‘Girls’ star Lena Dunham quits Twitter due to ‘verbal abuse’

LOS ANGELES — Citing a recent onslaught of what she calls "verbal abuse," "Girls" creator Lena Dunham has announced she's bowed out of Twitter and now allows someone else to post on the social media channel for her.

"I really appreciate that anybody follows me at all, and so I didn't want to cut off my relationship to it completely, but it really, truly wasn't a safe space for me," Dunham said on Kara Swisher's "Re/code Decode" podcast.

Dunham explained that she could no longer handle seeing the mean-spirited comments directed at her statements and photos, particularly referencing a recent Instagram of her in a sports bra and her boyfriend, Jack Antonoff's, boxers.

"It wasn't a graphic picture," she said. "I was wearing men's boxers, and it turned into the most rabid, disgusting debate about women's bodies."

Dunham also told Swisher that she'd stopped reading blogs Gawker and Jezebel for the same reason, saying "it's literally, if I read it, it's like going back to a husband who beat me in the face — it just doesn't make any sense."

She later apologized for that comment, via Instagram.

The news comes the same week that Dunham, who is promoting the Lenny newsletter that she co-created with "Girls" showrunner Jenni Konner, reiterated what she told Variety last winter: The end may be nigh for her polarizing HBO series.

"Never say never, but that is the way that we're thinking about it right now and we're starting to think about how to wrap up the storylines of these particular young women," Dunham said when she called into the syndicated radio show "Elvis Duran and the Morning Show."

"Girls" returns for its fifth season in January.