Brotopia — a book review
Look, I know how dangerous it is for a white, straight cis-dude to write anything negative about a book like this. It’s almost stupid to try, but I’m going to do it anyway.
This book is a missed opportunity. So much hype for it. So much interest in it. But so little promise fulfilled.
A big problem with the book is that there’s almost nothing in it you can’t find in many of the articles and reporting of the #metoo movement. The section about sex parties was the most original bit of reporting, but it was already published online.
Regarding that sex party story: it stinks. A friend and former colleague of mine whose honesty I do not doubt tells me that she was at the party, and that it wasn’t anything like the one Emily Chang described, and that she (my friend) would have left if it were anything like that. What’s more, people warned Chang that her story was inaccurate, but she chose to publish it anyway. Maybe not unethical, but probably not quality journalism, either.
That said, this is a a good book to give someone who feels downtrodden by bros and who hasn’t been keeping up with the news. Perhaps a young person in her first job in corporate America struggling with her first encounters with the sexism that pervades our culture. This is also a good book for leaders who haven’t been keeping up with the issues. There’s the rub — if those leaders haven’t cared enough to become enlightened before now, this book isn’t going to end up on their nightstand. I know two CEOs that I’d love to give this book to, but I know neither of them would read it.
My biggest issue with this book is that it’s not thoughtful or deep enough. It doesn’t cover the roots of gendered inequality. It completely avoids talking about the patriarchal behaviors in our broader society. It avoids talking about business culture in general, and the roots of meritocratic ideals (including the redeeming aspects of these ideals). The tech business inherited many of its norms from our broader society, but Chang chose not to touch on the broader cultural context. She stuck narrowly to just tech, and the book is less because of it.
One more thing: the book dangerously agrees with gender essentialist ways of seeing the differences between sexes, and in doing so, it extends sexist behaviors and the justifications used for them. Chang unthinkingly champions stereotypes that suggest the differences we observe between genders derive naturally from our underlying DNA, rather than from thousands of years of cultural baggage.
What I mean by this I learned from the book Testosterone Rex, which I recommend over this book any day. Here’s a quote from Testosterone Rex:
“When we think in essentialist ways about social groups, the differences between them seem large, unbridgeable, inevitable, unchangeable, and ordained by nature. Those who think in gender essentialist ways are more likely to embrace gender stereotypes that are the foundation of intended and unintended discrimination in the workplace. They are more likely to feel negatively toward power-seeking women, relative to men. They are more likely to allocate childcare in a traditional way. They are more likely to prefer that the husband earns more in a heterosexual marriage, and to expect to make traditional work-care tradeoffs. Women encouraged to take a essentialist view of gender become more vulnerable to stereotype threat: the reduction in performance and interest in traditionally masculine domains triggered by negative stereotypes about women. Gender essentialist thinking makes men evaluate sex crimes more leniently, and makes people less supportive of progressive gender policies and feel more comfortable with the status quo.”
Anyway, Brotopia is an OK book overall. I think those of us who have agreed to take responsibility for our own actions and how they impact others are even obligated to read books like this, so I’m glad I read it. But this is no Pulitzer contender, nor even touching memoir, nor brilliantly worded polemic. It’s more like a book-length article than a major contribution to the movement.
