Thread by @PennyRed

Unpopular opinion: leave Lena Dunham the fuck alone.

Too many people who should know better have seen this woman as fair game for the most sadistic bullshit ever. The fact that there has been legitimate criticism over the years doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a fuck of a lot of sexism, internalised misogyny and body-shaming.

I’ve utterly had it with friends, and friends of friends, telling me ‘I hate Lena Dunham and I don’t even know why, she makes me sick.’ Maybe you ought to think about why you feel that way.

Bear in mind that the reason Lena Dunham became famous was that she was one of the first people of our generation to make art about the messy, tender, contradictory realities of young women’s lives. Yes, okay, she made it from a lens of immense privilege. But >

Most of the people I’ve met who really, really, really hated Lena Dunham from the get-go weren’t really concerned about structural racism or privilege-blindness. They were outraged that a young woman was making this sort of art and being celebrated for it. And they were jealous.

Yes, Dunham was rich and white and, according to some people, infuriating. She was also wildly talented and light-years ahead of her time. Most of the things people hated about Girls were the same things they later celebrated about Fleabag.

Lena Dunham was the test case for all those good woke lefty white guys who discovered it was okay to bully and humiliate women and girls as long as they pretended it was all about ‘white feminism’.

And then, of course, there were the there were the Black women whose real, substantive critiques were co-opted by the far larger mob of self-hating female creators and recreational misogynists who smelt a young woman’s pain and wanted to slurp some of it up for themselves.

Heck, *I* was jealous of Lena Dunham back in the day. When Girls came out, I was a 24-year old, struggling broke middle-class white woman writer in New York. I spent a week trying to join in the mean-spirited mocking, but it just felt grubby and dishonest. Because it was.

At 23, Lena Dunham committed the cardinal sin of being a talented, successful young woman who told the truth about her life and owned her sexuality whilst not being traditionally hot.
She was punished for it. She is still being punished for it. Fuck off and leave her alone.

Most of the people who justify their bullying of Lena Dunham on the basis that at the age of SIX ‘she abused her little sister’ (not true) are the same people who are the first to excuse white rapists in their 20s and 30s on the basis that they were just ‘young and ignorant.

Since the age of 23, every slightly annoying or ignorant thing Lena Dunham has ever done has been mercilessly held against her by people who decided they had a free pass to bully a woman.
Meanwhile, grown male predators in her industry were protected because of their ‘genius’.

Lena Dunham was not ‘held accountable’. She was *made an example of*.
What was done and is still being done to Dunham and women like her sent a message to all young female creators: expect no mercy. if you make a single mistake in public, you will be punished for it, forever.

And the most disappointing part of it all is how many otherwise decent people with good politics dived right into the feeding frenzy because sadism feels good and gets you clicks. It’s low and mean and grubby and I can’t stand it.