Jonah Hill’s alleged texts reveal a bigger issue
Alleged text messages from a very famous man have revealed a wild reality women are facing in 2023.
OPINION
Men are getting sneakier with their bad behaviour, and it is the 2023 problem that women don’t need.
Jonah Hill’s ex Sarah Brady has posted a series of text screenshots that she alleged were between the pair, and they leave so much to be desired.
The messages are laced with misogyny disguised by polite therapy speak. They read like a conversation you’d hear on Married At First Sight.
We don’t have confirmation it was Jonah sending the texts but whoever did needs to be stopped.
He used words like “boundaries” and then told her not to post swim photos or have male friendships he finds “inappropriate”.
It is very unclear how he defines inappropriate, and pretty ridiculous he asked her not to post bikini shots when she’s a surfer.
Her work requires her to get into her swimmers, and if it doesn’t… who cares if she’s in her swimmers.
What a woman wears shouldn’t define whether she’s a good girlfriend or even what type of person she is.
Seriously, are we still having this chat in 2023?
The man finishes one of the texts by explaining that their relationship will be over if she doesn’t obey him.
Of course, he doesn’t use words like obey. Instead, he uses words like “boundaries”. He sounds like Christian Grey if he read a self-help book and got really into going to spiritual retreats that only rich white people can afford.
Yet none of that can erode the toxic masculinity that is seeping through these texts.
Jonah, or whoever wrote these texts, is so busy working overtime, trying not to seem like a bad guy. He also adds there will be no “hard feelings” if she chooses not to accept his boundaries, aka rules.
Ultimatums aren’t healthy no matter how you word them.
The messages are eerie because women dating in the 2000s have likely come across a
a man like this and received similar messages.
He is a type. Sure, there’s the F-Boys, love bombers and crazies, but there’s also the feminist liars.
The guy that calls himself a feminist and would never use the word slut but comments he finds your skirt a little revealing.
He’ll turn up to anti-abortion rallies but tell his girlfriend he wants her home at a certain time. Not because he has a problem with her partying until 3am, but just because he worries about her too much.
The criticism is subtle, and you’re left wondering, is my skirt too short? Rather than thinking about why you are with someone who is trying to police what you wear.
Actor Keke Palmer recently went viral because her boyfriend Darius Jackson, and father of her child, blasted her on social media for wearing a fun outfit to an Usher concert.
“It’s the outfit tho. you a mom,” he tweeted, alongside a photo of Keke’s outfit.
When people called him out for his gross actions he doubled down.
“We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is,” he wrote.
See? These alleged Jonah texts aren’t just some weird one-off. They speak to a wider trend among modern men.
We’ve all come across this guy.
You’ve dated that guy, or your friend has, and you’ve sat across from him at a pub and wondered why he was making your skin crawl and then hated yourself on the way home for not saying anything.
It is easy to call out bad behaviour when it is blatant and indisputable. When there’s screaming, foul language or explicit threats.
When it is so clear the other person is behaving poorly that you can confidently tell them to get lost.
It gets more complicated when men take modern feminism, cover it in their misogyny and spit it back at you.
“I don’t want you to wear that mini skirt because I respect you so much and don’t want you to pander to the male gaze.”
In Jonah’s alleged texts, he accuses Sarah of having inappropriate relationships with men. He is putting the blame on her.
If a guy told you not to have guy friends, it’d be really simple to tell him where to go! But if a man tells you he thinks you’re too flirty with men, suddenly it feels like you’re fault, and you begin to question your behaviour. Am I too flirty? Am I being inappropriate? Am I the problem?
It usually takes perspective, time and someone else pointing it out for you to fully comprehend what is happening.
We have a word for it: gaslighting, but it has a firmer hold on our culture than that. We are in a time when women wear shirts that say, ‘The future is female,’ but everything feels very male right now.
Sure, men are changing.
They are wearing sandals and socks and expecting our incomes to help contribute to shared bills.
Yet there are still men that have taken the old fashion misogyny that ruined our mothers’ lives and given it a hipster makeover.
They’ve given the sexist language an Oprah-worthy update and think they can get away with it.
Sure, they aren’t calling us sluts anymore, but in 2023 men are still trying to control women and it is a prime example of how far we haven’t come.
Originally published as Jonah Hill’s alleged texts reveal a bigger issue
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