages or pieces with tiny dollhouse furniture, just like her mom does in

real life. And Lena's real life sibling, Cyrus Grace, plays Lena's character sibling in the movie too, so it's very semi autobiographical. In twelve, she created and started HBO's Girls, which also explores kind of similar themes young white women trying to navigate young adulthood post college in Brooklyn, New York. Lena was born in nine six, so she is what you would call a millennial, and when Girls was debuting, it was kind of peak like what are the millennials

up to content time? Right? And so Girls was this huge success. Pretty early on, it got a lot of criticism for how white the show was, because just like shows like Sex in the City and Friends before it, it's just for white people who are not really encountering a lot of diversity that I know that you would

find in a city like Brooklyn, New York. But regardless positive, negative, whatever you thought, it was the kind of show that people were talking about a lot like it was in the discourse, which I think creates a certain kind of gravitas around anything. And just as a side note, in case you're curious, I actually watched and enjoyed the show.

I'm not gonna sit here and act like I have not seen every episode, or I am not going to sit here and act like I did not immediately go to a v club to read reviews immediately after watching episodes, because, like I said, it was part of a discourse. You know, the show created discourse, and I will never deprive myself of discourse. Okay, if people are talking about something, if there's articles and reviews to be read, I'm reading them.

I'm engaging. So Girls explore themes of sexuality, gender, and female friendship, and it's highly anticipated third season comes out in January. Now. In September of that same year, Lena releases a memoir essay collection calls not that kind of girl. Lena was having a really hot moment, and so the book was a highly anticipated one. Random House purchased the rights in October after a big bidding war, and bidding was reported to have risen past three point five million dollars.

So it's one of those very hot, very big deal book publishing projects. This was all happening against the backdrop of a particular climate politically, culturally, and socially in the mid twenty tins uh. If I had the ability to clear music rights on this podcast, which my producer Tari can tell you I bug her about pretty much every day, this is where we'd be playing, like maybe Katie Perry's Roar or Shake It Off by Taylor Swift, you know,

some other twenty hit to really set the scene. Might do what were some other twenty hits, like hits of the ts Rihanna? Maybe Rihanna was in there, like came and Paula was in there. Maybe I'm getting a little like late twenty tens. So just imagine that some some kind of music from that era is playing as I paint a portrait of what it was like in the

mid twenty tens. So in popular culture, the film Twelve Years of Slave won Best Picture at the Oscars, in which was hosted by openly gay Ellen DeGeneres and was the most watched Oscars since the year two thousand. Waves of states are passing marriage equality legislation. The Supreme Court decides not to hear cases on marriage equality appeals, thus immediately legalizing marriage equality in Virginia, Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin before it sent back to the courts and ultimately

legalized nationwide. A year later, the Black Lives Matter movement started and was really picking up. You have the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Florida, Mike Brown in Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, and the subsequent uprisings all over the country shows that this movement has real momentum and really it creates a national conversation that is

basically impossible to ignore. You'll remember that when President Obama was asked about Trayvon Martin, he answered, if I had a son, he would look a lot like Trayvon Martin. Obama gave a televised speech announcing his plans to use executive action to grant citizenship to about four point four million immigrants. So I have my own feelings about Obama's immigration policies, which is a podcast for another day. But the point is Republicans and right wingers absolutely fucking hated this.

We also get Obamacare in two ten, and for the next few years Republicans were fighting it tooth and nail, including Obamacare's birth control coverage. Mandate. Mike, do you remember that Georgetown law student and feminist activist Sandra Fluke? Had forgotten? But now it's coming back to me. What was the deal with Sandra Fluke? What do we know her name?

