Lena Dunham’s Publisher To Clarify ‘Barry’ Is Rapist’s Pseudonym In Memoir

Lena Dunham poses for a portrait on the red carpet of The 24th Annual PEN Center USA Literary Awards Festival at The Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Tuesday, November 11, 2014, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Casey Cur... Lena Dunham poses for a portrait on the red carpet of The 24th Annual PEN Center USA Literary Awards Festival at The Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Tuesday, November 11, 2014, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Casey Curry/Invision/AP) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Actress Lena Dunham’s publisher is tweaking future editions of her memoir to clarify that the man who Dunham says sexually assaulted her in college is not actually named “Barry.”

The move comes in the wake of an exhaustive Breitbart News article published last week that cast doubt on Dunham’s story of being raped while she studied at Oberlin College. It’s also a response to the lawyer representing a former Oberlin student actually named Barry, who fit part of Dunham’s description of the man who allegedly assaulted her.

“As indicated on the copyright page of ‘Not That Kind of Girl’ by Lena Dunham, some names and identifying details in the book have been changed. The name ‘Barry’ referenced in the book is a pseudonym,” the publisher, Random House, told TheWrap.

Random House told the Hollywood news site that the digital edition of Dunham’s memoir, as well as future printings of the physical book, would reflect the clarification.

In “Not That Kind Of Girl,” Dunham recounts a painful sexual encounter with another student and writes that “at no moment did I consent to being handled that way.” She described the student as a well-known Republican on the largely liberal campus and called him Barry without indicating, as she had with some other personalities in the book, that the name was a pseudonym.

The lawyer, Aaron Minc, told TheWrap that his client, who attended Oberlin at the same time at Dunham and was indeed a well-known Republican on campus, says he never even met Dunham.

h/t Vulture

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Well, I guess this proves once and for all time that campus rapes never happen, and that all of these reports are from hysterical lesbian fabulist harpies who only purpose is to ruin promising young men’s lives.

    At least, that’s how I imagine Breitbart, NRO, and George Will will spin it…

  2. What are the chances that Breitbart News only went after this because Denham mentioned that her assailant was a Republican?

  3. Feminism at it’s core is hatred of men, and making up statistics is just a part of the game to justify that hate. The stats feminists are throwing around about campus rape?

    “We don’t think one in five is a nationally representative statistic.”
    It couldn’t be, he said, because his team sampled only two schools. “In
    no way does that make our results nationally representative,”
    -The Campus Sexual Assault Study Lead Author Christopher Krebs

  4. I stopped right there. Being a son, brother, husband, and father, I’m naturally, as someone who loves and supports those people, a feminist as well. As far as statistics go, all I know is that many women I know have been raped on campuses, and these would be only the ones who could talk about it, so I certainly don’t imagine it’s rare.

  5. Of course, as a feminist, you will ignore the evidence that doesn’t support your false worldview…I get it. I wouldn’t expect any better from a feminist. In summary however, I’ll mention that the stats being used by feminists are made up bullshit. That is all.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

2 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for paulw Avatar for carlosfiance Avatar for normankelley Avatar for FallOfRomePartTwo

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: