One of the major stories from the Golden Globes last night — apart from that sucker punch George Clooney joke — was that creator of Girls and one of the coolest people on Twitter, Lena Dunham declared she’s a little sick of that scene now. She told Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet: “I deleted Twitter because I’m trying to create a safer space for myself emotionally. People threaten my life and tell me what a cow I am, so I decided I was gonna… I check it occasionally, but it’s not the same co-dependence Twitter and I once shared. It’s the dark side of the Internet. There’s a lot of people I love on Twitter, but unfortunately you can’t read those without reading deranged Neocons telling you you should be buried under a pile of rocks.”
While she hasn’t deleted her account yet, Dunham is not the first to discover how vicious Twitter can be to women. As the intimidatingly brilliant classical scholar Mary Beard, who has received more than her share of hostility online, said: “For a start it doesn’t much matter what line you take as a woman, if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it, it’s the fact you’re saying it.”
Dunham was most recently — and most ludicrously — dragged over the coals for a passage in her book, Not That Kind Of Girl, that described her examining her baby sister at age 7. She had to explain patiently to the mouth-breathing trolls online why this didn’t make her a child molestor. It’s actually a surprise @lenadunham has lasted as long as she has. “I deleted Twitter from my phone and sometimes send a tweet to a friend I trust to post if I’m out and about and wanna share,” she tweeted. Following it up with “We gotta create systems that make us feel safe. Sorry I confused you aka who cares.” We do, Lena. We do.
