Jonathan Van Ness Calls Sean Penn’s Recent Comments ‘Ignorant’
by David February 4, 2022 · Gay News / Gay Pride / Gay Rights / The Advocate
Author: Alex Cooper
Jonathan Van Ness has called out Sean Penn after Penn said that men are becoming “quite feminized.”
Penn told The Independent in a recent interview, “I am in the club that believes that men in American culture have become wildly feminized … I don’t think that to be fair to women, we should become them.”
He added that he attributed it all to “cowardly genes.”
“I think that men have, in my view, become quite feminized,” Penn said. “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.”
Queer Eye star and podcaster Van Ness responded to the Oscar-winning actor’s comments on Twitter.
“First of all Im non binary,” Van Ness wrote on Wednesday. “Second, @SeanPenn your remarks are ignorant, transphobic, and devoid of intelligence. My cowardly genes have more strength, resolve, and beauty than you could understand. Sean is suffering from toxic masculinity & needs to watch Getting Curious.”
They tweeted a post by the Daily Mail about the comments that included a photo of themself.
“@MailOnline this headline and entire story is so tired,” she added.
Van Ness came out as nonbinary in 2019 and uses he/she/they pronouns.
He recently launched his own Netflix show, Getting Curious, based on his podcast of the same name where he examines topics from vaccine misinformation to the Panama Canal.
When Van Ness came out, they told The Advocate’s sister publication Out, “Some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman. I don’t really — I think my energies are really all over the place. Any opportunity I have to break down stereotypes of the binary, I am down for it, I’m here for it. I think that a lot of times gender is used to separate and divide. It’s this social construct that I don’t really feel like I fit into the way I used to.”
Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Alex Cooper