So in twelve, Sandra Fluke was barred from testifying about birth can control during a hearing, and instead the only people who testified about birth control was an all male planel of clergy, and then Rush Limball called Sandra Fluke

a slut basically just for advocating for birth control. You know, these were the times where the phrase we were using, the phrase quote war on women a lot like that was a phrase that we were using, which I think captured something about what it was like to live through that era in but in a way kind of almost seems quaint. Now when you look at everything else that this would have going on, it does seem quaint. Now. I remember that war on women phrase and boys, uh,

we thought that was a war on women. Buck. It's funny because I wanted to do this episode because I thought it was like a little bit of a departure from everything happening in the news. But it's so funny

how it all. It always comes back to this. You know, I feel like every time I look backwards to the period like five fifteen years ago, I'm confronted with how quaint my concerns felt, and how the things I was alarmed about it seems so much smaller than the things that are just like normal ship in the news today.

Oh my God, tell me about it. Let's say a quick break out are back, so we're talking about this war on women, but back in you also have Beyonce performing in front of the word feminist in giant letters like decked out in life at the MTV v M as paired with a sample of Chimamanda and good speech on feminism and expectations for women and girls. We'd seech ghosts themselves to make themselves smaller. We see some girls you can have ambition, but not so much. And this

I remember this. I remember coming into work the next day after this aired, and it felt like a big cultural moment for women and feminism. You know, I think I've been a f I've identified like vocally as a feminist for most of my life since I was a child. But I think for a lot of people, when you were asked like are you a feminist? It was something you had to be a little bit wishy washy about it.

I feel like this moment with Beyonce, it felt like a cultural moment where people wanted to say it with their whole chests. Country pop sensation Taylor Swift famously came out as a feminist in fourteen in an interview with The Guardian where she credits her friend none other than

Lena Dunham with her feminist awakening. And I guess my point is this, this era really feels like a time where things like progressivism and diversity and feminism are coming increasingly mainstream, and that they're becoming attached with a kind of social currency. You know, it's not cool to be aligned with old men dragging their feet and blocking marriage equality, or calling college girls sluts for wanting to be on birth control. None of that is cool. But what is

cool is being a feminist. It's cool to be a feminist, it's cool to be an ally and in Lena Dunham was a huge part of this climate. So culturally, Lena Dunham's hit show Girls and her writing explores, you know, themes of sexuality and gender and these really frank ways. So that alone you know, creating work deposits that young women have an interiority that is worthy of serious exploration and respect is the thing that is really taking off

in the culture. You know, Lena Dunham is not a size four and yet she is nude on screen and has these sex scenes. She doesn't really great job of highlighting that sort of humor and awkwardness, that kind of company exploring your sexuality when you're young. You know what she's doing on screen. It feels a little bit daring. After the success of Girls, Lena starts Lenny Letter, a feminist newsletter where you know, you have celebrities getting really

really raw but also talking about feminist issues. You know, you have Jennifer Lawrence writing about the gender pay gap in Hollywood and Kesha writing about her abuse at the hands of her producer Dr Luke. This also translates politically. Lena positions herself as a vocal feminist and a champion for feminist causes. Another familiar trip down memory lane. Back around, Planned Parenthood was facing a lot of b S political attacks. Mike Pence was not just someone who was being threatened

with hanging and a gallows by his own constituents. Back then he was the governor of Indiana, and he made attacking planned parenthood and threatening to defund planned parenthood part a big part of his whole overall thing. And we also had these deceptively edited sting videos from anti abortion extremists. You know, they would do things like have somebody dress up like a pimp and then go in with women

to a planned parenthood and try to get services. Basically, right wing types were really trying to make planned parenthood and abortion and the kinds of exploration of sexuality and gender that Lee never really does in her work. They were really trying to brand that as something toxic that nobody would want to be affiliated with. Only it wasn't

really working. Isn't it funny how Mike Penn's built his whole career on like attacking people and making people seem like evil villains, and then he arguably rode out his career with members of his own party chanting to hang him. Uh, you know, isn't that funny that you reap what you sow? You know, you live by the stord, you die by the sword. What can I say? Yeah, exactly, You live by the jinn up outrage. You die by the Gallows.

