The right and the left is piling on Lena Dunham’s apology for questioning the sexual assault allegations of actress Aurora Perrineau. But while Dunham may have brought some of it on herself, Brendan O’Neill says the vitriol is undeserved.
But she also doesn’t deserve it because surely no one deserves to be metaphorically strung up like this simply for expressing skepticism about an accusation of criminal activity. This is the problem: in calling out Dunham’s double standard on believing accusers, we risk further entrenching the rush to believe accusers, the primacy of accusation over justice. The ritual denunciations of Dunham, and her craven apology in response to them, exacerbates the very notion that any kind of defense of a person accused of sexual assault is a huge no-go zone, something only cretins or rape apologists would do.
In going after Dunham like this, her critics, including many on the right, have worsened the often shrill, unforgiving culture that Dunham and other modern illiberal liberals have helped to bring about. Well done, guys.
That a woman has been put under enormous pressure to retract a statement of conscience, an expression of doubt, a defense of a friend, confirms how terrifying the fallout from the Hollywood sexual-harassment scandal has become. Now, not only are all sorts of sexual behavior, from the fairly innocent to the absolutely terrible, being called out on a daily basis, but so are those who say “Hang on a second…”
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