Matt Damon is asserting that he has never used the “f-slur” and that he stands “with the LGBTQ+ community” after the “Stillwater” actor admitted in an interview that he only recently stopped using the word.
“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–’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to,” he said in a statement to TheWrap. “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.”
In an interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times, Damon admitted that he only recently stopped using the “the f-slur for a homosexual” after his daughter wrote a “treatise” on why using the word to refer to people, gay or otherwise, is unacceptable. The Boston-born leading man said the “f-slur for a homosexual” was “commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application.”
LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD said in a statement that Damon’s remarks and the reaction to them served as a reminder that the need for accountability regarding anti-LGBTQ slurs remains.
“The conversations that have arisen after Matt Damon’s original interview and subsequent remarks today are an important reminder that this word, or any word that aims to disparage and disrespect LGBTQ people, has no place in mainstream media, social media, classrooms, workplaces, and beyond,” GLAAD head of talent Anthony Allen Ramos said in a statement. “There needs to be accountability at a time when anti-LGBTQ slurs remain rampant today and can fuel discrimination and stereotypes, especially when used by those outside of the community to defame or describe LGBTQ people.”
Damon was the target of many memes as well as pointed criticism as many people online questioned both why he decided to share this information — and also why he was still using such a derogatory term in 2021.
Openly gay comedian Billy Eichner joked that he wants to know which word Damon is using now instead of the f-slur. “I want to know what word Matt Damon has replaced f****t with,” Eichner tweeted Sunday.
Damon added in his statement: “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.”
Read Damon’s full statement below.
“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. 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.”