Sean Penn doesn’t have great form when it comes to standing up for the sisterhood. Following an unnerving number of “yikes” moments over the years, the Hollywood heavyweight’s latest misfire comes in the shape of comments made to The Independent concerning his rather rigid views on gender. “I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminised,” said Penn while promoting his new film, Flag Day. In Penn’s eyes, this is definitely not a good thing. “I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them,” continued Penn, coming on like a pumped-up Jordan Peterson fanboy or an incel in a Saint Laurent leather jacket. “There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.”
Doubling down on a similar statement made earlier this month (“I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them,” he told The i), Penn seemed to imply that there’s something wrong with the concept of fluidity between traditionally male and female traits. It’s something that smacks of old-school misogyny more suited to the ageing movie star he plays in recent cinema smash Licorice Pizza. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s glossy vintage-styled flick, Penn’s 60-something actor puts his charmless moves onto Alana Haim’s wide-eyed Alana Kane, a 20-something woman young enough to be his daughter, who he assumes is there for little more than his enjoyment. So far, so 1970s, but almost 50 years later, you’d have hoped that the real-life Penn would be a little more enlightened.
