Sean Penn says ‘men have become quite feminized’, blames ‘cowardly genes’

Sean Penn courted controversy after doubling down on his contentious remarks about men having become 'quite feminized'.

Sean Penn, left, and Dylan Penn pose for portrait photographs for the film Flag Day, at the 74th international film festival, Cannes. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Actor-filmmaker Sean Penn doubled down on his recent controversial comments about men turning into women in order to be fair to them. In an interview with The Independent, Penn said that men have become ‘quite feminized’, and blamed it on ‘cowardly genes’.

He said, “I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminized. I have these very strong women in my life who do not take masculinity as a sign of oppression toward them. There are a lot of, I think, cowardly genes that lead to people surrendering their jeans and putting on a skirt.”

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He was promoting his new film Flag Day, along with his daughter Dylan Penn, who stars in it. The Independent noted that while Penn was making his statements, his daughter went ‘quiet, staring into space’.

Penn made headlines earlier this month, when he told iNews, “I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized. I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I don’t think that (in order) to be fair to women, we should become them.”

The 61-year-old has won two Oscars–the first for Mystic River, and the second for playing gay rights icon Harvey Milk in Milk. In recent years, he has been focussing on his directing career, which hasn’t quite flourished after the success of his 2007 film Into the Wild. As an actor, his latest credit is Licorice Pizza, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. He has also been cast in a starring role in the upcoming Watergate series Gaslit, opposite Julia Roberts.

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