The (Jonah) Hills Have Eyes
The (Jonah) Hills Have Eyes
Boundary-less Inappropriate Friendships With Men and therapy speak
Hello sweet subs, thanks for your patience, I know you have all been waiting with bated breath for my return from a brief summer sabbatical. A hearty thank you to all who emailed me about your birth control experiences—much to think about, happy to keep everyone up to date on this riveting process of “not wanting kid or more depression” tug-of-war.
I am blissfully out of the discourse cycle and yet, certain threads (no pun intended) come slithering offline and irreparably, damagingly, into my brain, forcing me to continue fulfilling my Devil’s Pact and write. Here, hellishly, are some further thoughts on “therapy speak” and its many discontents.
I bring this up again because Jonah Hill, AKA Judd Apatow’s Softest Graduate, AKA funny guy who pivoted to focusing on “important and intimate” topics in the last few years, did some Bad Boundary Setting (read: controlling ass texts) with his ex Sarah Brady, who recently shared said texts between them on her Instagram:
Here is a great piece by Delia Cai with an overall rundown of the “scandal” and on how interpersonal snippets of a relationship we know nothing about can suddenly become viral fodder, meme bait, proof in our own narratives, etc. etc. etc. I also really liked these musings on the situation from Madison Malone Kircher (Hello Madison!) over at NYT.
We’ll get into the “therapy speak” aspect of it all but, LOL, sorry, this is dark and it’s not funny but also, it’s a little funny, because this woman is a professional surfer and she’s being demanded not to post pictures of herself in a bathing suit or go surfing with men. Absolutely NO friendships with unstable women “from your wild recent past” (they sound fun, where these ladies at) but then also no “boundaryless” friendships with men. So, no friends, just vibes. Let’s not confuse the quasi-therapy speak (the word boundaries, really, used both to underline his own needs and make them seem reasonable, even professional, and also the supposedly “boundaryless” nature of her friendships with other men, which actually undermines his own point, because it makes those friendships with other men seem devoid of behavior like this, thereby seeming much healthier than the relationship she’s in) and the pseudo thoughtful tone with the insecurity on display. A truly tuned-in and self-aware individual, as Hill publicized himself as, might have framed this as, “when you do XYZ it makes me feel insecure because of XYZ childhood trauma, can we work through this together,” or some shit, but I digress.
Both Hill and Sarah Brady are public figures, Hill much more famous. As podcast Who Weekly discussed in their episode on Tuesday, the sharing of screenshots does seem a last and perhaps only resort for the wronged and–crucially–less famous of the pair to get traction in alerting people to his behavior. One might ask why the world needs to be alerted about Hill’s behavior. I cannot imagine (well, I can) having an ex who is lauded for being such a fabulous and introspective person who is, behind the scenes, not so great and not so thoughtful. Whether you personally agree on this tactic–sharing with the public—that’s a different story. I don’t condemn it, nor would I recommend it, unless you are ready for the inevitable backlash and surrounded by a community that supports you. But it feeling like the only option makes perfect sense to me, especially when dealing with differing fame levels.
Cai writes about such backlash: “Moreover, there was a shared sense of outrage in the way Hill’s texts couched these demands within colloquial therapy-speak.” Cai continues, “Another irony, people seemed to agree, was that this was Jonah Hill, the acclaimed 39-year-old actor and director now regularly lauded by the media (including this magazine) for being frank about his own mental health. Just last year, he directed and starred in Stutz, a Netflix documentary about his therapist.”
It’s giving….Good Boy. No offense but to consider this a fall from grace is kinda a “media sucked his supposedly therapized dick too hard” problem and not a “HYPOCRISY ABOUNDS” problem. When you get so horny for men doing a Good Thing Publicly, is it so surprising when they do Not So Good Things Privately? But then again, we’ve been BEGGING men to go to therapy for years, as though it would magically, voila, poof, fix both personal and structural entanglements with toxic traits, especially those seeped in culturally learned and ingrained components of masculinity. Alas. It does, did, not.
Headlines about this incident range from “Jonah Hill’s Alleged Texts Show That Therapy-Speak is Out of Control” to “Why Jonah Hill's texts to his ex are problematic: therapist” and “Meghan McCain defends Jonah Hill after leaked text” so, clearly, we’ve got experts on the case. I feel it’s worth reiterating that what is new in this situation is the digital nature and sharing of the exchange and the subsequent public discourse. The use of language often associated with self-protection or healing being instead (advertently or inadvertently) used to control someone….old news baby! It’s not great news but it is certainly not new and Jonah Hill is absolutely not the first person who has been a champion of therapy and also sucks interpersonally. Many, MANY, such cases.
