Lena Dunham has had many haters over the last few years, but none of them have prepared to launch legal action against her – that is, until now.
Let’s go back to the beginning. A few months ago, Lena released her memoir, Not That Kind Of Girl, to great critical reception. One of the essays from the book which struck a chord in many people’s hearts was, unfortunately, the one in which she said she had been raped after a college party by a ‘flamboyant Republican conservative’ whom she refers to as ‘Barry’ in the passage.
In her description of the encounter, she claims Barry had removed the condom twice while having sex with her, and that it was aggressive: ‘I never gave permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us.
‘I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking.’
Anyway, some journalists over at Breitbart presumably obsessed with making Lena’s claims look hazy or untrue (will they do that with every rape claim? Regardless, they sound like terrible people already) looked to find out if Barry, a campus Republican who had a ‘mustache that rode the line between ironic Williamsburg fashion and big buck hunter’ really did exist. They did this in a 4,000 word report. Seriously.
Using some other information about him that Lena divulges in the book – the colour of the cowboy boots he wore, the job he did and the name of the radio show he hosted – they declared: ‘We could not find anyone who remembered any Oberlin Republican who matched Dunham’s colorful description.
‘Under scrutiny. Dunham’s rape story didn’t just fall apart, it evaporated into pixie dust and blew away.’
Which is an awfully nice way to talk about a serious allegation.
And now? Barry One, as he is being referred to for the sake of his anonymity, says that he can be identified as this Barry in Lena’s book because he’s a Republican who went to Oberlin – the university she went to. He knows she didn’t mean him when she wrote about this Barry because he says they’ve never met. But he’s still raising funds because he has allegedly been hounded by the media since the book came out. What will happen with these funds?
Barry One’s lawyer’s statement reads: ‘All proceeds will be spent by Barry on legal costs and related fees associated with defending Barry’s reputation including, but not limited to, potentially pursuing Lena Dunham and Penguin Random House for harm caused to Barry’s reputation from the publication and sale of Ms Dunham’s memoir.’
Funny how, after an allegation of rape has been made, this is the legal action that is threatened. Some people could do well to remember that being accused of rape is only serious because actually raping someone is a hell of a lot more serious.
Liked this? You might also be interested in:
In Which We Talk To Lena Dunham About Anxiety, Sexual Consent, And David Cameron’s Feminist Fail
Lena Dunham Issues Statement About Those Gross Sexual Molestation Accusations
Significant Life Lessons We’ve Learned From Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind Of Girl
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.