EXCLUSIVE: Lena Dunham & Jenni Konner Say Sharing Stories Is First Line of Defense Against Sexism
Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner have a lot to say and it all starts with a Lenny Letter.
ET caught up with the creative team behind Girls at the New York TV Festival for an inside look at the final season of the HBO series, where the two opened up about the recent Lenny Letter that Konner wrote detailing an "inappropriate" incident with an unnamed male producer who shared an offensive photo with Dunham.
"It was horrifying to me," Konner told ET, "and I had actually never seen anything so bold." Not wanting to wait to tell the story, the 45-year-old showrunner chose to publish the incident the next day on her and Dunham's popular newsletter.
Konner also expressed that when she was younger she felt shame in sharing her stories of sexism, but now, encourages women to speak up and share their stories and not to hold those stories in shame. "I didn't want to share them with anyone, but the more you share them, the less power they have over you," she said, adding: "That's sort of the first line of defense."
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"I also think we're realizing more and more how important it is to have women in positions of leadership and how that allows women -- in the best cases -- to come forward and talk about their stories and feel safer," Dunham said.
"We especially don't like it when we see what feels like women being piled onto without an understanding of what they've been through or what they're experiencing," Dunham continued. "So, it's really nice that we have this place, Lenny, to sometimes speak out about that."
Following the release of a 2005 video, in which Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump can be heard making lewd comments about women to then-Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, Dunham spoke out against Trump's misogynistic remarks.
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"I think women, and people of color, and Muslims who have been searched at the airport, and transpeople who have been denied their rights, all know what it feels like to have their body taken from them," Dunham told People. "Those comments aren't just about women -- they were about everyone whose body is treated like the property of other people."
And during her and Konner's panel on Thursday, Dunham said she hopes that if Trump has seen any episode of Girls, it's "One Man's Trash" from season two. "Because I want to bust open his idea of what a cool guy is and what a 10 is," she said of the episode about Hannah (Dunham) having a weekend fling with a neighbor played by Patrick Wilson. "He's operating with some weird idea about what makes women attracted to men and what makes men attracted to women and how the power balance of the universe works. And I want to f**k with his mind."