Watch me read this.
Worry not, my babies. I know you all have been waiting with bated breath for my take on Jonah Hill vs his ex Sarah Brady. I come to you today to deliver.
In sum, Jonah Hill telling Sarah Brady that not working with or being friends with other men is misogynistic in impact, if not intent.
Now, I can just hear you crying out, out loud, to your screen, right now.
āReally?ā youāre saying. āMarginalized Americans have to live the reality of biased, violent, unaccountable policing every single day of their lives and you canāt write about it for nine posts in a row?ā
Yes.
I need a breaky break. Shitās enraging and depressing. Itās often quite bewildering as well. Which means it takes a lot of mental energy just to try to make some semblance of sense out of it. Thus, I am still le tired.
Iām writing about this bit of celebrity gossip for three reasons.
First, as of lates Sex and the State has had too little of the āSexā and too much of āthe Stateā for my taste.
Second, celebrity gossip is fun.
Yes, celebrity gossip is stupid. Itās patently obvious that no one outside Sarah Bradyās friends and family would care that sheās shit-talking her ex online if that ex were not film star Jonah Hill. And thereās no real reason to care whether or to what extent Jonah Hill was a bad boyfriend, except that weāre a social species wired to connect. Which means most of us donāt view other humans purely instrumentally. Itās not really in our nature to watch one of us perform super well at sports or acting or even punditry and then just leave it there as if they were a robot performing a task. We get invested in these people as people. We care about a person in any way and then suddenly, while weāre gossiping to our friends and family about other friends and family, they come up as if theyāre in that category because they have entered our circle of concern.
Celebrity gossip is also fun because we can talk about it with a wider range of people than our actual friends and family. There are a lot more people who are going to know, at least vaguely, what Iām talking about if I give Twitter my opinion on Jonah Hill than if I opine on one of my sistersā life choices.
The third reason Iām writing about celebrity gossip is that itās actually useful in at least one way. Itās a Rorschach test. I think that how a person interprets Jonah Hill vs Sarah Brady tells me something useful about them as a person.
So, without further ado, let me tell you a little bit about me as a person with the help of this tidbit of stupid celebrity gossip.
Sarah Brady shared a text wherein Jonah Hill said he canāt continue to date her if she surfs with men and/or posts photos of herself wearing a bathing suit.
A lot of the discourse is on whether this text represents controlling behavior or abuse, or whether itās merely an instance of one partner setting appropriate boundaries.
Hereās my take.
The fact is that refusing to work with or be friends with men will tremendously disadvantage the vast majority of women.
Why? Well, weāve done a pretty dece job on this here newsletter chronicling the fact that the bottoms of most hierarchies are full of men. But let us not forget that most people at the tops of most hierarchies also have penises.
And guess how most people move up in their chosen fields most of the time? Merit? My sweet, summer child. To an extent, sure. But most people, most of the time, move up in the world based on who they know. And when most people at the top are men, if you donāt know men, youāre probably not getting to the top.
Except in rare cases, any man who asks his female partner to forgo working with or befriending men is necessarily asking her to curtail her own career progression. Rather than try to facilitate her success, heās forcing her forgo it to be with him and thereby implementing a totally unnecessary ultimatum whose only purpose is to alleviate his own insecurity and misplaced anxiety.
Any man who does that, my babies, is kind of a pathetic piece of shit.
Now, can a man be kind of a pathetic piece of shit but not be abusive?
Maybe?
This is one of those times where Iām reminded that consent is a spectrum.
I wish the line between setting healthy, appropriate boundaries and engaging in controlling behavior thatās at the very least heading toward abuse were as thick and as bright as I am.
But, like most things, in real life itās highly contextual.
For example, letās say Sarah Brady had attended Southern Baptist Church services three times a week, plus camps and long weekends, like I did, as a child. And letās say she hadnāt divorced, met a scientist, deconstructed her faith, and become a literal whore as an adult.
In all likelihood, sheād be married, first of all. And second, her husband wouldnāt have had to ask her to not work with or be friends with men or post photos of herself in a bathing suit. Sheād have heard that message loud and clear since childhood. Is that an instance of healthy, appropriate boundaries? I mean, Iām sex-positive feminist polyamorous former whore. As you may have guessed, I do not personally think so, no.
However, is it, on its own, abusive?
I mean, kind of.
Who am I to prevent grown adults from acting out whatever weird-ass gender roles they want?
However, complete consent requires everyone to go into the exchange with roughly equal power, infinite alternatives that are at least equally attractive, and all of the relevant information. But in real life, power is never perfectly equal, alternatives are quite limited, and no one can know everything that might help them make a decision.
I would argue that itās really hard for women who grew up in systems that disempower women relative to men to meaningfully consent to those systems in adulthood because women enter the negotiation with significantly less power than their negotiating partners.
A woman who grows up hearing, and believing, that God gave men power over women enters every negotiation with a man on unequal footing power-wise.
And here the complementarians will say, āBut men are supposed to use that power to protect and provide for women.ā And to that I would say I could really give half a ratās ass how things āshouldā be when the reality is that men abuse women and girls more often and more severely in highly gender inegalitarian communities.
Itās almost like power corrupts.
However, Sarah Brady doesnāt seem to hold particularly patriarchal views. Which makes what Jonah Hill said to her both more and less fucked. Itās less fucked because at least she wasnāt hamstrung by a childhood being explicitly told that wives should obey their husbands.
But itās also more fucked because itās undeniably controlling to choose to date someone who you know thinks itās fine to post swimsuit pics ā whose job, in fact, involves wearing a swimsuit in public and promoting herself on social media doing her job ā and then threaten to leave her if she doesnāt change this pretty fundamental aspect of herself that you, again, were fully aware of when you chose to date her.
So thatās that on that.
One more thing. Thereās actually a fourth reason Iām writing about this bit of celebrity gossip, other than having another excuse to rail against Evangelical gender ideology. Okay, so a fifth reason.
I think Iām partially worked up about this because I once dated a man who asked me to not post certain photos of myself and to stop working with and being friends with other men.
I shouldnāt have to say this, but judging by some of the takes on Jonah Hill, I do. He was extremely jealous, insecure, and controlling.
I wish I could say I left on that basis alone, because honestly, have you met me? Had he met me?
But the truth is I didnāt leave that relationship until I could no longer ignore the fact that I was riding a bus speeding toward physical abuse.
Perhaps itās theoretically possible for a man whoās not abusive to make not posting bathing suit photos and not working with or being friends with other men a condition of the romantic relationship.
But abuse ultimately comes down to power. Any agreement is consensual to the extent that itās made between two equally empowered parties. Two people who are equally free and able to walk away can behave badly. But abuse requires that one person faces much worse consequences if they try to skedaddle.
From a very young age, my mom would tell me, āNever enter into any relationship you canāt leave.ā As a kid, I got it to some extent. I had mad social anxiety and hated authority. I didnāt want to be anywhere I couldnāt leave.
But as Iāve gotten older, Iāve begun to see the layers. People treat you better when you know you can easily walk away from them at any time. Most people intuitively know, even if they never think it consciously, that they can only get away with abusing people who cannot easily walk away.
Perhaps itās possible that not every man who actively seeks to disempower his female partner is necessarily an abuser. But theyāre all definitely losers.
And every single abuser seeks to disempower his female partner.
So, what have we learned about me as a person from this event? One, my mom is a wise lady. And two, learn from my mistakes. Donāt date losers.
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