He said he thought about killing me. He said it with serenity and certainty. You know the ways your voice might crack and quiver when delivering a shameful confession? His didn’t. It was as though the thought of killing me gave him peace. I smiled. I said, “good thing you didn’t,” and I giggled.

I was alone in a classroom with him. I was standing behind a mobile podium;

I can push it into him and make a run for it.
How many steps would it take me to get to the door?
I have heels on, what if I trip and fall while making a run for it?
Can I use my phone? No, it’s in my purse and not within reach.
I don’t want to die. I have a young son, and the tragic murder of his mother would scar him for life.

“God help me,” I prayed. I slowly removed my heels.

None of the workshops, trainings, or educational resources I completed prepared me for this moment. I only knew that I was alone with a student who daydreamt about killing me, and I had to “diffuse” the situation. I pretended his words were insignificant, his shouting was normal, and his foul language was ordinary. My words to him were careful, soothing and endearing. Thirty minutes later, he thanked me for listening and walked out.

It took my mind about twelve hours to register what had happened, and it did so in my sleep. I left that encounter feeling physically exhausted, but not much else. It was as though my brain couldn’t immediately process what had transpired, and it became numbed. Then, in the middle of the night, I dreamt that he came into my classroom and shot me dead. “It was just a dream,” I thought. A few hours later, as I walked into campus, my body started shaking and tears flooded my eyes. My body had finally woken up, and it was terrified.

Women face disproportionately more violence in the workplace as compared to men, and the vast majority of perpetrators are men[1]. This is, in part, due to unequal power relations that position men as the ones with the most power. Women that work in accommodation and food services, retail trade, manufacturing, health care, and social assistance are the most vulnerable to workplace harassment[2]. In most situations, there is a power imbalance where, not surprisingly, the individual with less power is often the victim and the individual with less power in our society tends to be female. This type of harassment that comes from the “top-down” is well-documented and well-researched.

Academic contrapower harassment (ACPH) is a term that I recently came across as I attempted to find solace in research after another male student became hostile, defiant, verbally aggressive, and threatening. According to the article Women Faculty Distressed: Descriptions and Consequences of Academic Contrapower Harassment (2016), ACPH “occurs when someone with seemingly less power in an educational setting (e.g., a student) harasses someone more powerful (e.g., a professor).” In this study, women faculty reported significantly higher levels of stress-related illness, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and wanting to quit as a result of intimidation, bullying, and harassment from students.

Check, check, check and check.

As I was reading this article, I couldn’t help but notice that the findings resonated almost in identical form with my own experience. My trauma manifested itself through insomnia, low appetite, being hyperaware of my surroundings, and feeling tremendously anxious in the classroom. Violence has this effect on humans. It disturbs your mind, harms your wellbeing, destabilizes your sense of security and contaminates safe spaces.

Chavella T. Pittman[3] found that women of color experienced significant defiance to their authority as well as threats and harassment from white male students. Although the term academic contrapower harassment suggests that women faculty hold all the power when compared to students, Pittman indicates that female educators of color experience their classrooms with power, as faculty members, and powerlessness, as women of color; meaning that in a patriarchal racist structure, white male students preserve and react to women faculty within the conferred power they possess in broader society. This too echoes my experience at a predominantly white institution (PWI). My student aggressors have all been white males. The students who have made intimidating comments, behaved defiantly in class and submitted appeals to contest a grading decision have all been white and have all been male. In a recent grade appeal request, submitted over Christmas break, a male student who failed to submit nineteen assignments and decided not to take the final exam, emailed me two weeks after the semester concluded, demanding an explanation as to why he failed the course. In his appeal he wrote that I was “non-responsive” to his emails, referring to the fact that I had not immediately responded to the email he wrote to me while I was on Christmas vacation.

Male students don’t often consciously target female professors; they are not telling themselves, “I can harass this professor because she’s a woman”. This behavior, not frequently displayed towards male authority figures, is a manifestation of their socialization. Their status as men has been symbolically and socially elevated to the extent that aggression towards any women seems acceptable, and this narrative is reinforced in Christian spaces. I worked in public institutions for seven years before being employed at a Christian university, and I experience significantly more harassment from evangelical male students. In The Making of Biblical Womanhood (2020), Beth Allison Barr explains that women’s subordination “became embedded in the heart of evangelical faith. To be a Christian woman was to be under the authority of men” (154). Many church traditions ban women from teaching, preaching, and mentoring male adults. I wasn’t raised in the church, so when a pastor at the first church I attended told me that I couldn’t teach Spanish to missionaries because there would be male students in that group, I laughed. I genuinely thought he was joking. My smile soon disappeared after I realized that he wasn’t trying to be funny, and that he preferred to send a group of English monolingual speakers to Latin America with no linguistic knowledge of the Spanish language than to submit his male congregants to the teachings of a woman – a woman with a Ph.D. and extensive pedagogical training. Many Christian students attend these kinds of churches, and these are the messages that have been instilled in them since childhood. It is not a coincidence that evangelical male students undermine their female professors and ground their aggressions in the evangelical faith. After all, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. That God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people. That women’s subordination is central to the gospel of Christ” (Barr 173).

Most recently, a student I repeatedly asked to leave the classroom, after he became verbally aggressive, assured me that I was just “being too emotional,” a phrase that seemed pulled directly from the How to be a Sexist Manual. These aggressions are, of course, psychologically disturbing, but they are also very time consuming. I wrote numerous emails, recounted the details of the encounter to several individuals across campus, and had at least six meetings. I spent approximately ten hours actively dealing with this incident, hours that were taken away from class preparation, grading, and research.

