Actor Sean Penn is no champion of the conservative movement and there’s a good chance he never will be. But he does appear to agree with many of his political opposites when it comes to traditional gender roles.
The “Mystic River” alum is unhappy with men becoming more feminine and wishes the trend would reverse. “I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized,” Penn told UK-based inews.co while promoting his new movie, “Flag Day.”
“I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did,” he continued. “But I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them.”
That wasn’t the only time Penn spoke up about gender roles. The “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” actor also spoke with The Independent on the topic. “There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt,” Penn said.
“I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them,” he continued.
The publication noted how Penn’s 20-year-old daughter Dylan, whom he shares with actress Robin Wright, went “quiet” and “stared into space” while her father was speaking.
In the same interview, Penn made his pro-vaccination status clear.
“Sometimes people take their privilege and freedom as a right to be anti-citizen, to be failed citizens,” he told The Independent. “Those who will search out the kind of bogus science that would give them legitimacy [when it comes to] not being vaccinated.”
In 2020, Penn compared COVID-19 to an “active shooter” and advocated treating it as such.
“I don’t think we need to attach a face, a personality, or what somebody was sending on their social media to be able to identify an active shooter,” the activist actor said during an appearance on “The View,” The Daily Wire reported.
“An active shooter is anything that is continuing to kill people, and our brothers and sisters and fathers and daughters and sons,” he continued. “This is — this virus is the active shooter, and if we were — I think that if we could wrap our head around it in that way and understand that it’s principally putting in the radical people of color, elderly people, indigenous people, but randomly selecting all of us, that we need to huddle around and make very clear decisions on how to approach this thing.”
Penn is an enigma of opinions on all fronts. On one hand, he’s an unabashed fan of the late Venezuelan president and noted socialist Hugo Chávez. But the actor is also against cancel culture and the idea that only people of underrepresented groups can play themselves in film and TV.
The actor told Conan O’Brien how in today’s culture, he’d never be cast as a gay man like he was for the 2008 biographical film “Milk.”
“Today, almost certainly I would not be permitted to be cast in that role,” Penn said. “We’re living in a time when, if you’re playing a gay lead character, you’d have to be a gay man or a trans character. And there have been these casting issues.”
He’s not a fan of this move toward “representation.”
“When you have a period of evolution that certainly has an opportunity for people who have had less opportunities to move forward,” the actor said. “That has to be supported, and yet in this pendulum swing society that we’re in, you wonder at some point if only Danish Princes can play Hamlet. It is, I believe, too restrictive. People are looking for gotcha moments and to criticize.”