It’s 2017, and I’m on Tinder, for better or for worse. I’m freshly broken out of a messy relationship with an awkward power imbalance where he was much older than me but somehow still intimidated by me. “You can do better” and “You’ll forget about me when you’re rich” practically became his official tagline as I studied writing at university and started getting the odd byline before switching up to “You’ll never find anyone better than me” as a manipulation tactic.
When we split up, I was excited to find someone who had their shit together and didn’t mind me trying to get mine together too.
Being a journalist who specifies in sex and relationships, which I was then and still am now, can generate some awkward conversation starters on dating apps, which were split into two camps: the guys who invited me to come round and rate their sex performance (smooth), and the men who fumbled self-deprecating messages to me, detailing their perception of my apparent success, and their lack of it.
In the last couple of weeks, there’s been a whole lot of powerful men allegedly intimidating and pushing down powerful women in relationships weaving in and out of the headlines, showing how the type of vitriol I’ve experienced is common, even amongst celebrities.
“Children watch porn at an extremely young age, for God’s sake. They know what sex is.”
Last week, Keke Palmer and her partner Darius Jackson were trending across social media platforms after he appeared to publicly shame her for her outfit choices. In response to a video of her being serenaded by Usher, Jackson tweeted, “It's the outfit tho .. you a mom.”
After receiving inevitable backlash, he doubled down with, “We live in a generation where a man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother of his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others & he gets told how much of a hater he is.”
He continued, “This is my family & my representation. I have standards & morals to what I believe. I rest my case.” He has since turned off his replies and deleted all Instagram photos of Palmer, according to Page Six.
But Palmer isn’t alone. Over the weekend, surfer Sarah Brady, who is Jonah Hill’s ex-girlfriend, accused the actor of gaslighting her, which he has not yet responded to publicly. Taking to Instagram, she shared screenshots of conversations during their relationship, which suggested Hill had asked her not to post pictures of her surfing in swimming costumes or continue relationships with particular male friends at her surf club. At the time of writing, Hill has not responded to GLAMOUR’s requests for comment.
A running (disturbing) theme in these instances, if true, and my own, is men actively seeking successful and powerful women to date, only to push them down once they’re actually in a relationship. My ex-partner told me he was initially attracted to me because I was “so confident and smart,” so why did he do everything he could to oppress that part of me, and why did he panic when I started achieving my goals?
Men frequently claim to be attracted to successful women with impressive careers, like Keke, Sarah or arguably me (depending on who you ask). In fact, in Match's 2017 Singles in America survey, men marked "entrepreneur" as the sexiest career a woman can have. That same survey found that 87% of men say they’d be in a relationship with a woman who earned more than them, and nearly 90% wouldn’t mind if she were more educated.
Or, maybe they just think they want successful women since a new study from the European Social Survey shows men who are out-earned by their female partners report lower life satisfaction. “We found that women’s breadwinning carries such a heavy psychological burden for men that they would prefer she was not employed at all,” they reported.
A cultural shift has left heterosexual women wanting more from their relationships and, in turn, realising that men can’t always provide for them in the way they want.
This is so common, in fact, that a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that single women downplay their career achievements when in the presence of single men – not wanting to appear undateable. And another series of studies at the University at Buffalo discovered that while the idea of intelligent women turns men on, it doesn’t always work for them in practice. They found that, typically, if a woman outperforms a man on the same test, he’ll express less romantic interest in her.
“Relatives warned me that many men see professional women as intimidating and that going after a swanky career might ‘put a target on my back’.”
I’ve been on the receiving end of this for most of my twenties – even from complete strangers. Relatives solemnly warned me that many men see professional women as intimidating and that going after a swanky career might ‘put a target on my back’. And even now that I’m happily married to someone who delights in my success, other men still oppress me on his behalf.
While sitting in a bar a few months ago with my husband, a man started a conversation, and we began talking about our jobs. When my partner made a joke about being a trophy husband, this stranger criticised him for ‘allowing’ that imbalance and claimed it to be emasculating without any regard for either of us might feel hearing this. This is, regrettably, not an isolated experience.
She has vaginismus, which affects one in 10 women.
Unfortunately, the idea that men need to hold the household up with an abundance of money, power and authority while women stay kept, is deeply ingrained in society. So much so, that while I don’t want to let men off for this behaviour, it’s easy to understand how the cycle of seeking successful women, pushing them down, and experiencing low life satisfaction happens.
The patriarchy, evolutionary factors, and toxic masculinity spreading in schools and on social media (thanks ‘alpha males’) primes men to be competitive and domineering. And anything threatening their perceived wealth, power, and, well, abundance, is deemed a humiliation that must be counteracted. That’s why we might be shamed for earning more money, working hard, not wanting children, or wearing a revealing dress while getting serenaded by Usher.
We know there’s a lot of work to be done in levelling the playing field between men and women, but it’s clear this extends to our personal relationships as well. For now, we can take comfort in the knowledge that when men, including our own partners, degrade us, it’s less about us personally and more about being so intimidatingly successful they don’t know what to do.
GLAMOUR has reached out to Jonah Hill's representative for comment. This article will be kept updated.
