After being blasted for making sexist comments regarding women’s roles during a podcast appearance earlier this month, former Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton released an eight-minute video to his social media on Friday (April 22), titled “Let Me Explain My Comments” in attempt to clarify his comments, saying they were “taken out of context.”
During Newton’s interview with Barstool Sports’ “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” podcast, he made a few degrading comments about women, claiming that being raised in a household by his mother, father and grandmother taught him to differentiate between a “traditional woman” and a “bad bitch.”
“Now, a woman for me is handling your own but knowing how to cater to a man’s needs,” Newton said a few weeks back. “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.”
In his video clarifying his remarks, Newton believes that the backfire wasn’t necessary. He claims that his comments, a minute and 20 seconds worth of an hour-long interview, were taken completely out of context and admitted that he didn’t go in-depth.
He repeatedly said that he isn’t sexist and that he “knows his heart.” Without apologizing, he added that society is “sensitive about topics that need to be brought to the forefront.”
“Not only am I bringing awareness to what the ‘bad bitch’ is, I’m also bringing awareness to what a ‘fuck boy’ is, what a man should be to their kids. To their families. I’ll be the first person to tell you: Did I make a mistake by not going into depth on a certain topic? Yes,” Newton said. “I should have said on top of what I also said and mentioned, that not only should a woman know when to be quiet, a man also should know when to be quiet.”
“The whole premise of my tone and how I was talking was this: You can’t expect so much from a person and give so little. No matter if you’re the breadwinner in your family dynamic as a man or you’re the breadwinner in your family dynamic as a woman. You’ve gotta uphold your end of the bargain,” he added.
Despite his refusal to acknowledge what he said as offensive, Newton claimed he “never wanted to demonize or to shrink the woman’s power in America,” and finished the video off by saying that he stood by his comments and he didn’t care if others disagreed because that is his preference for women.
Watch his full video below: