Matt Damon is under heat after saying in an interview that he only recently stopped using the “f-slur for a homosexual” after his daughter showed him “how dangerous that word is.”
“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was regularly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” Damon stated in an interview with The Sunday 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 issued a statement the day after the interview was published, providing additional background and explanation for the incident. He said, “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.”