Studies have found that women of color faculty have heavier teaching loads compared to male and white female professors, are expected to engage in considerably more nurturing service responsibilities (Pittman 2010), and full-time female faculty earn $18,370 less yearly compared to their male counterparts[4]. Furthermore, research suggests that college students have an unconscious bias against female professors and faculty of color that is reflected on student evaluations. In a 2015 experiment published by the Innovative Higher Education journal,[5] students rated online professors with a male name significantly higher than those with female names, regardless of the actual identity of the professor. Students tend to comment on the personality, appearance and competence of female instructors to a much higher degree than that of their male teachers. Studies have also revealed that students rate white faculty more positively than faculty of color and believe that faculty of color are less credible (Reid 2010[6]; Hendrix 1998[7]). This poses a disadvantage to female professors of color because student evaluations are commonly taken into consideration for hiring, promotion, tenure, and other career opportunities, despite the overwhelming evidence of bias.

Many of the disparities that women of color face in academia and beyond remain unquestioned because they are normal practices of white-centered patriarchal organizations. The institution of higher education was built as a space for white men. Seventy-six percent of all faculty in institutions of higher education are white[8] and at Christian colleges this number is even higher – 83.8% (CCCU 2021). More strikingly, Latinas comprise only 3% of all university professors in the United States (NCES 2018). Universities claim to have a desire to diversify their faculty body, but seem unwilling to make institutional changes that create environments where all faculty can thrive and feel safe.

Academia is supposed to be a place driven by sound research and Christian academics should be concerned with engaging in scholarship that helps human beings flourish. When faculty members and administrators of faith are presented with convincing data, produced by a reputable study, that women are being disadvantaged and disrespected in the workplace, the next logical step is to inquire into what can be done to improve their experiences. However, this course of action is too rational and too unfavorable for patriarchal structures. I witnessed this phenomenon unfold when a group of researchers shared their findings of an institution’s gender climate study. A white male immediately interjected and asked if these findings were truly representative of the female faculty experience at large. Then, a woman complained that her experience had not been included in the study and therefore, claimed that the findings were incomplete. The whole meeting was spent explaining the research methods used in the study and convincing certain people of the findings’ legitimacy. Actionable steps were not discussed. The study did not fit the ideals of patriarchy and as a result, it was dismissed.

Women’s accounts are often disregarded, even when the research supports their claims. An absurd amount of time is spent questioning the veracity of their experiences to the point of exhaustion. Men are often not held accountable because women are not believed. In many instances, women prefer not to report workplace harassment because of the tiresome amount of time it will take for the claim to be considered and the fear of being alienated, fired or being blamed as the victim.[9]

“Why does this commonly happen to me?” I said aloud to a supervisor as I shared details of an encounter I had with a student who became threatening. In my heart I knew the answer, but I was seeking some empathy from a female leader. Her response shocked me: “Maybe it’s because you set boundaries.” She theorized that male students often turned violent towards me because I establish firm boundaries, do not let their misconduct go unnoticed and the result is that I escalate the situation. Following this explanation, I (the victim) had done something to provoke the student (aggressor). Victim blaming reinforces sexist notions that women are responsible for men’s violent actions. Admittedly, for a brief second, I entertained this thought. I’m aware of the literature that speaks about victim blaming as a product of patriarchy. I’ve counseled other women on many occasions not to blame themselves for the abuse that was inflicted on them, yet I entertained this notion, if even for a brief second. Why? People tend to be more accepting of these sexist rationales when given by people of authority. If a person that society regards as intelligent, wise, and ethical is making such claims, these statements become more compelling. Consequently, evangelical leaders (men and women) have a higher degree of responsibility to counsel women in ways that do not reinforce misogynistic notions that will retraumatize women. Also, it is often these individuals who have the authority to ensure that the abuser is held accountable.

I was told that the university had to ensure that the student who assaulted me was cared for, and that the institution embraced a non-punitive model of discipline. At this point, I was frustrated, and I replied, “That’s great. And how is the university caring for me? What consequences will this student face for his behavior? How is the university keeping him accountable and deterring him from committing further acts of aggression?” Accountability is not vengeance. Discipline is not assault. Caring for someone does not mean ignoring their wrongdoings. Spiritual language is often utilized as a method to reinforce male dominance and female culpability. Grace is code for “overlook what was done to you,” forgiveness signals “do not seek justice,” and compassion is equivalent to, “brush it off, they were just having a bad day.” The message: if you don’t overlook what was done to you, if you do seek justice and you refuse to just brush it off, then you are not graceful, forgiving or compassionate, so you must be a bad Christian woman.

Aggression against women extends to all spheres of society, and women of color bear the double burden of racism and sexism. Evangelical leaders – both men and women – commonly emphasize female submission and rigid gender roles. We must understand the harm that this messaging is causing in the lives of countless women and realize how this rhetoric is being used to inflict violence on women. Jesus empowered women; he did not come to this earth to “put them in their place,” treat them as inferior to men, or reinforce the gender inequality present in Jewish society. Jesus disrupted gendered expectations, and in so doing, showed the love of God to these women. There are many “sympathetic” leaders who simply shake their heads and cross their arms. They believe that Jesus holds both men and women in the same esteem, but this belief is not acted upon – it does not materialize. What value does a belief actually carry if it is not grounded in action? In my experience, the policies were inexistent, the process was unclear, and the consequences were vague. The policies that did exist were there to protect the “integrity” of the aggressor, rather than ensuring the safety of the victim. Accountability is crucial and institutions must also be held accountable for their inaction.

A female colleague told me, “I don’t have much power,” speaking as to why she had remained silent for so many years about her own experiences. It was the same woman that was now advocating for me. While many of us may not hold significant power in our respective spaces, we do hold collective power. This is an invitation to action. This is an invitation to utilize our collective voice. Por nosotras. Por nuestras hermanas.