Actor Matt Damon has issued a statement
clarifying that he does not use gay slurs in his “personal life.”
Controversy erupted after Damon told
the UK's Sunday Times that he stopped using the offensive term
“months ago” after his daughter called it “dangerous.”
In a statement given to Variety,
Damon said that he does not “use slurs of any kind.”
“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 said. “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.”
“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,” Damon added.
The Sunday Times quoted Damon as
saying that he recently “retired” the term at his daughter's
insistence.
“The word that my daughter calls the
‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid,
with a different application,” Damon told the Times. “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.”
Damon is currently promoting his latest
film, Stillwater, which opened in the U.S. late last month.