Editing The Silence of the Lambs (film) (section)

==Analysis==
In the years following its release, ''The Silence of the Lambs'' was subject to much film criticism regarding its themes of human sexuality and sexual politics.{{sfn|Tasker|2019|p=38}} Throughout the film, [[Clarice Starling]]'s gender is emphasized as a distinguishing feature, as she is a minority amongst her numerous male peers, though film scholar [[Barry Forshaw]] notes that "any feminist agenda is never bluntly formulated verbally".{{sfn|Forshaw|2014|p=32}}

Some [[gay men|gay male]] critics and feminists felt that the film's portrayal of [[Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs)|Buffalo Bill]] negatively associated the [[LGBT]] community with deviance, psychopathy, and violence.{{sfn|Tasker|2019|p=37}} Despite this, Bill's sexual orientation is never explicitly stated in the film, and [[Hannibal Lecter]] expressly states Bill is "not really [[transsexual]]".<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/02/dr-lecter-my-name-is-clarice-starling|title='Dr. Lecter, My Name Is Clarice Starling'|date=February 23, 2021|magazine=Vanity Fair|access-date=February 25, 2021|archive-date=February 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225191807/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/02/dr-lecter-my-name-is-clarice-starling|url-status=live}}</ref>
Director [[Jonathan Demme]] argued that this criticism was misguided, telling ''[[The New York Times]]'' that "I got all this unfounded abuse... [Buffalo Bill] wasn't a gay character. He was a tormented man who hated himself and wished he was a woman because that would have made him as far away from himself as he possibly could be." Demme added that he "came to realize that there is a tremendous absence of positive gay characters in movies".<ref>{{cite news|last=Schmalz|first=Jeffrey|date=February 28, 1993|title=From Visions of Paradise to Hell on Earth|work=[[The New York Times]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/28/movies/from-visions-of-paradise-to-hell-on-earth.html|url-access=limited|access-date=February 18, 2017|archive-date=February 15, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215111127/http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/28/movies/from-visions-of-paradise-to-hell-on-earth.html|url-status=live}}</ref> 

In a 1992 interview with ''[[Playboy]]'' magazine, the [[feminist]] and [[women's rights]] advocate [[Betty Friedan]] stated: "I thought it was absolutely outrageous that ''The Silence of the Lambs'' won four{{sic}} [[Academy Awards|Oscars]]. [...] I'm not saying that the movie shouldn't have been shown. I'm not denying the movie was an artistic triumph, but it was about the evisceration, the skinning alive of women. That is what I find offensive. Not the ''Playboy'' [[Playboy Playmate|centerfold]]."<ref>"Interview of Friedan" by David Sheff, ''Playboy'', September 1992, pp. 51–54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 149; reprinted in full in ''Interviews with Betty Friedan'', Janann Sherman, ed. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, {{ISBN|1-57806-480-5}}.</ref>

In following years the film (and its claims that Bill is "not really transsexual") has been criticized for [[transphobia]] by [[Transfeminism|transfeminists]], who claimed that it is "one of the most significant and impactful examples of pop culture [[transmisogyny]]" and it "encourages disbelief of trans people's [[Gender self-identification|self-identification]]".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Truitt |first=Jos |date=2016-03-10 |title=My Auntie Buffalo Bill: The Unavoidable Transmisogyny of Silence of the Lambs |url=https://feministing.com/2016/03/10/my-auntie-buffalo-bill-the-unavoidable-transmisogyny-of-silence-of-the-lambs/ |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=Feministing |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Romano |first=Aja |date=2021-02-16 |title=Understanding Silence of the Lambs' complicated cultural legacy |url=https://www.vox.com/culture/22281548/silence-of-the-lambs-cultural-impact-legacy-feminist-transphobia |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=Vox |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite thesis |title=The Transvestite, the Transsexual and the Trans Woman: The Transmisogynist Representation of Transgender Killers in Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and The Mantis |url=https://studenttheses.uu.nl/handle/20.500.12932/36045 |date=2019 |degree=Bachelor |language=en-US |first=E. P. H. |last=Ophelders}}</ref>