Real Men on Top

A bold work of philosophy that argues for a paradigm shift about gender: that it exists and functions as a system that privileges "real men" over others The resurgence of "Smash the Patriarchy!" following the election of Donald Trump and the rise of #MeToo was not a throwback to a bygone political slogan. It was a cry of frustration from millions who sense that there is a common culprit behind their experiences of gender-based violence and exploitation. But who or what is that culprit? In Real Men on Top, philosopher Robin Dembroff asks you to reconsider everything you believe about gender and patriarchy. Gender, Dembroff argues, is not being a man or a woman. Even more fundamentally, gender is gendering: the process of evaluating and treating people based on cultural ideals of what men and women should be. Patriarchy, they say, is the institutionalized system of gendering. Against the accepted idea that patriarchy privileges men over women, Dembroff argues that patriarchy elevates people who resemble culture's most powerful ideals of manhood-ideals that reflect men who are white, straight, wealthy, and not disabled. To put it simply, patriarchy puts real men on top.

A revelatory new lens on patriarchy-as a force that governs how we see the world, live in our bodies, and imagine our futures In Real Men on Top, Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child. These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths—ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'. But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation—especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself—while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them—and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human. Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live—and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality.