Ann Friedman senses a shift in the lexicon:
Mainstream news has been dominated lately by stories lamenting “bro culture” — a term that used to be found solely on feminist blogs — everywhere from Silicon Valley to the U.S. military to the financial sector to pockets of academia. Last week, National Journal published an examination of the military’s fratty atmosphere under the headline “How the Military’s ‘Bro’ Culture Turns Women Into Targets”; and in Sunday’s New York Times, reporter Jodi Kantor examined Harvard Business School’s attempt to de-bro itself. Also over the weekend, at a TechCrunch-sponsored hackathon, two “grinning Australian dudes” got onstage and pitched a “joke” app called Titstare. (Yeah, it’s exactly what it sounds like.) “It’s as if,” wrote the Atlantic Wire, “the brogrammers seen here didn’t know their audience wasn’t all bros like them.”
“Bro” once meant something specific:
a self-absorbed young white guy in board shorts with a taste for cheap beer. But it’s become a shorthand for the sort of privileged ignorance that thrives in groups dominated by wealthy, white, straight men. “Bro” is convenient because describing a professional or social dynamic as “overly white, straight, and male” seems both too politically charged and too general; instead, “bro” conjures a particular type of dude who operates socially by excluding those who are different. And, crucially, a bro in isolation is barely a bro at all — he needs his peers to reinforce his beliefs and laugh at his jokes. That’s why the key to de-broing our culture just might be the straight white guys who aren’t bros.
The Dish 