What is also new is the BUZZINESS of therapy-speak that comes primarily from the internet and not from therapists. And perhaps some of the confused discourse comes from that, and also, the idea that someone loudly espousing the benefits of therapy must be themselves HEALED, or respectful, or A GOOD DUDE, and thus, any errant behavior is hypocrisy. Let me quote at length from a piece I wrote in 2021 about the “men should go to therapy” meme.
I’ve definitely made jokes about men needing to go to therapy, the implied sense of the utopia waiting on the other side implicit in the phrasing. Yes, if men went to therapy the world would be a beautiful place. Everything would be fixed, everyone would be in love, nothing would hurt. In tandem with that thinking is the idea that all the extra work women take on—in the home, in the office, as caregivers—would dissipate. Men, equipped now with an awareness only possible from talking about the self in a paid-for session, would be ready to take on the labor previously outsourced to women. Never does the meme format (why would it) question who is now responsible for the man becoming sentient, never does it equip him with the ability to do this for himself. He pays for talk therapy, he proves it to you with an invoice, patriarchy ends, capitalism is...over? Yeah! I know, and you likely do too, that therapy isn’t a panacea. At all. To suggest such is disingenuous. I can’t help but see the “men go to therapy” meme as part and parcel of this girl boss feminism that seems to creep around the corners of even the most seemingly innocuous phrases. It once again finds a way to put the responsibility on men to fix themselves, to google it, to not ask questions but also, miraculously, find their own way to the correct ideas. Men not wanting / not going to therapy shouldn’t be meme-ified in this casual way that insinuates no men are in therapy and the reason for this is because they are complacent, lazy, and willing to let women do all the growth, to teach them about it later. Is this sometimes true? Sure, of course. Everything is sometimes true, especially if you’re looking for it.
And, because I am omniscient and never wrong, another snippet:
There’s also the reality that people who go to therapy might become equipped with the language of therapy, and then just be able to use that to continue doing whatever they were doing before, but now sound sort of logical about it. Who does that help? And if we keep up the insistence that men should be fixed by therapy, what does that imply? That therapists are better mothers than partners? That men still need to have some third-party bystander encourage their self-growth, that it is never within their own means? What does it mean if we frame all change as instigated by others, never from the self? What does it mean to keep isolating the process of change? Never is this mentioned as a potentially collective endeavor, but one of self purification—to fix oneself is treated as the path to fixing everything. It’s comforting maybe, to believe in that. But it’s not reality, certainly not the one we exist in.
I think fundamentally it’s a misnomer to equate his texts with what he is learning, or may have learned, in therapy. Buzzwords are buzzwords, and no good therapist is going to sit there and tell you that the best way to set boundaries with your partner is via text, Buzzfeed listicle version. These are not boundaries, they are petty-ass controlling and deeply embarrassing insights into someone who is very insecure. It’s sad, for all involved.
As I wrote in a more recent newsletter about therapy speak, “This supposed therapy speak is what I of scientific mind can only dub as a creature borne in the murky depths of Tumblr, that rose The Blob-like onto Instagram and TikTok, where it found a ripe and fertile breeding ground to proliferate amongst absolute weirdos calling themselves self-help experts to make a name for themselves. I mean—help others. Like and subscribe as self-care, cuties!” Here’s that full newsletter if you’re interested:
My point is, I think this situation is a heady and confusing amalgamation of things that can be perhaps lumped into “therapy speak is doing us dirty” discourse (which I agree with in large part) when that’s, IMO, not really what’s happening here. A manipulative partner, being controlling, using the word “boundaries” does not necessarily indicate therapy has made him this way more than it suggests the word “boundaries” is something osmosed into his being from scrolling the internet. Therapy Speak, as it’s been oft discussed recently, is different than “how we speak in therapy.”
But it must be said: some therapists suck, sometimes therapy is not the right modality for the type of healing needed, sometimes therapy merely equips someone abusive with skills in which to do so more covertly, sometimes therapy saves your life. There is no one size fits all treatment, just as there is no correlation between the subjects that someone makes a career out of or is publicly lauded for and their lives behind the scenes.
Anyways speaking of boundaries, here’s a perfect text where I did in fact get dumped by a cuck, note the time stamps, what a perfect angel love him so much RIP.
Reading:
Book: White Cat, Black Dog - Kelly Link. Love Kelly Link so much, these new stories are excellent.
On the web:
Making Housing More Accessible for People With Multiple Chemical Sensitivities
NYPD to pay largest protester settlement for abuses during George Floyd uprising
Bird report coming next week…And happy Brand Activation Day! Hope you are celebrating accordingly. Here’s a Clem:
As Malibu Barbie said best “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds….”
Best,
Shelby + Clem