When a Woman Speaks Authoritatively It Shuts Down Some Men’s Brains
On ‘role incredulity’ and the authority gap
“You actually provided zero proof…” a man recently said to me in a comment on a story that was filled with nothing but… including quotes from noted anthropologists and other subject matter experts.
Why wasn’t he able to perceive all the substantive research and intelligent analysis that I’d carefully put together to construct my essay? The same reason that an entire class of men can’t seem to see this same sort of thing — because I’m a woman and when a woman speaks authoritatively, for some men, it apparently shuts down their brain.
In an extreme case of cognitive dissonance, a certain kind of man cannot even physically see compelling relevant research — at least not if it has been presented by a woman. Quotes from Scientific American? Nope, they don’t count for shit. Data from long-time researchers in the field? No way, show me some real proof! And if a woman presents something they haven’t heard of, it can’t possibly be true. It never occurs to this type of guy that it might be because she has actually studied this topic and he hasn’t.
Let me give you an example:
In his book, Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People, anthropologist Thomas Gregor reports that on his most recent visit to the Mehinaku, “the thirty-seven adults were conducting approximately 88 extramarital affairs.” The figure is inexact, he tells us, because “opinions vary within the village as to who is having a genuine affair, and who is engaging in an occasional liaison.” After some back-of-the-envelope calculating, Gregor concludes, “The villagers’ taste for extramarital liaisons is limited primarily by social barriers, such as the incest taboo, and only secondarily by personal preference. In short, village men and women tend to have relations with each other unless they are specifically prohibited from doing so by the rules of their culture.”
“There is zero data in that…”
OK, it doesn’t have the exact breakdowns that this guy wanted to see, but it’s not my job to write the story that he wanted or provide the exact research that he would like to see. And, “the thirty-seven adults were conducting approximately 88 extramarital affairs.” … How exactly is that zero data?
You would not believe how absurdly common this is for me — and a lot of other women that I know. It turns out that the Authority Gap plagues women everywhere, even at the highest levels of politics and power. Margaret Thatcher noticeably lowered her voice so as to be seen as more authoritative once she took power.
When journalist Mary Ann Sieghart set out to document the ways that women are held back by a cultural presumption of their inferiority, she found reams of data to support her case — and heard stories of how it affects even the most successful women in the world. The authority gap: why women still aren’t taken seriously
Other researchers have also studied this phenomenon and named it Role Incredulity.
Role incredulity is a form of gender bias where women are mistakenly assumed to be in a support or stereotypically female role — secretary, administrative assistant, court reporter, nurse, wife, girlfriend — rather than a leadership or stereotypically male role, such as CEO, professor, lawyer, doctor, or engineer. In these instances, women must expend extra energy and time to assert and sometimes prove their role. Their words may lack the credibility and authority inherent in their position. (emphasis mine) Role incredulity surfaced as a common theme in our research dataset of women’s stories from interviews, open-ended survey responses, social media posts, and public articles.
Ben Barres is an American neurobiologist who was assigned female at birth. After transitioning to male, he noted that he was given much more deference and gravitas than when he presented as female.
After transitioning, he noticed that people who were not aware of his transgender status treated him with respect much more than when he presented as a woman. After delivering his first seminar as a man, one scientist was overheard to comment, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s [believing work published under his deadname to be his sister’s] work.” (source)
Although I don’t have an official title or role here, as someone who has researched and written extensively about particular areas of social science for a long time, I do have a fair amount of expertise. Quite often that is recognized and appreciated, and quite often that recognition comes from men. But there is a certain subset of guys who are almost performatively incredulous or hostile to just about everything I say. The main problem seems to be that I am the one who is saying it.
I have reached this conclusion because it doesn’t seem to matter how many peer-reviewed male scientists and experts I quote, I’m still accused of being naive or of having romantic notions. I don’t think men speak that way to other men they disagree with. My detractors don’t say things like, “Your analysis doesn’t add up.” They say things like, “You’re reflecting solely the Western perspective on these matters.” when in fact, I’ve actually spoken quite extensively about several non-Western cultures and given specific examples from them. These sorts of off-base critiques aren’t even about substantive disagreements — they are just a way to take potshots at me and they are a glaring indication that role incredulity is in play.
