Warning: Derogatory language below.
Free agent quarterback Cam Newton appeared on a podcast Sunday, and proceeded to shove his entire foot directly into his mouth.
While appearing on the “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast, Newton discussed how he believes women should act, based on how his mother acted during his upbringing.
“I had a perfect, a perfect example of what a man was in my life by my father. My parents have been together for 36, 37 years now and it’s a beautiful thing,” Newton said via Mediaite.
“I grew up in a three parent household. My mom, my father, and my grandmother. And I knew what a woman was. Not a bad bitch!” Newton proclaimed.
The host then asked what the difference was between a woman and what Newton called a “bad bitch.”
“A bad bitch is a person who’s just, you know, ‘Girl I’m a bad bitch, I’m doing this, I’m doing that.’ I look the part but I don’t act the part,” Newton clarified.
“There’s a lot of women who are bad bitches. And I say bitches in a way, not to degrade a woman but just to go off the aesthetic of what they deem is a boss chick,” he continued.
“Now a woman for me is, handling your own but knowing how to cater to a man’s needs. Right? And I think a lot of times when you get that aesthetic of ‘I’m a boss bitch, Imma this, Imma that.’ No baby! But you can’t cook. You don’t know when to be quiet! You don’t know how to allow a man to lead,” Newton said.
So to recap, Newton believes women should cook, be quiet, cater to their husband’s every need, and not be a “boss chick,” which Newton appears to think is something bad. Newton didn’t say that’s the type of woman he wants for a wife or partner, he said that’s what he believes a woman should be, and women who don’t act like that aren’t acting as a woman should.
Newton is obviously allowed to believe and think whatever he chooses, but he said some things that have been used to denigrate, minimize, and silence women for decades, if not centuries. The women who fought for equal rights and access to birth control in the 1960s and 1970s were fighting against the expectation that they had to get married, bear children, cook all the meals, stay quiet, and cater to their husband’s every need.
In the decades since, women have largely rejected that view of what they should be, replacing it with the idea that women can be anything they want to be — including a traditional housewife. And the practice of letting “the man” lead a heterosexual relationship has also fallen by the wayside in favor of both parties leading and making decisions together as equal partners.
There’s nothing wrong with Newton wanting the same kind of relationship his parents have, as long as his partner is fully on board with cooking, being quiet, and letting him lead. But if that’s what he truly believes all women should be, someone needs to get the man a calendar and point out to him that the year is 2022 and not 1952.
Newton’s opinions on women have gotten him in trouble before
It’s blatantly obvious that Newton has not expanded his very narrow idea of what a woman should be in the five years since he told a room full of reporters that the concept of a female football writer made him laugh.
Yes, that did actually happen. During a 2017 press conference, when Newton was still with the Carolina Panthers, then-Charlotte Observer reporter Jourdan Rodrigue asked Newton a question about routes. Newton’s response was the exact opposite of what he should have said.
“It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes like — it’s funny,” Newton said via ESPN.
While the Panthers said that Newton apologized to Rodrigue later, Rodrigue said in a statement that Newton didn’t apologize at all, and what he said to her after the press conference was actually “worse.”
You’d think that after being lambasted for that, Newton would have learned to keep his opinions about a woman’s place to himself. That seems like it’s harder to do than simply understanding that there are as many different types of womanhood as there are women on this planet, but he hasn’t seemed to absorb that lesson either.
