In lieu of a comments section, more angry readers light up the in-tray:
WTF? So now Jodie Foster is an “enabler of homophobia“? How is that exactly? Has she made homophobic remarks or films? No. Has she pretended to be straight? No. Has she lied about her sexuality (as opposed to telling everyone it was her own business)? No. Where’s the homophobia, Andrew?
Moreover, she never “mounted an incoherent attack on the coming out of others.” Her plea for privacy was a cri de coeur against the ridiculous, celebrity-obsessed world in which live. It wasn’t an attack on other celebrities, out or otherwise. If anything, it was an attack on us, the general public, and our insatiable appetite for gossip.
Every gay person in the closet is an enabler of homophobia. Every single one. And in the past two decades, silence also equaled death. Yes, I feel strongly about this. I don’t believe in outing but I do believe in helping your community when it is besieged and dying in the hundreds of thousands. And yes, privacy is trumped by mass death. And she was attacking other out gay people with her absurd parody of what coming out entails. Many readers are dissenting along these lines:
So Anderson Cooper is out in his private life, but not out publicly due to privacy concerns (although it is widely known he’s gay). Then he comes out publicly via you and it is a great and brave thing. And Jodie Foster is out in her private life, but not out publicly due to privacy concerns (although it is widely know she is gay). Then she comes out publicly during an awards show, after having done something similar years ago, well before Cooper. But Foster’s actions are horrible, just horrible.
Not her actions. Her rhetoric. Compare Anderson’s honest, reasoned email with Foster’s incoherent, narcissistic rant and veiled attack on other out gay people. She attacked people for coming out at press conferences. Anderson didn’t. She effectively did. And I’ll just ask you one thing. What if she were Jewish, had hidden her Jewishness for “privacy” reasons, and then announced it publicly, while berating those who parade their public identity as Jews as some kind of grandstanding? When you think of it that way, you realize just how soaked in homophobia so much of our public discussion still is. Another:
And Hollywood royalty? Please. If Foster is, she didn’t inherit it; she worked her ass off to beat the odds. What really pains me is how easy it seems for critics to completely dismiss the fact that this woman fought to make the successful transition from child to adult actress and went on to be a director and producer in Hollywood, which, I don’t think I have to point out, is still a very rare occurence in that Boys’ Club. But helping knock down barriers for women in an industry that is shamefully every bit as sexist as it is homophobic counts for nothing because she didn’t officially come out the way that you think she should have?
So why did this feminist icon invite as her date a man who beat and threatened to kill his own wife, who has uttered vile anti-Semitic and homophobic rants? And why did she say he “saved” her? Seriously? You want her to be a feminist icon and ignore that? Why the fuck is he involved in this at all? Unless Foster’s politics are closer to his than we realize. Another reader:
Given that when accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award, the camera kept cutting away to Mel Gibson’s hideous mug, it was kind of weird to read a blurb on Wikipedia today that Jodie Foster has spent the past decade attempting to get a biopic of Leni Riefenstahl made, starring herself as the notorious Nazi filmmaker. Foster thinks Riefenstahl was “complicated” – that perhaps she got a bum rap. I hope Foster really is retiring now.
Maybe her date, Mel Gibson, will finance it. Another:
On the Foster speech, I think you are missing some of her broader point and perhaps willfully conflating her desire for privacy with the issue of sexuality. When I listened to her, I interpreted her statement that “Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was” as a simple statement that we’ll feel nostalgic about a time when we were not under 24 hour surveillance, tracked by the GPS in our phone, monitored in the books we read on our e-readers, or inspected by probing hands simply because we want to catch a plane. I feel that nostalgia. I can’t believe she was thinking that closeted sexuality was a beautiful thing. Really? I think you’re a more astute reader than to think she was speaking only in terms of sexuality. Part of the incoherence of her speech came from the complexity of our identities.
Another:
Sure, everyone is allowed to come out in his or her own way. I am not gay, so I would never presume to suggest there is a “right” way to come out. That being said, what I found most disturbing about Jodie Foster’s rambling and confusing speech (don’t get me started on her “date” Mel Gibson), is that she seemed to be declaring herself on the high road while disparaging anyone who came out publicly. As if protecting one’s privacy – though her speech was a direct contradiction to her argument for privacy – is nobler than standing up for who you are. As if she should be honored for not acknowleding her gayness because that’s how we do it in polite society. Forget that kids are bullied to death for being gay. Forget that she has a fortress of success and money to protect her… SHE is the noble and persecuted one. Give me a break. She can live whatever life she wants, but her speech was disgusting to me.
The Dish 