Sean Penn says men are ‘feminised’ now: ‘Cowardly genes lead to them surrendering jeans and putting on skirt’

Oscar winning-actor Sean Penn has said in a new interview that ‘cowardly genes’ are causing men to wear skirts, doubling down on his earlier comments that American men are now ‘wildly feminised’.

Earlier this month, in an interview with a British newspaper, Sean had said he didn’t like how feminised men in American culture were and that masculinity wasn’t a toxic trait. 

“I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminised. 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,” he told INews earlier in January.

Recently, he repeated these comments in an interview with The Independent. When asked to clarify his earlier comments, the actor said, “I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminised. 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.”

The interview was part of the promotional tour of Flag Day, the new film in which Sean stars alongside daughter Dylan Penn. The film has been directed by Sean as well and deals with the daughter of a con artist struggling to come to terms with her father’s past. The film released in the US in August 2021 to mixed reviews and is releasing in the UK this month.

Also read: Cannes 2021: Sean Penn rips apart Donald Trump post screening of his Flag Day

61-year-old Sean Penn is a two-time Oscar winner for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008). He was last seen in the 2021 coming-of-age comedy Licorice Pizza, in which he played a supporting role.