So in the wake of all these attacks on planned parenthood, Lena becomes the face of a campaign to fight back called Women Are Watching. She designs a hot pink shirt that says Lena loves planned parenthood in supported planned Parenthood, and she gets other a list celebrities like America Vera and Gabrielle Union to join in. Lena made this kind of cheeky, kind of wink wink ad for the DNC in supportive Obama. In your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy.

It should be with a guy with beautiful someone who really cares about and understands women, a guy who cares whether you get health insurance and specifically whether you get birth control. It was funny, Yeah, so it's playful. It's kind of funny. It's a little edgy. Uh so. Probably unsurprisingly, right wing types did not like this ad. Ben Shapiro, who remember that name because he will be important, later

said that the ad mocked versions. His whole screed about the ad is pretty amazing, so he writes in bright bart So Lena chose to do it for the first time with Barack Obama since he quote cares about and understands women. In fact, he understands them so well that he exploits them for insane commercials, comparing losing your virginity with voting. Obama has a young daughter's, but that didn't stop him from releasing this commercial because this is what

Obama thinks of your daughters. This is Obama's official campaign ad, paid for with his campaign money distributed by his campaign. If this ad were any more demeaning to women who apparently care only about having sex, if you listen to Lena you wanna do it, done him? It should be produced by Bill Maher and star Bill Clinton. Oh wait, that's Obama's actual campaign. According to Barack Obama, this campaign isn't about the economy or foreign policy. It's about three

birth control as advocated by unbelievably wealthy celebrities. If Obama goes any smaller in this campaign, we're gonna need a microscope to find him. It's so in the top. I just need a minute to choke down this moment. It comes up at any time. Ben Shapiro's words up here, it's you mentioned that he's going to be important later. When is that? Like, when will he be important. We're still waiting. I'm sure he's still waiting. I'm sure he's

been waiting his whole life to feel important. So they did not like Lena's Obama at And actually I find it so interesting how Shapiro uses Lena's involvement to really shrink the issue of birth control coverage, like it is simultaneously a small issue that is so small that it's unbecoming of Obama to align himself with, and it is also an issue that the right wing was actively exploding at, elting down over, you know, holding hearings about it and

making it a huge deal. So you know, the math isn't really math thing on that one, Like which one is it? Is it so inconsequential that nobody should ever care about it? Or is it this huge issue that you need to hold a million hearings about, you know which one? That's such a good observation. I ever thought

about it like that. But you're absolutely right. It's like so consistent with their whole hypocrisy thing around the one hand, when they're on the attack, like, oh, it's so inconsequential, it's insulting to even bring up the concept of birth control. And then you know, flip the screen and the only thing that matters is abortion restrictions and preventing women from having abortions. It's like two sides of the same coin, but like one side is life or death for society,

on the other side is like trivial and brass. Yeah, it's almost like some of these folks are not genuine actors. It sounds like some of them are completely disingenuous. Yeah, it does. She almost like that. I mean, like that can't be it. There's gotta be something more. I'll keep thinking about it, keep thinking about it more. After a

quick break, let's get right back into it. Anyway. So at this point, Lena is really proving herself to be somebody with a certain kind of cultural cachet with millennial young women, and somebody who seems to really know how to leverage it for you know, big d democratic causes in a way that actually cuts through. Like even though right wingers did not like that ad, people talked about it,

people wrote about it. So lover her or hater, Lena Dunham knows how to wield her own specific kind of political, social, and cultural power. And the vibe around that is that it's cool to care about politics, and it's cool to care about feminism. Importantly, this is actually largely a phenomenon on the left. There aren't really a lot of cool, young, culturally relevant political celebrities on the right in the same

kind of way. Not to go on too much of a tangent, but for a long time, people myself included, assumed that Taylor Swift was a silent right winger because she pretty much never spoke up about politics in interviews. When she was asked if she was a feminist, she would say things like, oh, I don't call myself a feminist because I never believed in men versus women. But her friendship with Lena Dunham gets Taylor to be this loud and proud feminist who actually speaks up about politics

