CLASH POLL: Do You Believe That Matt Damon Didn’t Know He Was Using An Anti-Gay Slur Until His Daughter Told Him?
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How does someone in Hollywood in 2021 not know that the archaic word for a bundle of sticks has been labeled an offensive term? Was he living under a rock?
This is a very weird series of events. On Sunday, Matt Damon outs himself as using a Word That Should Not Be Used and is now defending himself after facing backlash and insisting that he stands by the LGBTQ+ community.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Damon told a story about how he was using a word that the Brits used to colloquially refer to cigarettes for years and didn’t realize that it was offensive until one of his daughters took offense and wrote him a letter about it.
He said that growing up in Boston, it was “commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application.”
Matt Damon on Monday insisted that he stands with the LGBTQ community after revealing that he was using the homophobic slur f****t until ‘just a few months ago’ – when his daughter was forced to tell him it was wrong.
Damon, 50, sparked a furious backlash when he told The Sunday Times about a conversation with one of his three daughters – Isabella, 14, Gia, 12, and Stella, 10.
‘The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,’ he said.
‘I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!’
‘She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous.
‘I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.’
Source: Daily Mail
On Monday, following the backlash, he defended himself that he had never called anyone the “f-slur” and was discussing with his daughter the “progress that has been made” with regard to tolerance.
“During a recent interview, I recalled a discussion I had with my daughter where I attempted to contextualize for her the progress that has been made – though by no means completed – since I was growing up in Boston and, as a child, heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to. I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly. To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice,” Damon said in a statement provided to THR.
He added, “I have never called anyone ‘f****t’ in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind. I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself ‘one of the good guys.’ And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst. To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
His answer, however, doesn’t make much sense because the initial story was that he told a joke and his daughter was offended and wrote him a “treatise” on why using the word was wrong. This looks like he’s cleaning up a public relations mess that he started by bringing up the word in an interview in order to virtue signal.
Alright, whatever. It’s not a surprise that Damon leans left, and is kissing the ring of the LGBTQ+ lobby. He’s still got his career in Hollywood to think about, right? After all, he became rather popular with the LGBTQ+ crowd after his role in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”
But here’s the thing — the guy is 50 years old. Are you telling me that he just realized that that word was a slur?!
The LGBTQ+ lobby has been beating the drum about bullying and slurs for decades now and he just somehow… missed it? Sorry, I’m not buying it.
Just imagine someone else of comparable age like Tucker Carlson or Don Jr. not knowing that the word that rhymes with “maggot” was an anti-gay slur and had been using it in jokes until a few months ago… what would the reaction be?
There would be boycotts, marches complete with torches, and pitchforks.
My cynicism makes me think this whole hullaballoo is just a PR tactic gone wrong to try to gin up some interest in his upcoming movie, Stillwater, after being blasted by Amanda Knox who said that the film “distorts her reputation in negative ways” and that Hollywood is “profiting off her name, face, and story.” She went after Damon specifically in a Twitter tirade against the movie.
He didn’t plunge the knife per se, but he’s definitely at fault somehow. His name is Damien Matthews, and he starred in the Jackson Burne spy films. He works with Tim McClatchy, who’s a Harvey Weinstein type. It’s loosely based on reality. Shouldn’t bother Matt or Tom, right?
— Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) July 29, 2021
My take is that the initial interview was supposed to show how Damon is raising some fine, progressive children, but it ended up making him look like a bigot, so the story shifted to just how he was raising such fine specimens of leftism. And of course, he followed this with the obligatory apology and bow and scrape to the LGBTQ+ community.
What do YOU think?
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