Sean Penn is taking a critical eye to the #MeToo movement.
On Monday, the Oscar-winning actor and outspoken Trump critic told “TODAY” that he believes the #MeToo moment is doing as much harm to men and women as it is good. (RELATED: SEAN PENN’S BIZARRE NEW BOOK SLAMS #METOO AND CALLS FOR TRUMP-LIKE CHARACTER’S ASSASSINATION)
“This is a movement that was largely shouldered by a kind of receptacle of the salacious,” he told Natalie Morales. Asked to elaborate, Penn said, “Well, we don’t know what’s a fact in many of the cases. Salacious is as soon as you call something a movement that is really a series of many individual accusers, victims, accusations — some of which are unfounded.”
Penn also suggested, “The spirit of much of what has been the #MeToo movement is to divide men and women.”
You can watch how it all unfolded below:
Also notable is when Penn claims the women he knows are more afraid of the movement than willing to embrace it:
“I’m gonna say that women that I talk to, not in front of a camera — that I listen to, of all walks of life — that there’s a common sense that is not represented at all in the discussion when it comes to the media discussion of it — the discussion where, if Sean Penn says this, so-and-so’s going to attack him for saying this, because of that. I don’t want it to be a trend, and I’m very suspicious of a movement that gets glommed onto in great stridency and rage and without nuance. And even when people try to discuss it in a nuanced way, the nuance itself is attacked. I think it’s too black-and-white. In most things that are very important, it’s really good to just slow down.”
This isn’t the first time Sean Penn has taken a critical stance on the #MeToo movement. In his debut novel Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, Penn calls the movement “reckless” and a “toddlers’ crusade.”