The bros and me

Beaty's bro code, objections thereto, and my story

Gentle reader,

Family metaphors are key to the life and being of the church, and I believe those family metaphors can also be key to healthy relationships between men and women. We’re called to see each other as brothers and sisters.

This makes the denigration of those family metaphors—specifically, the turning of brothers into bros—a special tragedy, as it attacks the nature of the family of God. It assumes authoritarian power-mongering—instead of the loving self-gift of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—is the way to make way in this world.

Brothers love and support. Brothers lift others up. Brothers reach out with empathy and understanding.

Bros circle wagons, protecting their own, belittling women.

Bros rule like the Gentiles, lording it over others (Matthew 20:25). Brothers imitate the humility of King Jesus, looking “to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3).

It took me months to read the piece, even though my friends were talking about it. I was avoiding it, because I have big feelings about evangelical institutions and “bro codes.”

That piece was published by Katelyn Beaty at

The Beaty Beat

. Later,

Karen Swallow Prior

shared some of her story with Beaty, here. Just last week, Kirsten Sanders at

To the Shire

questioned whether there is such a thing as an evangelical bro code. (Let me note that I know and respect these authors, but I’m writing today, in part, in disagreement with Sanders.)

Here, Beaty’s summary of the bro code pattern:

1. A woman takes a job at an evangelical institution (ministry, university, church) excited by its mission and ready to contribute her skills and expertise.

2. Within the first few years, and especially if she has or aspires to a leadership position, she meets overt or covert resistance from a male colleague or several colleagues.

3. Her job performance, Christian orthodoxy, soundness of mind, or institutional loyalty is called into question. These efforts are aimed at casting a shadow over her presence in the institution and slowly edging her out.

4. There’s some internal battle in which a top leader or board is roped in to determine next steps, often after a crisis….

5. Here’s the kicker, for the purposes of this essay: The top leader or leaders will usually take the side of the man. In the warp and woof of evangelical institutions, the woman has to go. This is especially true if the institution receives support from people outside of it who are raising Cain about her presence there.

Telling stories is tricky. Most of us who have dealt with the bro code can’t provide receipts. Why? Because bros operate in the shadows.

But telling stories is a human thing to do. With some personal differences, all five steps in the process outlined above describe my experience, except the part about the woman being let go.

I left.

(I have a long list of women who have left.)

I thought my “skill and expertise” (quoting Beaty) would buy trust.¹ I thought publishing and teaching well and doing all the things asked of me would be rewarded. More, I thought my impeccable orthodoxy² would protect me. I even thought it would be esteemed.

Lady studying the bible (1832) R. Gontar

I’d barely started a new job when a retiring professor gave comments to the student paper about how “feminists” were ruining the Bible and theology department. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know my work. He knew only that I was a woman. He felt free to undercut a new colleague, in print, without talking with her.

Never mind that I knew prominent men at the institution who had put heterodoxies in print, my female body meant my orthodoxy was suspect.

In Sanders’s piece, she notes that she has experienced “gender credit,” in her career. I have no doubt that I have too. And, still, most people hired into roles like mine are white men, and, still, many folks will always assume I’ve “only” landed a role because of my gender.

Sanders writes:

There have been invitations where I felt that the invitation was both belying a “gender credit” and that it was not something I could do well. If I had not declined such an invitation, my participation would not be up to snuff, because I just wasn’t ready for the attention or up to the level of the project.

I doubt, though, that most men in my field would reject a prestigious invitation because they feared they weren’t ready for it, and isn’t embracing what we’re not ready for the way we learn to do what we’re doing? I wasn’t ready to write a book when I wrote my first book. I wasn’t ready to be a mother when my first child was born.

But I fear that many bros would not stop to imagine they’re unready for those opportunities.

