Matt Damon Backtracks on F-Word Usage, Says He Never Used Slur
Since Matt Damon recently admitted to stopping his use of an offensive, homophobic slur, the actor issued a follow-up statement.
Per BBC, Damon said, “This conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind.”
On Sunday, the Jason Bourne star 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,” recalled 50-year-old Damon.
Now, Damon says that the conversation he had with his daughter was an attempt “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–‘ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to,” he 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.”
He continued: “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.”
Damon concluded, “To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”
As we earlier said, Damon’s social media backlash for his comments had many of us questioning why he’d even share the story in the first place. It’s not the first time Damon has landed in hot water — In 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Damon told reporters that inappropriate sexual behavior needed to be seen as existing on a “spectrum.” He recently apologized for the comments, admitting he had been “tone-deaf.”
“Like everybody, I’m a prisoner of my subjective experience and that leads to having blind spots. Me more than most given the experience that I’ve had as a white male American movie star. It’s a very rarefied air. I don’t even know where my blind spots begin and end. So, yes, I was and am tone-deaf. I do try my best not to be.”
