NFL free agent Cam Newton has garnered backlash after he told a podcast host he doesn’t like women who “can’t cook” or who “don’t know when to be quiet.”
The former Carolina Panthers quarterback compared the women he grew up with in his household to “a lot of women” he referred to as “bad bitch” with the “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast.
Newton said he wasn’t trying to “degrade” women but explained he grew up in a three-parent household with his mother, father and grandmother.
“And I knew what a woman was, not a bad bitch,” Newton said. “A woman for me is handling your own, but knowing how to cater to a man’s needs.”
“I think a lot of times you get this aesthetic, like, ‘I’m a boss bitch’,” the professional athlete continued, “but no, like, you can’t cook, you don’t know when to be quiet, you don’t know how to allow a man to lead.”
Newton’s comments were criticized on Twitter and several media outlets as sexist, with people accusing him of using antiquated and demeaning stereotypes about women’s role in society.
An op-ed on the sports news site Deadspin characterized his comments as “cringe-worthy behavior.”
NFL Network correspondent Stacey Dales said that his remarks on the podcast were “DISGUSTING.”
“Ooops… then again, not for Cam. True colors always reveal themselves, time and again. I prefer to keep negativity off my feed, but this is DISGUSTING. No need ‘to be quiet’ here…,” Dales tweeted.
Kevin Cole, a data scientist for PFF, tweeted a picture of the host during the podcast saying, “he knew Cam was in trouble.”
The NFL player also drew scorn in 2017 when he was accused of belittling a female reporter with the Raleigh News & Observer who had asked about football passing routes, according to the outlet.
“It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes,” Newton told the female reporter before he laughed, according to the News & Observer.
Newton later apologized for the remarks.
In a Tuesday column in the newspaper, Scott Fowler said Newton had not learned his lesson.
“Because now we have another example of Newton’s sexist views, more than four years later,” Fowler wrote.