after a decade of staying quiet. And it's basically almost like a right wing bogeyman come to life. You know, you're sweet, blonde, conservative, country loving young woman will become corrupted by a tattooed feminist with green hair and will be pulled into identifying as a liberal feminist, So you know, say what you will about Lena Dunham. That is a certain type of cultural power and homegirld knows how to

use it. And you know, when it comes to the culture, it was people like Lena Dunham who had the relevance. And I can see how this would be really threatening to right wing types who historically have had a lot of political power. But they aren't cool, They're not young or hip, and that is a problem for them. So all of this is the backdrop on which a website

called Truth Revolt comes to exist. And to understand this misleading claim that Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling and where it comes from, we have to first start by talking about Truth Revolt. Wait, so I was following along the whole way, but all of a sudden, now we're talking about a website called truth Revolt. What is truth Rebolt? Truth Revolt is a right wing website that was launched

on October seven. According to c SPAN, Truth Revolt is a politically concerned bit of media watchdog and activist group founded by conservative commentators Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz of the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a counterpoint to the politically progressive media Matters for America. Yes, Ben Shapiro is the same person who wrote that breathless piece about lena'welve ad for Obama, and so I note a lot of

y'all probably know Ben Shapiro. He is pretty famous for being you know, he's young, I think he's thirty eight now. He's pretty famous for being this right wing media figure, and he's been at it since he was seventeen. I personally just find him awful. Like the fact that I'm even talking about him on this show is slightly annoying to me, because I just don't like talking about him.

You know. I think one of the reasons why I dislike him so much is because his whole thing is culture war stuff, right, And so he's the guy with a huge platform complaining about Disney making a woke remake or something like that, or you know, he is the person who's always complaining about culture because culture tends to be a space where, you know, people who are traditionally marginalized can have a little power and have a little

bit of a voice, and so he's constantly complaining about culture. The thing that always comes to mind when I think about Ben Shapiro, I will always associate him with trying to lead a moral crusade against Megan the Stallion and Cardi Bi's song of the Summer Wet as Pussy and kind of self owning himself by saying that the only reason so he says, oh, I I'm married to a doctor.

I talked to my doctor wife and she assures me that the only reason that a woman would have a w A P is if she had a vaginal infection, which is just hysterical. I think about it all the time and laugh. Yeah, it's the funniest thing about him, is the only thing I think about when I think about him. It's like perfectly summarizes his whole culture war thing where there was like a video I don't even think it was really edited of him like doing spoken

word of the lyrics of that w AP song. Uh, and then him like commenting about yeah, exactly who said his wife, who apparently is a medical doctor, saying that the only reason it might happen is because of an affection. It was sad and shocking, and I almost feel like like he was setting us up, but like it's just too much humility. I think it's it just truly is that embarrassing for him? Yeah? I if folks have not seen so the video that you're talking about. I definitely

watched it a hundred of times. He is reading the lyrics on his show in disgust and so he's reading the lyrics to Wet s Pussy. But then somebody and I think he's trying to demonstrate like this song is so immoral and like this is what our girls are listening to, and YadA, YadA, YadA. But then somebody to a beat. Somebody puts it to the w A p bet and it kind of slaps not gonna It's hilarious, Like look it up. I I'll link it. I'll link it in the show notes because I I watch it,

It's given me great joy. I'll put it that way. Yeah, And I think it's the best way to really understand

Benjapiro as a person and as a man exactly. And obviously this is it sounds so silly, and it is silly, but it's also really important to this particular story because turning culture into a political battleground is a big part of how we got here with this one persistent claim about Lena Dunham, so Truth Revots mission page states that its goals are to quote unmasked leftist in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public,

and devastate their funding basis. So essentially, truth Revote was created per the co creator David Horbitt's own mission statement, to manipulate media for political means. Here's what he wrote on the site. The media win elections for the left. It's not the competence in office. Leftists have demonstrated none. It's not the left ideas. Leftist ideas have failed everywhere they've been tried. The left winds for one simple reason.

