Blake Lively criticised for using transphobic slur in past interviews
It Ends With Us star Blake Lively has come under fire after several past interviews resurfaced in which she used the transphobic slur ‘tr***y’.
Amidst reported behind-the-scenes drama for new film It Ends With Us involving lead actress Blake Lively and director and star Justin Baldoni, several instances of the former using a transphobic slur in the late 2000s to early-2010s have prompted more outrage.
Lively used the transphobic slur in a 2012 interview with Elle Magazine, during which she discussed her “hopes for her potential future children and their fashion sense”, which has resurfaced on X.
“I hope to have a few girls one day,” Lively said at the time, before adding: “If not girls, they better be tr***ies. Because I have some amazing shoes and bags and stories that need to be appreciated.”
The instance has been posted as a screenshot to X by a user who captioned the snippet: “Sometimes I’ll be quietly going about my day and then I’ll remember the time Blake Lively said this to a journalist.”
Lively, who went on to have four children with Deadpool & Wolverine‘s Ryan Reynolds, also used the slur in a 2009 interview with Allure. There, she referenced her own height, saying that she felt like a “tr***y” herself.
“I feel like a tr***y a lot of the time. I don’t know, I’m … large? They put me in six-inch heels, and I tower over every man,” she said. “I’ve got this long hair and lots of clothes and makeup on … I just feel really big a lot of the time, and I’m surrounded by a lot of tiny people. I feel like a man sometimes.”
Lively used the phrase again in a VT for a Nylon TV shoot with Gossip Girl co-star Leighton Meester to describe rumours plaguing actors at the time.
“You read the gossip magazines… and everyone’s had tons of plastic surgery and we’re actually men and tr***ies,” she said.
She said it again here too. The early 2000s were a terrible time for language like this, so many people casually used these words. pic.twitter.com/cK8VLH3gFN
— alli. ✨ (@AlliApplebum) August 18, 2024
“That…that can’t be real,” wrote on X user under the initial interview snippet.
Another added: “I’m not ordinarily one to advocate for deplatforming, but in this lady’s case…”
A third wrote: “She was so obsessed with using the t slur.”
The blow to Lively’s reputation is the latest in the controversy surrounding It Ends With Us: journalist Kjersti Flaa recently called the star out for a 2016 interview that made her “want to quit” her job after Lively implied Flaa was pregnant.
Fans have also been quick to note that Baldoni has reportedly hired expert crisis PR guru Melissa Nathan, who represented Johnny Depp during his trial with Amber Herd.
The Blake Lively controversy is a reminder that the t-slur is offensive and shouldn’t be used
The t-slur (tr***y) is a shortening of the word ‘transvestite’, which is used to describe someone who dresses in clothes of the opposite gender.
Using the word or its shortened slur to describe someone who is transgender wrongly assumes that being trans (identifying with a gender that one was not born as) and being a ‘transvestite’ is the same thing.
GLAAD’s glossary of terms reads that the word “dehumanizes transgender people”.
In the early 2000s to early-2010s – when many of Lively’s comments were made – there was debate over whether the term could be reappropriated by the community.
The term is widely condemned as hateful and offensive today, and is categorised as hate speech by many organisations, including Facebook.
Several X users have taken to the site to defend Lively’s words as a product of their time.
“I’m kinda her biggest critic/hater right now but I must say that the word “tr***y” wasn’t seen as derogatory back in those days,” one wrote.
“People used to use the word a lot,” another added.
