After Lena Dunham defended Girls producer Murray Miller, who has been accused of raping a 17-year-old girl, critically acclaimed novelist Zinzi Clemmons released a public statement saying she’s done writing for the actress in her weekly feminist newsletter, The Independent is reporting.
“Let’s hold Lena accountable,” Zinzi Clemmons wrote in part, acknowledging that she’s known the Girls writer and star for years. “To me that means sacrificing some comfort and a little bit of cash, in this moment.”
Clemmons’ comments come after Dunham’s controversial statement to the Hollywood Reporter, in which she declared the rape accusations — waged by a woman of color against a white man — were false. She’s since walked back on her comments and apologized — but not before Clemmons called out Dunham for her hypocrisy, and her friends for what she called “hipster racism.”
“I avoided those people like the plague because of their well-known racism. I’d call their strain ‘hipster racism’, which typically uses sarcasm as a cover,” Clemmons wrote, recalling that the two ran in the same circles in college. She went on to write that
“As a result of Lena Dunham’s statements, I have decided that I will no longer write for Lenny Letter. For all you writers who are outraged about what she did, I encourage you to do the same. Especially women of colour. She cannot have our words if she cannot respect us. To eliminate any doubt, I know exactly who Lena Dunham is — who she was before she was famous — and have for years.”
Read her statement in full below.
My statement on why I will no longer write for @lennyletter, and the behavior I witnessed firsthand from @lenadunham‘s friends.
It is time for women of color–black women in particular–to divest from Lena Dunham. pic.twitter.com/dxOWCLhTpA
— zinziclemmons (@zinziclemmons) November 19, 2017
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