Actor Terry Crews in a recent interview with Jezebel spoke out against the “man code” in modern culture that allows men and athletes to get away with whatever they want.
“I’m living in the real world and you can drink the Kool-Aid all you want,” the “Brooklyn 99” actor said. “A lot of guys love the Kool-Aid. The sports world is Kool-Aid world. You can do anything if you ‘Just win, baby.’ That’s the [motto]. You’re rewarded. And then what happens is, they win and they go, ‘You know that girl? She’s my trophy. I deserve that girl. In fact, she don’t even want to be with me, but I don’t care. I’m going to take it.’ What kind of mindset is that? Never, never, never, never, never should that ever be accepted. That’s not ‘a code.’ That’s Taliban. That’s ISIS.”
Crews, who is a former player for the Los Angeles Rams, said his views haven’t always been well received by his fellow athletes, but for them he has a special response.
“Does ‘Man Code’ work when it’s your daughter who gets raped?” he said in the interview with Elamin Abdelmahmoud. “‘Man Code’ — does that work when your mom gets abused?”
He went on to draw comparisons between men who don’t stand up for what is right and the people who stood by during the civil rights era.
“The people who were silent at the lunch counters, when it was the Black lunch counter and the white one or the schools were segregated, and they had two books in the Black school and the white school had everything and you were quiet, you were accepting it,” he said. “Same thing with men right now. If you don’t say anything, you are, by your silence, it’s acceptance. I’m not going to be silent.”
He stressed that men are afraid of feminism because they don’t understand it.
“I think the big thing about feminism is that it scares men because, you know—the big deal is that people are scared of being controlled…I want to be clear that feminism is not saying ‘women are better than men.’ That’s not what’s going on…What it is is that we’re talking about gender equality, true gender equality…but the problem is that men have always felt like they’re more valuable.”
Crews discusses all of these views and more in his book “Manhood: How to Be a Better Man—or Just Live Like One,” which came out in May of this year.
