Speak On It is a Teen Vogue column by Jenn M. Jackson, whose queer Black feminist perspective explores how today’s social and political life is influenced by generations of racial and gender (dis)order. In this piece, she explains how actor Terry Crews’s toxic comments about fatherhood make the case for better citizenship and political education for all.

Over recent years, since the advent of at-your-fingertips-access platforms like Twitter and Instagram, social justice culture has been on the rise. “Woke” has become a household term. And celebrities have grown increasingly comfortable with sharing their social and political beliefs with fans. Entertainers and athletes such as Colin Kaepernick, Serena Williams, and Matt McGorry are just some of the prominent figures who have used their platforms to express concerns about racism, police brutality, and sexual violence in the United States. A couple years ago, actor Terry Crews added his name to that list.

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In 2017, Crews revealed to fans via Twitter that he had been sexually assaulted by a “high level” Hollywood executive at a gathering in 2016. While some prominent media personalities questioned Crews’s experience, politicians, actors, activists, and concerned supporters across social media reacted in support of Crews. Since sharing the story of his alleged assault, Crews has been an active voice advocating for greater accountability around sexual violence and harassment by those with power in Hollywood. Last June, Crews even testified before Congress in support of a Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights.

Fast-forward to Friday, March 1, when Crews sent a sequence of tweets that highlighted how even when our faves appear to have good politics in one area, that may not apply to a host of other social issues. Sharing his beliefs that mothers and fathers play fundamentally different roles in children’s lives demonstrated just that.

“I’ve reiterated many times that same sex couples and single parents can successfully raise a child. But I believe paternal AND maternal love are like vitamins and minerals to humanity,” Crews tweeted. “No matter where you get that paternal and maternal love. MY purpose is to give paternal love."

As fans and critics responded to the tweets, Crews appeared to become defensive. One Twitter user responded that children with single or same-sex parents “will not starve.” Crews came back with “But they will be severely malnourished,” according to USA Today. He has since deleted that tweet and apologized, USA Today reported.

For three days, Crews doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on his original comments. On Twitter, both fans and critics of Crews responded by saying that his tweets were homophobic, harmful to people who had lost their parents, and supportive only of heteronormative ideas about families. But none of that stopped Crews. Among his numerous responses, on Tuesday, March 4, Crews sent a tweet that essentially mocked many of the activists and fans who had sought to call him out online, addressing them as “#Woke Twitter.”

Even though he has since apologized (again) “for anyone who was triggered or felt targeted,” Crews has arguably yet to adequately grapple with the ideological commitments that informed his tweets in the first place.

“It places an importance on what I feel like many of us, or more people, are learning or accepting, as a hypergendered and binary way of thinking about what parenting looks like and who can be parents,” Todd St. Hill, an organizer, writer, and socialist in Chicago, tells Teen Vogue. “[Crews] hyperfocuses on his experience, and only his experience, as a man.”

“There’s still this valorization of manhood in ways that are, I think for him, incredibly contradictory because of his advocacy around #MeToo,” concluded St. Hill.

Some men on Twitter agreed with Crews’s comments. Others recognized his sentiments in their own fathers when they were growing up.

“My father comes out of the tradition of you don’t talk about your feelings, you don’t admit that you’re wrong, you don’t show too much emotion because that makes you appear feminine,” said Najja K. Baptist, a doctoral candidate in political science at Howard University. “But we know now that keeping this stuff inside, we know now that holding this stuff in, we know now that suppressing these things causes mental anguish for a male child later on that leads to more toxic behavior, such as abuse, verbal [and] physical.”

Still others found Crews’s words completely unexpected.

“I was surprised because he talks about hypermasculinity all the time,” Joseph Cook, a father of twin boys and an instructor at an HBCU, tells Teen Vogue. “I was disappointed because part of hypermasculinity is the idea that women can’t do things that men do, that there are strict roles for women, strict roles for men.”

“[Crews is] using his authority-figure position to propagate these harmful myths,” Cook says.

But Crews’s comments and his reaction to accountability aren’t just about a celebrity saying the wrong thing on Twitter. This isn’t just a story of #WokeTwitter “canceling” another blue check simply for tweeting an unpopular opinion. Rather, Crews’s comments end up feeling rooted in the long and troubled history of toxic masculinity and respectability politics in America.

“It’s saying that love is somehow changed by the gender of the person loving," Yelley Victoria, a queer mother, musician, and writer in the Chicago area, tells Teen Vogue. “[It feels like he’s saying that] every other combination or variety of love is inherently lacking.”

Social justice issues have become a fad for celebrities. While it’s important that they use their platforms to highlight important issues, many also appear to be still figuring out how they truly feel about these issues.

“Terry Crews got so much attention around the #MeToo movement...being a man who is willing to speak on assault,” Victoria continues, “then to turn around and use that same platform to blame people in the community or to shame, is just really irresponsible.”

Perhaps what is lacking is comprehensive political education.

“If we could approach political education on a grand scale, I would want it to be as holistic as possible,” says Alyx Goodwin, a mother of two, organizer, researcher, and writer based in Chicago, tells Teen Vogue. “We’re not single-issue people...these things that we’re speaking up about are not single-issue things.”

Goodwin mentions a recent clip from LeBron James’s show, The Shop. In the clip, rapper Meek Mill, comedian Jerrod Carmichael, and rapper 2Chainz joke about how they should not be obligated to provide cars, houses, and money to family members just because they have been successful. Goodwin notes that these men, like Crews, have been advocates for criminal justice reform, racial justice for Black Americans, and other forms of equity for marginalized groups, but says that they apparently couldn’t see how many of these issues could also be linked to a lack of wealth redistribution (or sharing wealth among less-wealthy family members).

For Goodwin, this issue is about intersectionality, the multiple and interlocking ways that race, gender, and class contribute to the conditions facing Black Americans. “A lot of the issues people in Black communities face are linked. It all comes down to bias,” Goodwin says. “Terry Crews has this bias because of his own experience.” When it comes to Crews, the patriarchal and misogynistic issues he has spoken so strongly against are the same issues he ended up perpetuating with just a few tweets.

While personal experiences are crucial, they aren’t the only factors that should guide our social and political thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors. Instead, a commitment to dutiful citizenship, equal access to rights and justice, and integrity should shape our daily choices and interactions with others. When it comes to parenting and building meaningful relationships with our loved ones, character and intentionality matter.

When asked about how to combat toxic masculinity, Cook says he asks his students, “What makes a good person?”

“We’ll list those traits and values like honesty, integrity, love, compassion, selflessness, tenderness, vulnerability, transparency. And then I ask them, ‘Are any of those traits unique to males?’ The answer is no.”

Crews’s apologies don’t grant him absolution, nor do they erase the harm he has already caused. Crews is a celebrity, one who has attached himself to the #MeToo movement, and yet his seemingly retrograde notions of gender, family building, and fatherhood can ultimately promote toxic ideas that support a violent status quo.

Hopefully, Crews will take a cue from some of his critics, and respond wisely and with thoughtfulness to being called in. Celebrity doesn’t readily lend itself to accountability, but Crews has an opportunity to change that if he actually believes in justice for all.

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