After Lena Dunham faced the backlash of defending a writer for HBO's "Girls"
accused of rape, a friend of Dunham's, and blogger for
LennyLetters, is accusing Dunham of "hipster racism." Welcome back to What's
Trending, I'm Martini Beerman. Make sure to LIKE this video and SUBSCRIBE for
more celebrity news. Snyone who knows Lena Dunham knows that
she is a very vocal feminist and supporter of women. Her television series
"Girls" has been praised for its brutal honesty and surprising humor about the
lives of young women, so it came as a surprise to many when Lena Dunham
started defending a male friend of hers accused of sexual assault.
Actress Aurora Perrineau has accused Murray Miller, a writer and producer on
"Girls," of raping her when she was just 17 years old. Lena Dunham and co-showrunner
Jenny Conner wrote a statement in Miller's defense. "During every time of
change there's also incidences of the culture,
in its enthusiasm and zeal, taking down the wrong targets. We believe, having
worked closely with him for more than half a decade, that this is the case with
Murray Miller. 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 Mis reported every year."
Were you there? Did you see it with your own eyes? If not,
you probably shouldn't be releasing a statement like this. And the crazy thing
is that Lena Dunham has previously spoken about how to deal with the
situations just like this one. On October 6th, Dunham tweeted, "Now is the time to
listen and learn, not make ethical judgments about women who were
intimidated, coerced and harmed." She has even acknowledged how hard it is to
speak up against your rapist, especially in the entertainment industry.
From October 5th: "The women who chose to speak up about
their experiences of harassment by Harvey Weinstein deserve our awe. It's
not fun or easy. It's brave." From August 4th: "Things women do lie: about what they
ate for lunch. Things women don't lie about: rape." But when a friend of hers was
accused of having raped someone else, Lena double-downed. "I believe in a lot of
things, but the first tenet of my politics is to hold up the people who
have held me up, who have filled my world with love." Lena Dunham sits on a huge
public platform where everything she says
is scrutinized. There are ways to support your friend, but maybe not so publicly.
Rose McGowan called Konner and Dunham's statement "Good old-fashioned elitist
slut-shaming." June Diane Raphael quotes the statement, "one of the 3 percent of
assault cases that are misreported every year," and replies "A WORD ON HIS
DATA POINT. RAPE AND SEXUAL ASSAULT ARE GROSSLY UNDER REPORTED. BYE." Laura Witt
tweets, "It's "believe women" until the victim is Black." In light of Dunham's
defense of an accused rapist, her longtime friend and co-worker has
accused her of "hipster racism." Zinzi Clemmons is a writer who recently left
Dunham and Konner's blog "Lenny Letters." Zinzi is also a long-time friend of
Dunham's since college. In a statement, Clemmons describes Dunham and her
well-connected circle of friends as having "a lot of power and they seemed to
get off on simultaneously wielding it and denying it." According to Clemmons, many
of these people even went on to work on "Girls" in some form or another.
Clemmons says she avoided Dunham and her friends back then for their "hipster
racism," which is masked behind sarcasm and humor. Clemmons says the offensive,
racist remarks were covered up with a "it was just a joke" excuse. Clemmons also writes that
Aurora Perrineau's story mirrors an incident in college, where one of her
friends was victimized by someone in Dunham's powerful social circle and
nothing was ever done about it. As she tweeted her statement, she calls
on women of color to "divest from Lena Dunham." "Hipster Racism" has also been seen
as "ironic racism." Like, when people say something offensive or racist, they just
act like it was a joke, but "hipster racism" comes in many different forms. "We
saw it also in her shameless sexualizing of Odell Beckham Jr., the propensity to
perform in step with a type of gaslighting hipster-racism." braidsn-
glasses says, "In hipster racism you'll hear things such as: 'Well, India, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh aren't actually, like, Asian, ya know?' Or, 'Omg I had Korma last night!
How proud are you of me?'" Jordan Weissman writes, "Hipster racism was, sadly, very
much a real thing among a certain kind of arty white kid who grew up in New
York during the early 2000s (aka Lena Dunham and a lot of Oberlin students)."
What do you think of the Lena Dunham controversy? Let us
know in the COMMENTS. And Dunham has apologized for her statements, like she's
done in the past. Max Read tweets, "I'm so old I remember
the first time Lena Dunham was accused of "hipster racism." And Lena Dunham has a
history of shoving her foot in her mouth while trying to be supportive.
While retweeting an article about George Clooney speaking out against Harvey
Weinstein, Dunham joked that speaking out against sexual assault makes men
"sexually irresistible." What? In December of 2016,
Dunham was relating a story on her podcast about visiting a Planned
Parenthood clinic in Texas. Dunham was asked by a volunteer in Texas to share
her "abortion story," but Dunham herself explained she's never had an abortion.
She ends the anecdote by saying, "I still haven't had an abortion,
but I wish I had." She has since apologized for making what she called a
"distasteful" joke. It's just a joke, everyone. That's totally fine to say
these things if I'm just joking. So, I'm pretty sure we'll be talking about Lena
Dunham's next apology really soon. Chris Scott tweets, "All of Lena Dunham's
apologies should end with "Anyway I've learned nothing here and we're gonna do
all of this over again in a month.'" Anyway. I've learned nothing here, and we're
gonna do all of this over again in a month. So, for more stories head to
whatstrending.com.