Y’all know that I’m not a Lena Dunham fan, nor am I a Lena Dunham apologist. I think she’s a navel-gazing narcissist, a terrible example of millennial feminism and a high-level attention-seeking troll masquerading as a pop-culture icon. She does, says and writes countless problematic things. But this week’s Lena Dunham story has left me feeling… a little bit sorry for her. Just a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, she absolutely said the wrong thing in the wrong way. But if you read her full comments, I totally understand the point she was trying to make, which makes the “outcry” and “backlash” against her comments all the more ridiculous. Lena was chatting on her podcast about a trip she made to a Planned Parenthood in Texas several years back, and how one woman asked her to share her experience with abortion:

“I sort of jumped. ‘I haven’t had an abortion,’ I told her. I wanted to make it really clear to her that, as much as I was going out and fighting for other women’s options, I myself had never had an abortion. And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue. Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman’s right to choose, felt that it was important that people know that I was unblemished in this department.”

She commended her loved ones, who have had to have abortions, for their “bravery” and “self-knowledge,” adding that she has realized her need to put her own stigma surrounding the issue “in the garbage.” She concluded, “Now I can say that I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.”

[From People]

As I said, she said the wrong thing in the wrong way. Her point was about how even she, a full-throated defender of women’s reproductive choices, still has internalized the perceived stigma of women seeking abortion. That she might even be offended that someone thought she had an abortion at some point. That’s how we, as women, internalize society’s misogyny. That’s how men get us to vote against our own interests. That’s the point I think Lena was trying to make. But instead she started trending on Twitter with self-righteous anti-choicers telling her that she should be ashamed of saying that she wished she had an abortion story to tell. Basically, a bunch of people are telling her that having an abortion is awful and no one should want one and that’s why abortion-seekers should be stigmatized, right? In any case, Lena offered this long-winded apology on Instagram:

My latest podcast episode was meant to tell a multifaceted story about reproductive choice in America, to explain the many reasons women do or don’t choose to have children and what bodily autonomy really means. I’m so proud of the medley of voices in the episode. I truly hope a distasteful joke on my part won’t diminish the amazing work of all the women who participated. My words were spoken from a sort of “delusional girl” persona I often inhabit, a girl who careens between wisdom and ignorance (that’s what my TV show is too) and it didn’t translate. That’s my fault. I would never, ever intentionally trivialize the emotional and physical challenges of terminating a pregnancy. My only goal is to increase awareness and decrease stigma. I take reproductive choice in America more seriously than I take literally anything else, and therefore own full responsibility for any words I speak that don’t convey this truth clearly. I know plenty of people will never like a thing that leaves my lips, mea culpas or no, but this apology is for the women who have placed their trust in me. You mean everything to me. My life is and always will be devoted to reproductive justice and freedom. You know how in some households you curse and have to put money in a jar? Well in mine, if you mess up your pro-choice messaging you have to give a sizable donation to abortion funds (https://abortionfunds.org/need-abortion) in New York, Texas and Ohio ?I look forward to fighting with you all for the next four years and beyond.

[From Lena’s Instagram]

Okay. I don’t think she should have called it a distasteful joke? That’s sort of offensive.

Photos courtesy of WENN.