If you've decided to 'call out' Lena Dunham for her abortion comments, you're doing feminism no favours

We no longer have a 'call-out culture', but a shame culture. There is something horribly anti-feminist about shaming a woman for trying to participate in her own liberation and failing at it

Lena Dunham is a more credible feminist (Getty)

This week, Lena Dunham made an unfortunate comment about abortion.

Most of us heard about said comment thanks to the collective rage of the feminist Twittersphere, and were one to rely on tweets alone for information about the scandal, one would be forgiven for thinking Dunham had been guilty of something deliberately malicious and cruel.

“Things worse than cancer,” began one widely favourited tweet, before going on to list Dunham among them.

An endless barrage of unforgiving denunciations from prominent feminist accounts have clogged the timeline since the incident, including comparisons to Mike Pence, a man who once supported “gay cure” therapy.

Now, there is no question that Dunham’s comment was distasteful, thoughtless and insensitive to those women who have struggled with abortion. However, she apologised. She apologised very sincerely, and demonstrated clear engagement with, and understanding of, why she was wrong: “It didn’t translate. That’s my fault. I would never, ever intentionally trivialise the emotional and physical challenges of terminating a pregnancy.”

Too little, too late, according to the Twittersphere. Dunham was dragged ever more fervently for inadequate grovelling. “In 2017, make these people disappear. I don’t care how, just do it,” said one tweeter, listing Dunham along with Amy Schumer and Taylor Swift, who are often regarded as bumbling and insensitive white feminists in the same category as Dunham.

But making Lena Dunham disappear would not be good for feminism, and neither is publicly shaming her.

In life, and particularly in social justice movements, we teach fellow activists and the world by example. However, there is a misconception among young activists that we only do this by good example – perfect, immaculate example, in fact. The words and actions of activists and allies are minutely policed and reported on in the internet age. Any activism that falls short in any regard is instantly held up as “problematic”, and this quickly mutates by memetic transfer through social media into “evil”, “abominable”, “disgusting”. Rage catches like wildfire on social media, and witch hunts are conducted routinely and without remorse.

This is not helpful.

Good examples are not the only ones that are instructive. As toddlers, we might learn not to put our hand on a hot stove because our parents tell us not to, but the lesson becomes much more forceful if we burn our fingers ourselves. Bad examples are sometimes more useful than good ones.

Self-proclaimed activists in the public eye who make mistakes are valuable to any social justice movement. They act as lightning rods for discourse and analysis around what constitutes good activism. We talk about feminism needing to be intersectional, but that concept is quite nebulous and hard to exemplify. It’s almost more helpful when you see its absence: its counter-example. That’s why it was useful in a didactic sense last year when Taylor Swift misunderstood Nicki Minaj’s complaints about black representation in music awards, and later had to apologise for it.

Her failure to engage with race was exemplary of bad feminism, and her subsequent apology was exemplary of how one learns from one’s fellow activists and becomes a better activist as a result.

Activism lives or dies on this principle. Activism must be built on a culture of dialogue and openness, and mistakes must not only be allowed, but encouraged. If one is forbidden from making mistakes, then one is necessarily precluded from learning from them. We talk about dismantling and deconstructing these systems of oppression, but nothing can be deconstructed when you live in fear of becoming a social pariah for saying one wrong thing.

This is when “call-out culture”, as it is known, becomes problematic in itself. Call-out culture is valuable and wonderful when it is properly realised. It is supposed to be the solution to bad, exclusionary feminism. It’s supposed to be a utopian system of peer monitoring and teaching. But in school, your teacher doesn’t march you to the top of the room and stick a “D for Dunce” hat on your head when you answer a question wrong. If she did, nobody would ever try to answer the question.

Nobody would ever try to engage, understand or learn, because the cost of being wrong would be too great. When we demonise, vilify, and ostracise self-proclaimed feminists for saying something wrong, even when they engage with their mistake and apologise for it and learn from it, then call-out culture has failed.

Then we no longer have a call out culture, but a shame culture. There is something horribly anti-feminist about shaming a woman for trying to participate in her own liberation and failing at it. We have all failed at it at one time or another. This culture is one where we do not bring ambiguities or uncertainties to light, but cloak them in the murk of feigned consensus.

Young activists who have witnessed the witch hunt for Dunham must surely be discouraged. You are expected to know everything about how to act, speak and think in a feminist way without ever getting anything wrong, as though this knowledge is genetic and will just somehow spring up fully formed in your mind. It is a heavy burden, and if you fail, your head will be on the chopping block.

Maybe your friends on Twitter, instead of privately messaging you in good faith to explain why your recent tweet was problematic, will simply screenshot it and tweet it publicly with a derisive tagline. Maybe when their friends launch a Twitter campaign against you, and strangers are tweeting “kill yourself” at you, you will feel very educated about what you said wrong. Forgive me for thinking there might be a better way.

Activist circles are microcosms of the real world. Mistakes are going to be made, and there are going to be disagreements, misunderstandings and thoughtless comments. It is very helpful and important to critique and call out these thoughtless comments. But it is not helpful to punish people for them.

Dunham's heartfelt apology and clear, demonstrative engagement with her own mistake was exemplary, and should be commended. This is how we as activists must learn from each other and hone our activism to be as sensitive and inclusive as possible.

But Dunham continues to be dragged across the coals. The internet does not forgive, and it does not forget.

Where do women, and indeed allies, find any footing then? If Dunham's response was not redemptive, what would be? What constitutes a sufficient apology – public self-flagellation? And what is really more important - that Taylor Swift makes money off feminism, or that millions are encouraged toward feminism by her example? I would argue the latter.

Crucifying women is never a solution. Witch hunts have always been anti-feminist.