Brothers as bridesmaids: migration, meta-masculinity, and the gynocentric god of transnational Sino-Taiwanese Christianity

This paper explores when, where, and how masculinity becomes reflexively foregrounded in people’s lives and identities as an ethical question. Focusing on followers of Chinese Christian fundamentalist reformers Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) in Taiwan and the UK, it examines how gender hierarchies emerge and are subtly contested within this transnational religious movement. The group’s theology centres on a collective-feminine experience of worship, depicting the church as the Bride and Christ as the Groom, while simultaneously valorising masculine authority in leadership and family life. Through the story of one follower, Aiguo, and his migration from Taiwan to the UK, I trace how these tensions become apparent through shifting, embodied positionalities. In Taiwan, he encountered church hierarchy viscerally, situated within a male-dominated centre. Migration, however, placed him at a triple remove: geographically marginal, a non-elder, and not the household breadwinner. This dislocation enabled a shift in self-understanding, fostering what I call meta-masculinity - a reflexive, relational masculinity distinct from the group’s dominant reactive masculinity. The paper thus demonstrates how the material and embodied shifts migration entails can generate alternative, non-hegemonic masculinities. It highlights the role of embodied marginalisation in producing a meta-level awareness of one’s own and other’s situated masculinities that is not disempowering but quietly transformative.