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.[8] 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".[9]
Some gay male critics and feminists felt that the film's portrayal of Buffalo Bill negatively associated the LGBT community with deviance, psychopathy, and violence.[10] Despite this, Bill's sexual orientation is never explicitly stated in the film, and Lecter expressly states Bill is "not really transsexual".[11] 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".[12] Despite that, in following years the film (and its claims that Bill is "not really transsexual") has been criticized for transphobia by 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 self-identification".[13][14][15]
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] 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 centerfold."[16]
