Lena Dunham’s an easy target but not the problem

Cue Internet freak-out from the left and the right.

None of which means we should look the other way when prominent women behave badly. But “behaving badly” should be the line — things like harassment or bigotry, not uttering something on a freewheeling podcast that merits little reaction beyond an eye roll. This is especially true in a political climate where hostility to reproductive rights — and hostility toward women generally — is climbing, and where liberals and feminists need all hands on deck to defend against the coming encroachments on our rights and liberties. Spending our time parsing a stupid but largely harmless comment is, in the aggregate, damaging — there are only so many hours in any given day, and spending even a few of them channeling our anger toward Dunham seems, in this instance, counterproductive (to say the least). It also sends a toxic message to other girls and women: To speak publicly, you must be perfect, and if you screw up, even in the most minor of ways, you will be publicly harangued far more brutally than your male peers.

It’s satisfying to position oneself as the “best” feminist — the one who would never say something so silly, who would never make an insensitive remark, who proves just how virtuous she is by slamming the women around her who are less good. That is more satisfying still when the object of your feminist derision is someone richer and more powerful than you, who can be easily melted down into a warped plastic caricature of an actual human woman.

It is harder to be brave and to put oneself out there fully, with the messy and ugly bits under the florescent light of public scrutiny. And it is harder still to ignore the distractions and the noise that pull us away from the real feminist goal: Rights and liberties for women, even under an incoming administration that seeks to curtail them, and will surely have the power to succeed.

Facing such an uphill battle, it’s tempting to pick off the easy targets like Dunham — the imperfect feminists who despite (or because of) all of their human faults do actually care, and who will inevitably apologize for their missteps (and will inevitably misstep again). It feels good to win those battles. But it distracts from — and sets us up to lose — the bigger war.