The weirdest thing is, it’s like these guys have become functionally blind, and what causes that blindness, I believe, is a surge of emotions. Based on over 5 years of dealing with this constantly, I’d say those emotions are all related to a woman trying to present herself as authoritative and how threatened that makes them feel. Honestly, it makes some of them darn near apoplectic. Others are less belligerent but still can’t seem to quite wrap their heads around what I’m saying because they just assume that it must be wrong.
“You didn’t speak to this.” Uh, yes I did… here and here…
“You asserted this and it’s wrong.” No, I actually never said anything remotely like that.
“Your theory is unsupported.” Actually, it’s not my theory. I’m just reporting on the one that most experts in this field subscribe to — based on decades of research on this topic — and I’ve already provided several citations.
In fact, pretending that it’s my theory that I just sort of pulled out of my ass instead of the theory of many or most subject matter experts is a common tactic. You wouldn’t believe how often I hear that one, and I always remind them, it isn’t my theory. I didn’t just cook it up — I’m simply reporting on it.
To be honest, I became a research-based writer to try to ward off some of this by providing a huge number of quotes from experts, science magazines, and researchers in the field right up front in every story. For this type of man, it doesn’t even matter, because their brain has so shut down that they cannot perceive these things as legitimate support — there’s just no way in their minds that I could be authoritative.
Many women on Twitter have expressed frustration with role incredulity. Some women were flat out told they don’t look like someone in a male-dominated role (“you don’t look like an engineer”) or were received incredulously. For instance, one woman was introduced to a colleague’s male friend, and the friend expressed surprise that she was a reporter, explaining that he assumed the women were in the newsroom “to type up the stories for the men.” Role incredulity can even be a safety issue; a geomicrobiologist was injured in her own lab when a young male staff member wouldn’t listen to her.
Women of color frequently find themselves subjected to role incredulity. On Twitter, several medical doctors described being mistaken as the wife or girlfriend of a physician, as Dr. Uché Blackstock recently noted: “For the umpteenth time, I was asked again today by a parking garage attendant (**looking at my MD license plate for hospital parking), ‘Are you the doctor or is your husband?’” Similarly at a fellowship welcome picnic, Dr. Jennifer Huang was mistakenly assumed to be another fellow’s girlfriend or wife, and Dr. Nancy Yen Shipley was assumed to be the wife of a medical doctor at a fellowship interview. Dr. Yen Shipley commented, “I mean, I’m a wife. Of someone else. Who is not at the fellowship mixer.” (source)
This is 2023, for heaven’s sake! It’s gotten somewhat better, but how long is this going to go on?
Journalist and book author Mary Ann Sieghart who has studied this topic extensively notes this, “The one that most shocked and depressed me actually, was that British parents, when asked to estimate their children’s IQ, put their boys, on average, at 115, which in itself is pretty funny because the average really ought to be 100, and girls at 107 -despite the fact that girls develop earlier, have a bigger vocabulary and do better at school. So they are implicitly treating their boys as cleverer than their girls.”
Little wonder then that the stereotypes perpetuate when these unconscious biases are so deeply ingrained and are not being countered and spoken to nearly enough.
At this point, I mostly block these guys pretty quickly. There is no logic or data that can permeate the level of cognitive dissonance that seems to be taking place for them, and to be honest, I’m pretty sick of this shit. If someone has a good faith question or even a substantive challenge to something I’ve written, that’s different. But just being unable to grasp that a woman might know something that you don’t is frankly pretty pitiful and I don’t have any patience for it.
When they completely mischaracterize what I’ve said, try to hold me accountable for what other women have said, or just plain can’t come to grips with the fact that I do actually know what I’m talking about, (despite 12 quotes from subject matter experts out of peer-reviewed journals), I no longer have the time or the emotional bandwidth to try to reason with them for very long. It’s just tiresome, in the extreme.
And I’m just a web-based writer discussing topics that interest me. Imagine how a woman astronaut or a woman doctor feels to be taken for someone with no real authority simply based on her gender alone. Women of color have it worse, as do women with disabilities. At least I have the option to verbally skewer and/or block the men who do this to me with no negative impact on my career or reputation. Not every woman is so lucky.
A lot of guys work well with and have productive and respectful relationships with women. It’s time for the rest of them to get on board because, in this day and age, these sorts of guys really do look like morons.
In fact, that’s how I know for sure when it’s time for me to block them, when the thing that I really want to say next is, “You’re just a complete moron, aren’t you?”
© Copyright Elle Beau 2023
