Lena Dunham's Publisher Clarifies Her Alleged Rapist's Name Is Fake

By Kate Dries  |  December 9, 2014 | 2:50pm
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After facing a wealth of insane criticism from the right wing media outlets, Penguin Random House, the publisher of Lena Dunham’s memoir Not That Kind of Girl, has announced that they will be clarifying that the name of Dunham’s alleged rapist is not real in future books so he will not to be confused with a real man who attended Oberlin at the same time as Dunham.

In case you haven’t read the highly embarrassing “investigation” Breitbart News did into Dunham’s book, a quick recap: in Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham discusses being date raped by a man she refers to as Barry, a Republican and token conservative on the Oberlin College campus. (Prior to that Breitbart piece, the inclusion of Barry was criticized in a National Review “review” of Not That Kind of Girl by Kevin Williamson.) Breitbart’s John Nolte combed through the text, alleging that despite the fact that Dunham’s book is a memoir and we can safely assume many things in it have been changed for a variety of reasons, legal or otherwise, the name of Barry is truly Barry. Or it’s truly something. Nolte claims that he is attempting to exonerate “Barry One,” as they call him, the man who has been pegged as Dunham’s rapist, ignoring the important point that if he and other conservative “reporters” hadn’t been trying to identify Dunham’s rapist, there would be no need to exonerate him. He writes:

The man we call Barry One, however, the man legions have found online using details published in Not That Kind of Girl, is very real. And what’s unforgivable is that, through an incomprehensible malice or a combination of breathtaking carelessness and a number of unthinkable coincidences, in the courtroom of public opinion, Lena Dunham is pointing her powerful finger at this man and screaming “rapist.”

Anyway. Despite the fact that “Lena Dunham might have been raped at Oberlin College, but the ‘Barry’ she describes in her memoir is a ghost” (yes, this piece includes many, many sentences as terribly written as that), facing pressure from said journalists who had spent their time desperately trying to out a man who is probably not named Barry, Barry One has procured a lawyer and is raising money via GoFundMe to defend himself from claims he raped Dunham. Now Penguin Random House has come out to clarify, via The Wrap, that “The name ‘Barry’ referenced in the book is a pseudonym.” They’ve also noted that they will pay Barry One’s attorney’s fees, indicating that the money Barry One has raised for his own use should be donated to “not-for-profit organizations assisting survivors of rape and sexual assault” and said that the name Barry will be identified as a pseudonym in the future.

So to sum up: Conservative publications started a witch hunt to identify a man who allegedly raped Dunham who she did not intend to identify and by all appearances did not want identified, which got a man who apparently did not rape Dunham accused of rape, and now said conservative publications are gloating because they caused multiple individuals unnecessary turmoil under the guise of journalistic due diligence.

Excellent use of everyone’s time.

Image via Getty

 
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