Leftists control the information distribution system in the United States, and they use that system to pillary conservatives, heartless bigots intent on harming the poor and targeting minorities. The media must be destroyed where they stand. That is our mission at truth Revolt. The goal of truth Revolt is simple. Unmasked leftists in the media for who they are, destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their funding basis.

Truth Revolt focuses on high profile media members and holding them accountable. Truth Revolt also steaks to stop the left dead in its tracks when it comes to training the next generation on our college campuses. Truth Revolt works to make advertisers and funders aware of the leftist propaganda they sponsor and bringing social consequences to bear to create pressure

on such advertisers and funders. So pretty obviously from their own state meant Truth Revolt specifically is looking to quote unmasked leftist and target specific leftist public figures in the media to make them toxic for brands and funders to be associated with. And they're kind of modeling themselves after places like Media Matters for America, who monitor disinformers and bad actors and extremists like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon

to pressure advertisers to drop them. Um. They're also specifically focused around winning over young people like college students, who we know are Lena Dunham's biggest audience demographic. So obviously, I think it goes without saying that Truth Revolt is not just some you know, run of the mill media outlet reporting the facts from their own statement, they are a right wing outlet with a political acts to grind. They are out for vengeance, they are out to dismantle

people take them down. By their own admission, this idea that like leftists are supported by is great funding. HAP reads I know so many broke gass leftists she's talking about me separating from their funding is like not even the thing, like so many of them are broke, you know, Like where what is this like big leftist funding the media that they're talking about. I mean, nothing that they say is accurate, you know, they say that like, oh,

the media is a tool. Like the media like that the idea that that that the that mainstream media is a tool propping up leftist agendas. It's just I mean, it's such an un serious claim. I don't find it worth they have a retort. It's just it's just like you can just read the newspaper in the wake of the fall of Row, read the newspaper in the New York Times today they I mean, I don't even want to get into it. But yes, it's it's such an un serious claim that it's not even worthy of a response. Yeah,

it's it's like ludicrous. It's like who who owns the media? We've got you know, NBC, you know, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. Like these are not leftist people, No, it's it's horship. Okay, so you might be wondering this website sounds sketchy as hell. But what does it have to do with Lena Dunham. Well, the claim that Lena Dunham admitting to molesting her younger sibling was initially started on Truth Revolt. Oh shit, so that's the connection here.

This truth ruble started this claim about Lena Dunham. I should have seen it coming, but somehow they snuck it in on me. It's true, and I should probably say that something that we know about disinformation and the way that it spreads oftentimes it contains some element or nugget of truth that can be easily manipulated or taken out of context, and that is definitely what's happening here. So let's look at the facts. In September, Lena Dunham released

her memoir Not That Kind of Girl. Now, I have read the memoir a couple of times, so, like, I'm pretty well versed on what it says and what it doesn't say. And it does include passages of Lena describing sexual situations around her younger sibling. I should say right now, Lena's sibling is called Cyrus Grace Dunham and uses they them pronouns. But that was not the case when this memoir was published, but as I read some quotes from the memoir, I'm going to amend the quotes to reflect that.

So Lena writes about trying to get her younger sibling to kiss her on the mouth and lay on top of her. As Cyrus Grace grew, I took to bribing them for time and affection. One dollar in quarters, if I could do their makeup like a motorcycle check, three pieces of candy. If I could kiss them on the lips for five seconds, whatever they wanted to watch on TV. If they would just relax on me, basically anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl

