There Are No Girls on the Internet - CONCLUSION: The Internet thinks Lena Dunham did something awful to her sibling. Why?

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

We’re finishing our two part series looking into the allegations that Lena Dunham abused her sibling.   START WITH LISTENING TO PART 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/bh/podcast/the-internet-thinks-lena-dunham-did-something-awful/id1520715907?i=1000568927100   Want to support the show? (thank you!) Subscribe, tell a friend, leave a review, or buy some merch at There Are No Girls on the Internet’s store: TANGOTI.COM/STORE Join our newsletter: Tangoti.com/newsletter Say hello at [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the Internet. So today, We are continuing our episode looking at the claim that Lena Dunham joked about sexually abusing her sibling in her memoir, not that kind of girl. Quick trigger warning, we're talking about childhood sexual abuse and sexual violence. And I am joined again by There Are No Girls on the Internet producer and chief science officer, Mike. Mike, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me back, Bridget. So where we last left off, we were talking about Lena Dunham, the sort of pop feminist culture of the mid-2010s 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 too long didn't read is basically that actor and writer Lena Dunham wrote about things like putting pebbles in her little sibling's vagina 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 17, 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 that 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 peace, 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 to injure 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 10 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 Revolt's response

to be so wild because Truth Revolt itself admitted that it was a typo, saying that she was 17 and not 7. 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, puffed 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. Oh, right.

Excuse me. Yeah. So not an apology. Actually, just like a continued attack. Yeah. Great. The kind of guy we're dealing with here. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you.

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 going to take them at that word. You're so right that even if that was just a typo, somebody just slipped a 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 really stunning that he won't even, like, on the one hand that the website admits it, but on the other hand, it's like, but we're did nothing wrong. It's like, well, can't really be both. Yeah, like some omissions 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 was anything but? Yeah, right. 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 is 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's sibling 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, Heteranormativity deem certain behaviors 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, is 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 their, 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 a siblings genitals is a quote, normal common behavior in kids ages 2 to 6. 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 experts. Gawker spoke to Sam Rubenstein, 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 exclamation can 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 attach something to it,

but it's almost totally different. It's an innocent type thing. Slate spoke to Rich Sabin 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 ever, and they will do it forever and ever and ever. John V. Caffero, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and an expert on sibling abuse wrote that a Washington Post column, quote, to be clear, sexual curiosity

in children is 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 predestined 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? 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 in our collective shared understanding.

There is no conversation that is made better by the injection of lies. people deserve the truth. Like that is a value that I will just like scream from the rooftops over and over again. If you are adding lies to a conversation, you are doing us all a disservice. And so I also think that truth revolt really blowing up what Lena did write 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, 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 17. 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 disiniformer derailing tactic, flattening out conversations and stripping them of any context or nuance that are required to have a thoughtful, substantive 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 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. You know, the injection of lies into 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. Like you said, take all the oxygen out of the room to prevent discussion about something. else or to discredit and smear and shame a woman who they perceive as a leptist activist. 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 shitheads 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 joky was seriously bad on Lena Dunham's part. I would have never written about my younger sibling the way 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 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, I guess, like, writing about that as a way that's kind of cute and sort of like defining her as a kind of, like, defining her as a kind of. a quirky character or 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 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 childhood sexual abuse. I remember you got that comment from that listener and 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 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 haven't read the book, but you did. 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 sardomically

looking at and projecting commentary onto her own experiences. And so her experiences are presented and you, the reader, sort of takes them at face value. And then later in the book, 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 as this like, yeah, this sarcastic, sardonic person who is kind of like critiquing and commenting on the way that she described those things early on.

There's this piece for Vox by Alex Abad 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. Kaffaro, 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. with one study finding that at least 2.3% of children have been sexually victimized by a sibling. Dunham's treatment of this very serious topic was not exactly sensitive, something she herself has acknowledged.

To some degree, that is of a piece with Dunham's greatest strengths 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 cringy, so awkward, so uncomfortable. 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 valid criticisms of the way that she handled it. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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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 inaccurate 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 situations 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 was insensitive, 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 not so

notable that this whole controversy and apparently allegations that, you know, people continue to hold against her of being a 17-year-old sexual predator, did not come from the alleged victim, her sibling, did not come from survivor justice advocates, but instead came from Ben Shapiro, a vowed and an open right-wing activist, you know, like you're not going to convince me that he gives a shit about really anyone. Yeah, and a 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 prominent liberal voice, and she certainly was when this all has. 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's 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 bums 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 her sibling. I just feel like we just don't, 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 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 like Lena Dunham and how awful she is. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. Like, I'm no stranger to ad 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 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 valid. I mean, truthful. 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 Revolt 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 a 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 general people. On the white hand, Maybe I got right-wing folks, and the thing that they're uniting over is that they all agree 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 17, we know started in the right-wing blogosphere, it has really traveled out of those bases 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. shit on women about shit 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 with your 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 17 or not. It will stick because it squares with our already held belief. That's just how our brains as humans work.

