The sleek rollout of The Fate of the Furious– the eighth movie to feature the streetwise action-heavy crew led by Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel – has hit an embarrassing speed bump.
Actor-singer Tyrese Gibson, who plays former criminal Roman Pearce in the hit franchise, went decidedly off-script in an interview with BET to promote the movie and is now being accused of shaming women.
BET has deleted the video from YouTube, though a portion is below, while Universal- the distributors of The Fate of the Furious– are scrambling to minimize the fall-out from his indiscreet remarks.
LOL: Tyrese said some things here and now people are mad pic.twitter.com/a7SYTb4hU6
— ♌️ 🖕 (@The_Menace__) April 10, 2017
When asked about his views of the opposite sex, Tyrese said: “I appreciate all the ladies out there that are still single and they are holding out. Don’t settle. Don’t settle.
“Because I’m gonna tell you all right now, and this might be harsh. But sluts, skeezers, hoes, tramps and overly aggressive promiscuous women, they are never without a man because they don’t have no standards.
“They’re ready to have sex with any and everything that want to have sex with them. But when you are single, and you actually love yourself, you know your value and your self worth you hold out until God sends you whats yours.”
It seems as though Tyrese is trying to make a meaningful point about the value of relationships though of course he could have got his message across without referencing ‘skeezers’ and ‘hoes’ .
Ill-advisedly he wasn’t done with his reflections on the fairer sex: “So sometimes they be talking mess to women that are single but I have a respect for them because if you’re single and you may say, “I’ve been single for a couple of years,” whatever the case may be, you actually holding out because you have your value.
“Now you’ve got women that are active out in these streets, they going to lunches and dinners every night. Private planes, mega yachts, it’s cracking. They’re never without. However, it comes with a cost, you gonna put a lot of miles on yourself down there. Come on!
“This s**t is tight but it’s right.”
Social media disagreed that the s**t was right.
#ICYMI: Tyrese is out here in these virtual streets slut-shaming women and it’s making everyone tired: https://t.co/a86VFumine pic.twitter.com/iYefHwHWCf
— The Root (@TheRoot) April 11, 2017
@BET @Tyrese Does he have words for promiscuous men too?
— queen onyx (@onyxkhaleesi24) April 10, 2017
If @BET really cared about celebrating and protecting all types of Black women, they would not have @Tyrese on their network shaming us.
— Ᏸecca (@MJStarLover) April 10, 2017
Tyrese has a history of upsetting women with his views. The uproar this time on Black Twitter was led by leading feminist Kimberly Foster who tweeted: “Black women are Black people. We are whole humans deserving of respect (hoes or not) and we deserve better than lectures from Tyrese.”
The furor is unlikely to jeopardize the commercial reception of the male-targeted movie which is estimated to make a “cracking” $380 million in its global rollout this weekend.
And if women do steer clear of The Fate of the Furious because of his comments, Tyrese himself probably wouldn’t lose to much sleep over it, no doubt regarding them as being of the “skeezer” and “hoe” persuasion.