Well, Never Mind

So, turns out there was a reason Cate Blanchett was so nonchalant about her sexual otherness. It’s because she actually isn’t. Over the weekend, Cate said her Variety cover story comments about having “many times” had relationships with women were taken out of context. She clarified her quote during a press conference for “Carol” in Cannes over the weekend.

“From memory, the conversation ran: ‘Have you had relationships with women?’ And I said: ‘Yes, many times. Do you mean have I had sexual relationships with women? Then the answer is no.’ But that obviously didn’t make it.”

Well, dang. Dang, dang, dang and bummer.

Variety reporter Ramin Setoodeh has since stood by his original quote of her as accurate. Also it should be noted that Ramin Setoodeh seems to be behind every gay story controversy. But it is clear – whether she was being coy or he was being a bad reporter – that with the current back track we must now take her off the big list of “queer or other” female celebrities.

She followed up her clarification comments with this:

“In 2015, the point should be: who cares? Call me old fashioned but I thought one’s job as an actor was not to present one’s boring, small, microscopic universe but to make a psychological connection to another character’s experiences,” she said. “My own life is of no interest to anyone else. Or maybe it is. But I certainly have no interest in putting my own thoughts and opinions out there.”

Sigh. Well, here’s the problem with the whole “who cares”/whatever/no labels thing. As much as we want to live in the post-sexuality utopia where everyone accepts everyone’s everything, we simply don’t live there. Not yet, not by a long shot. Instead we live in a world that still very much classifies us, our worth, our rights and – all too often – our safety by our sexual orientation/gender identification. So when actors/actresses (and I’m not saying that’s what Cate did here, but just making a point) sidle up to us and say, “Hey, I’m like you, too” we want them to mean it. We want them to mean it because the more people who mean it, and the more people say it, the more we get closer to that idealized universe of acceptance and openness for everyone.

So, as I was saying, bummer. We want to believe Cate spent her summers partying it up at Jodie Foster’s clambake. But, alas, she did not. But hey, we’ve still got Ellen Page.