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.

Robin Dembroff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University whose 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 venues, including The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, TIME, Scientific American and Boston Review