And another truism about disinformation, is that it often seizes on legitimate existing tensions and pressure points and fractures that already exist, particularly within marginalized communities. If you listen to the episode that we did about End Father's Day or Vanessa Guillen, 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. Oh, that's interesting. 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 premiered on 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. 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 Dunham missteps. And I actually went to go look one up because I was like, oh, I should read one here on the podcast. That'll be funny.

And so I googled Lena Dunham Apology Twitter and I found the tweet, Lena Dunham issued an apology for her new HBO Mac 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 Lena Dunham apologies. It's just a me asthma of Lena Dunham uncertainty.

Exactly, exactly. Is it art imitating life or is it life imitating art? Or is it art imitating catcropus? So this is a little bit of a tangent, but I just have to mention it because I think it was such a weird thing that happened along the kind of 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. 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 seat 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 going to 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. 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, add to 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 in 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. That kind of reminds 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 B, yeah, it does establish them as an unreliable narrator who is probably going to say some shit 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 catcorposes accept the apology? I wasn't able to find a response from the cat corpse community, but I will keep looking. Okay, I'll check in with some necromancers that I know. More after a quick break.

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Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life, one hot flash and hormonal crime jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a perimenopausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with the Adamania Arriva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden I'd had hanginess happening on my own.

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So I mentioned how Lena had a newsletter called Lenny Letter. Zenzie Clemens, who was 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. Clemens 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 Lena 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. Ooh, 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, whose mixed race, filed a police report accusing girls' writer and executive producer Murray Miller of raping her on the set of girls in 2012 when she was 17 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 Coner, 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 3% 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 we stand by Murray, and we're not. We stand by Murray, and we're not. We're just to be reported. And,

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 a 2018 follow-up piece called To Aurora an apology, Dunham writes, 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 information, I claimed, rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to me nothing at all. 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.

Yeah, I just think it's really horrible. And personally, this was the top, 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 good, because I just felt like it was such a calculus. 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 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 that 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 women and Hollywood event to publicly apologize again. Last November, when Britney'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 stage 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 of a 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 Lena Dunham that I just laid out really do exist along pre-existing political, racial and social 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 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 stick. 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 17. I think that is the reason why we see it being, you know, having such staying power. Yeah. And it's so sad that, you know, all those societal tensions of racism, sexism, misogy noir, 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's sibling? What does it mean that she wrote about it in this jokey way? We don't have to get to have the 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. Those conversations are too big, too 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 men that were 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. 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, substantive, 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 17? 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 we'll 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 right. I think we've seen time and again. That's their goal to create just a miasma of unspecific negativity and lies and not just spread lies, but reduce confidence in the, there being any sort of truth. Exactly, right? And so it'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? And so I think the further we get away from that where things that are not true can sort of become true, the worse off we all are. And I have to say, you know, this all happened back in 2014. Here we are, nearly 10 years later. And just last week, A.V. Club published an article about Lena's new film project on June 23rd. 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 is just sort of a non-issue at this point. That is grim. All right. Well, so Bridget, what is the point of you telling us all of this? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. So here we are in 2022, 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 inflamed. And it creates a situation where the sexual abuse of kids is 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 Lena 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. It's a scary sentiment to end on. Yeah, I mean, that's all I got. Yeah, well, let's all try to stick to the truth, huh? Is that so hard? Is that going to 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, please don't come from me, though. I'm a baby. I don't, you know, be cool about it. But like, I want to know what you think. What are you, what are your thoughts on Lena Dunham, her memoir, all the things that we lay 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 much I'll think. And Mike, thank you so much for taking this journey with us. Yeah, thanks for bringing me on it.

You know, I agree. It's been great hearing from listeners about this who have, you know, feelings about it and thoughts about it. And that's great. And that really, this is actually the second time that we've recorded this second part because we wanted to incorporate feedback. that we heard from listeners. And so, yeah, please email us at hello at tangodi.com.

And thanks, Bridget, for having me on. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoity.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet

was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed. You just understood.

That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming till he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Shanty Plummer from Fudd Around and Find Out. This week, AZ Fud and I sat down with Step and Curry. Step talks pressure, confidence, and what it really takes to stay great. There's different categories, I guess, so I'm like conditioning, shooting drills where you try to simulate kind of games. Look at her face. Look at her face. We have a love-hate relationship with those

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I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.