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Matt Damon Faces Backlash After Saying He Just Recently “Retired The F-Slur”
Matt Damon is receiving criticism after issuing a fresh statement in response to previous contentious remarks in which he disclosed that he had “retired” his usage of the “F-slur.”
The “Stillwater” star was in hot water Monday after claiming in an interview with The Sunday Times that he just stopped using the “f-slur for a homosexual” because his daughter sent him a “very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous.”
Matt Damon explained his previous comments regarding his usage of the “F-slur,” stating he wasn’t speaking about himself, but rather about the society he was exposed to as a young man.
The uproar began after the Stillwater star gave a long interview to The Sunday Times in the United Kingdom over the weekend. Damon shared a story with the publication about his personal usage of an insulting phrase that he’s since abandoned as part of a wider conversation about the changing environment of Hollywood and cultural sensitivities – and “changes in modern masculinity.”
In the interview, Damon said that the derogatory term was “commonly used” when he was a youngster, but that it was used “under a different application.”
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“I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter,” he said in the interview. “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,” he explained.
It’s unknown which of Damon’s children wrote the “treatise” that convinced him to rethink his stance, but the actor did explain why he was still using the word only a few months ago.
A Twitter frenzy ensued, with puzzled and outraged followers wondering why he felt the need to provide this information, let alone why the Harvard-educated celebrity still used the term or required his daughter to convey its danger.
“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,” Damon, 50, told Variety in a statement on Monday, August 2, following backlash for his earlier comments. “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,” the Good Will Hunting star said.
Damon, in the same Sunday Times interview, seemed to foresee the prospect of blowback when he stated he’s learned not to speak as much in interviews since his words are more likely to be picked apart in today’s media world.
“Twenty years ago, the best way I can put it is that the journalist listened to the music more than the lyrics [of an interview],” Damon opined. “Now, your lyrics are getting parsed, to pull them out of context and get the best headline possible. Everyone needs clicks.”
“Before it didn’t really matter what I said, because it didn’t make the news. But maybe this shift is a good thing,” he added. “So I shut the f**k up more.”
Damon has issued a fresh statement to Variety in which he addresses the backlash that erupted as a result of the comments and claims to have “never called anyone ‘f****t’ in [his] personal life.”
“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,” the actor said.
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