I’m not a fan of television awards shows, but coincidentally, I was in the living room just as Jodi Foster began to speak at the Golden Globes. I started watching her because of the dress, but very quickly realized something important was happening, and I’m so glad I was able to hear her coming out/respect privacy speech. I thought it was really awesome as some others did too. The Twittersphere was all lit up with posts talking about something other than who wore what dress.
I’ve been somewhat surprised however at the backlash- and the folks who have been so negative about it. I thought I would use this article from the Guardian UK to share my ideas.
Strudwick writes a wonderful piece and I believe adds good ideas to this question, but I think misses the mark here:
It is every gay public figure’s social responsibility to be out, to make life better for those without publicists and Pilates teachers. Those who cry, “It’s none of your business! Who cares who I sleep with?!” shirk their public duty, and deny the shame that keeps the closet door shut.
Is an actor a “public figure”? I don’t think so. Some make their entire lives public, while others treat their acting as a job, and do it, like you or I might. They come and go from the office. And others are somewhere in between these extremes. I “get” his point about social responsibility, but I’m not sure it is a public person’s responsibility but rather the responsibility of all of us. And each and every one of us deserve to make the choices that we make based upon the criteria that we choose to use.
I am “out” at work, but in the process of doing my job, I do not declare my orientation overtly. If someone is in my office, they may see the picture of my partner and I together. But I don’t say, “I’m gay” to them. If they were to ask in regards to my professional responsibilities, I would consider it an inappropriate question.I’m not sure why then we expect actors to be different?
I think that Strudick has another point wrong too:
And everything since then – every gay TV character, every gay politician, every persecutory law revoked, every last triumph or freedom we’ve ever enjoyed, has come from a single act of defiance, repeated tirelessly across the world: the act of coming out.
Not from a single act, but rather from the collective act of millions and millions of people performing a individual act. And even that may not be a true statement, because, coming out is never a single act. It is something that many of us do all of the time, over and over. It is nice to suggest that one raindrop helps the plant grow to it’s fullest, but really it is the accumulation of all the raindrops together. Is one more or less the thing that makes the real difference? I don’t think so.
Foster too can be said to have not really been in the closet at all. She was, in Strudwisk’s own words, “on view.” Foster’s “crime” is different from those actors who deny over and over that they are gay. What she did do, however, was refuse to come out in the way or time that others demanded that. In my opinion, this is the real basis of the negativity. People are pissed off that she didn’t do it their way and so she gets attacked.
I also think that Foster received so much criticism because she is a woman. I don’t have much to back that comment up, but I feel pretty strongly about that. I’ve been searching back over things written about Neil Patrick Harris and his coming out and there was none of this negativity. He did two things differently than Foster:
- He came out before he was outed. In other words, the system beat him. The “public” won, rather than the actor.
- He also followed the script and said all the right things.
Oh, and yes, he’s a cute guy, rather than a strong independent woman.
via http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/jodie-foster-coming-out-speech