Well, in her apology she does acknowledge that her initial over the top butthurt reaction could be viewed as racially tinged in the greater context – she is very aware that * regardless of the intent of the writer, the impression upon the audience needs to be addressed*. And the reality is that a number of people *did *see a racial component, I could well imagine bringing that up may have added some extra shock to help her snap out of it quicker.
Applies to any of us, from A-Listers to anonymous cubicle dwellers: Letters, e-mails, blog posts, if you wrote it angry/hurt, don’t send it right away.
I totally accept the point that if your words or actions are having an undesirable *effect *on others (be it racism or anything else), then apology and modulation may be appropriate even if there were no deliberate intent on your part. However, there surely has to be a reasonableness standard - in this case, is it be reasonable for a black person to construe this as demeaning on racial grounds? Maybe so, it’s a moot point - but it’s not sufficient that a few angry tweeters claim they were offended.
Oh good grief. Shock, horror, a woman suspected an athlete, and a football player at that, of ignoring her because she’s not a fuckable trophy, which seems to be how many athletes see women. And people think she only said this because he’s black?!
She’s apologizing for the perceived racism because that’s what she’s been accused of. I see no racist connotation in her words (as reported). I’m usually pretty quick to spot racism–and it’s everywhere so it’s not that hard to do–but unless something’s being left out of her comments, I’m calling this scandal hypersensitive bullshit.
That’s true. You know us black people, always looking for monsters to be afraid of.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the very, very, very long history of bad things happening to black men who have the misfortune of being in the sights of a white woman, like in TKAM.
Has Beckham bothered to address this yet? I would respect the hell out of him if he just decided to sit out this foolishness altogether and let it wither without a response. It’s not like he’s not kinda REALLY BUSY at the moment, after all.
Well said and frankly that is an aspect of white female privilege that white women are often loathe to be sensitive to, or even acknowledge. Putting a black man in a hyper sexualized context relative to yourself where he* should* be paying attention to your average to chubby white girl tuxedoed self, but for some mysterious reason beyond comprehension is not, is ascribed as fat shaming, self centered rudeness on his part.
Painting a black man and all the cultural baggage he has to carry into a corner like this with all your white female expectations of being due his male gaze is a level of entitlement that beggars the imagination. And many white women, some even in this thread, are utterly blind to the humiliating box their expectations might put him in.
We’re talking about a woman who bragged about molesting her sister as a child, and who claims that white people eating sushi is cultural appropriation here. Why should anyone take anything she says seriously?
Here’s my thinking. I basically put together the facts.
[ul]
[li]Lena Dunham is a well known social justice activist. [/li][li]Lena Dunham is an edgy comedian.[/li][li]Edgy comedians often make jokes that cross a line.[/li][li]Lena Dunham has no reputation for racist remarks. [/li][li]She apologized properly.[/li][li]She is not known for using apologies as an excuse to hurt people.[/li][/ul]
Given all this, I say “not racist.” And given all but the last two, and I say assuming racism was the wrong tact. Better would be to assume she’s not trying to say anything racist and just tell her it could come off that way.
Of course, that’s not what gets the views and the money.
Oh, and she didn’t do what Guinastasia claims. Those are also sensationalist headlines. What she did was make a joke in her book about a time as a kid where she was curious about her sister’s vagina (and discovered that she’d been putting pebbles up there). And she supported a group at an Ohio school that said that they were making sushi improperly with bad ingredients.
As a general rule, if you hear bad stuff about a supposed “SJW,” take it with a grain of salt. Go read what really happened before you believe the stories.
That is not a fact. That is, in fact, the opposite of a fact.
Lena Dunham comes under fire all the time for how clueless she is about real social justice issues, and also for how damn white her show’s version of Brooklyn is.
Bear in mind, her sister is 6 years younger than her. I have to wonder if you’d be quite so sanguine if a 13 (likely 17)yo boy was bribing his 6-10yo sister to kiss him and *regularly *masturbating while his sister was in his bed?
Was it sexual molestation? Well, if a boy did it to a girl, almost certainly. It’s certainly close enough that someone can make the claim in a press article and face no legal repercussion. IOW Dunham and her manager presumably think there’s a fair chance they’d lose a libel suit.
It is certainly as creepy as hell to have a 13yo kissing bribing their 6yo sister to kiss her and masturbating when she climbs into their bed. It wasn’t one act, as you suggest, it went on for at least 6 years. Calling it molestation isn’t wrong, it’s a perfectly valid interpretation for some seriously creepy behaviour.
In her actual initial words, what stereotype seems to be grabbed upon in a phrase like:
is indeed that of athletes as meatheads. (Which does bring up: would it have been it OK to just stereotype “male athletes = horny meatheads”? More on this later.)
However, given the current American sociocultural vibe, people are understandably touchy about a black man being the target of the meathead athlete stereotype* even if the statement had no racist content*, due to a large load of baggage around the stereotype. Some day may come when it’s not, but in late summer 2016 it is still not utterly unreasonable to see hackles raised, unfortunately. Which brings me back to something I mentioned earlier – I can’t help but wonder: if people had not felt it pressed their “racism” buttons and told her so, if people had just complained about the unfairness of the “athlete” stereotype, would that have been made a big deal of, would she have felt as motivated to step back and reconsider her statement?
And FWIW, both there and in other statements, Lena does seem to be down on the Met Gala as a festival of shallowness. So was she there looking for material to snark on? Sister, sometimes a party of rich privileged people is just a party of rich privileged people… and yes, Lena, you are now one of them.
That’s her pretty much her whole career. I suppose she’d be even worse off if she realized that she shouldn’t feel like a “sack of flaming garbage” because of her appearance. She should feel like a sack of flaming garbage because of her personality.
She was born one of them. She grew up in a $6 million apartment in Tribeca to artist parents and now lives in a modest $5 million condo in Hipster Heaven. She is scion of a rich well connected family who likes to portray herself as the every woman. For every interview I see of her that makes her look like a nice funny interesting person there is always at least one that makes her seem completely insufferable.