I was trying. The memoir also includes this passage Do we all have uterus? Is? I asked my mother when I was seven. Yes, she told me. We're born with them and with all of our eggs, but they start out very small, and they aren't ready to make babies until we're older. I look at I look at my Cyrus Grace, now a slim, tough one year old, and at their tiny belly. I imagine eggs inside of them, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte's Web, and their uterus the size of a thimble. Does their vagina

look like mine? I guess so, my mother said, just smaller. One day, as I sat out on our driveway in Long Island, playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Cyrus Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between them. And I leaned down between their legs and carefully spread open their vagina. They didn't resist, and when I saw what was inside, I shrieked. My mother came running, Mama, Mama, Cyrus Grace

has something in there. My mother didn't bother asking why I had opened cyrus graces vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Cyrus Grace had stopped six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently, while Cyrus Grace cackled, thrilled that their prank had been a success. So the book actually does contain content that involves her describing these sexual

situations with their with their sibling. That is true, but she writes about doing this at age seven with her sibling who was aged one. On October, about a month after her book could come out, Truth Revolt published the passage that I just read about the Pebbles and the Vagina under the headline Lena Dunham described sexually abusing her little sibling. Now, as Box points out, Truth Revolt did two very misleading things in their post, calling Donham a

sexual abuser. One, they really keyed in on this phrase they didn't resist, which obviously becomes a lot more loaded when paired with the headline about sexually abusing her sibling. Two, and this is really important. Truth Revolt article originally stated that Dunham was seventeen at the time, when Dunham and

Actuality said that she was seven. So obviously, if you have a seventeen year old describing these kinds of interactions with a one year old, it is a very different situation than if you have a seven year old, which she actually says was her age doing them with someone who is one. Yes, and seven are pretty different there, pretty different. So Truth Revolt eventually does say that it

was a typo. I guess that that's fine. Uh. The story is then linked to by the Drudge Report, which if you don't know what that is because you're not older like myself. Uh. It's basically a right wing news aggregator that can really blow up stories. It was the first place to publish the Bill Clinton scandal involving intern Monica Lewinsky. Back. Once it's picked up by the Drudge Report, the story gets a one more traction. It makes the rounds on you know, truth for both it's kind of

a niche site. It makes the rounds on the wider right wing blog and info sphere, and much bigger right wing outlets begin to pick it up. The National Reviews Kevin Williamston, for instance, declared there is no non horrific interpretation of this episode, and The Daily Caller, another conservative outlet, rites Dunham had admitted to the quote gleeful sexual abuse of her infant sibling. Now that is initially really what seated the whole Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling narrative.

And now it's out in the wider right wing blogosphere infosphere, and now it is a thing. It's so selacious it almost feels like Taylor made for these kind of right wing outrage aggregators. I mean, that is such a commonality of disinformation, and it's something that I have to remember myself quite a it. It's not just folks on the right.

I'm speaking about everybody. Myself very much included that when you have these stories that seem almost tailor made to trigger certain things inside you or or outrage you in a certain kind of way, those are always stories that you should be a little bit wary of because it's no not a coincidence that they are hitting you in

this particular way. Yeah, right, And you've mentioned that, guests have mentioned that on the show, talking about ways that combat is information, Like when you're feeling that emotional reaction, that should almost be a signal to like step back and evaluate, like who is writing this? Where am I reading this? Is this something that I want to share exactly?

And that's one of the elements about this that I find so fascinating is how obviously, if you are Ben Shapiro or a right winger who has endured the last few years where it seems like progressivism and diversity and feminism and sexuality, you're all things that are becoming more and more salient, and you're feeling less and less in control and less and less relevant and these things are becoming more and more relevant. I can see why that would prime somebody who is a right winger who feels

kind of threatened by this. I could see how that would prime them to believe and amplify and spread this particularly damaging lie about Lena Dunham. However, what I find so fascinating about this is the way that didn't just stay in right wing circles. It made the rounds and it's still persists today. And so I think, you know, this might be a good place to take a little break and will continue this conversation in the next episode.

So next week we'll get into lena inter siblings response and why this particular claim got such traction and was so sticky with so many people, not just the right wing online spaces where it started. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. Just want to say Hi. You can reach us at Hello at tang godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tang

godi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget tod It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almato 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 My Heart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts