Real Men On Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality

Robin Dembroff, in conversation with Jason Stanley

Please join us as we celebrate the publication of Real Men On Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality by Yale philosopher Robin Dembroff, who will be in conversation with How Fascism Works author Jason Stanley about gender as the internal logic of our current fascist moment.

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, but 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 wrong with the way we live—and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality.

“Real Men on Top is a stunning work of philosophy that explains why insights from gender studies are so feared by authoritarian regimes. In plain language, Dembroff illuminates gender as the internal logic of our current fascist moment — how it divides us from each other and enriches the wealthy few.”— Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works and Erasing History

“Real Men On Top deftly dissects and discards patriarchy’s logic of biological supremacy, then reveals what’s left — a shadow play propelled by the flimsiest of narratives. By demonstrating clearly how even the men who purportedly benefit from these stories are also exploited, this elegant treatise offers us all a salvational alternative. Robin Dembroff releases our chains, guides us gently out of the cave, and helps us begin to adjust to the shimmering reality outside.”— Alison Bechdel, author of Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home

“As a person who has been studying and fighting patriarchy most of my life, Real Men on Top took me to a whole new level of understanding. It deeply transformed my consciousness around gender. Dembroff has nailed the next evolutionary steps needed in dismantling a devastating paradigm that as they brilliantly show, encompasses and destroys us all.”— V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of The Vagina Monologues and The Apology

Robin Dembroff

was raised in rural California as an Evangelical homeschooler and is now an associate professor of philosophy at Yale University. Their work explores how stories about bodies shape our sense of reality and uphold systems of inequality. Dembroff's writing appears across both academic and public outlets, including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, TIME, Scientific American, and Boston Review.

Jason Stanley 

is a philosopher based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.  He is the author of seven books, including Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future and the NYT bestseller How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, about which Citizen author Claudia Rankine states: “No single book is as relevant to our present moment.”  Stanley serves on the board of the Prison Policy Initiative, is a member of The Justice Collaborative at Yale Law School, and writes frequently about authoritarianism, democracy, propaganda, free speech, and mass incarceration for The Guardian, Zeteo, and Project Syndicate, among other publications.  His books have been translated into more than 25 languages.