Power damages the brain:

The brains of powerful individuals react differently to social cues in ways that resemble psychopaths or patients with frontal brain damage. Psychopaths and some patients with brain damage lack empathy and the ability to take others’ perspectives. Research has shown that power can deform the brain to act in the same ways. For example, people with high status have been shown to be less accurate in judging the emotions of people with low status.³

In a patriarchal world, men always wield a kind of power because of their maleness. It takes the mighty power of the Spirit at work to help a brother question the lies and deformations of worldly power. Many never will.

Sanders speaks of men wanting her to succeed. I’ve experienced this too, but it doesn’t mean that a systemic “bro code” isn’t also functioning. I’ve seen men who want me to succeed bump up against the same bro code elements I was bumping against. I love my brothers, and in my time in evangelical institutions I’ve known many brothers who embody Christian love and support. I’m lucky to call those brothers friends. To say that something like a “bro code” is in operation is not to condemn all the men in an institution, and women, too, can support a bro code. Patriarchal systems reward that support. Women can be bros, or at least they can aspire to bro-dom. They can also be Serena Joys or Aunts.⁴

Years of service under the operation of a bro code took a toll, a cumulative toll, on my person and on my physical, spiritual, and emotional health. Those years damaged my ability to be faithful to my vocation, as I felt the bros looking over my shoulder as I taught or wrote.

I’ll name some fairly objective dynamics, which contributed to that toll:

• Sheer numbers. When a department has five men to every one woman, that will be felt. Female professors find an extra heavy mentoring burden is placed on them. Similar dynamics apply to committee and service assignments. This numbers burden is also borne by people of color.

• Women experiencing sexual harassment, including comments about bodies and anonymous letters and phone calls threatening violence.

• Explicit statements of contempt for institutional priorities related to diversity. Pointed refusal to follow policies related to diversity.

• In hiring: female candidates questioned in ways male candidates never were. (What does her husband think? What if she wants to have kids?)

• Being asked, at an important interview, by an important leader, how “my husband and kids were coping” with me working full time.

I can’t report the parts of the story that hurt the most, because I heard about them on a whisper-network, because the bros weren’t going to talk to me. (Though perhaps they might grumble, behind my back, about my supposed failure to follow Matthew 18. The irony of that goes unnoticed.) I heard that lies were told, but those lies were not spoken to my face.

Parts of the story are hard to report, because they’re about feelings. If I felt that a male leader could only relate to women as “wife” or “mom,” and so didn’t know how to related to a woman as “colleague,” well, I felt that way, but it’s not something I can prove. I can feel that I lost opportunities or material supports because of gender, or that female talent was minimized while male talent was magnified, but I can’t prove those things.

When I left, I felt an enormous burden lifted off of me. That was a feeling too.

When I left, I was—what’s the right word? lucky? blessed?—to find a healthy, happy place to go, a place where I can pursue my calling as faithfully as I know how. Many men and women have no such alternative.

Beaty quotes

Lore Wilbert

:

Leaving is sometimes the best thing we can do. Leaving is the most care-full thing we can do. Care for our own souls and selves, and care for those God actually has entrusted us to lead and love.

I’m healing from the toll the years of bro code took on me. I’m now in a seminary context where leaders, faculty, and staff alike are clear about supporting women. It’s not just better for female employees. It’s better for the institution and our mission, it’s better for students, and it’s more faithful to the kingdom of God.

Grace & peace,

BFJ

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1. From Beaty:

It doesn’t matter how talented, credentialed, or solidly orthodox the woman is. She can hustle and strive for excellence, while casting her work as a team effort, so as not to seem careerist. She can defer to male leaders — even in areas of her own expertise — to show she’s not undermining their authority. She can dress appropriately feminine (she’s not trying to be a man, after all) without being sexy (she’s not that kind of woman, after all).

Yes. Yes. Yes.

2. A very, very silly phrase.

3. Psychology Today, The Brain Under the Influence of Power: How power can “deform” the brain.

4. This is a Margaret Atwood reference.