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REAL MEN ON TOP
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OVERVIEW
The word ‘patriarchy’ is attached to a big promise. It promises a unified explanation for gender injustice across places and times. In this, it also promises to give common connection and language to all those who have experienced disadvantage or harm because of gender. It’s no wonder the term feels rich and full of possibilities--it points to a vast and unifying target. 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 individual experiences of gender-based violence, exploitation, and marginalization.
We need a new model of patriarchy. The received view—that patriarchy is a system that privileges men over women--fails us. It overlooks or ignores the fact that gender generates hierarchies among both women and men that denigrate bodies and activities coded as feminine, persecute deviance from heteronormativity, and favor those from historically privileged groups.
These problems have led some to wonder whether we should abandon the concept of patriarchy. It won’t shock you to know that I think the answer is no. We don’t need to give up on articulating a common system of gender injustice simply because it cannot be characterized as a system that privileges men over women. But any path forward has to abandon this binary framework of 'men versus women'. Even more fundamentally, it has to abandon the idea that gender is a feature we have--much less something we are. This is a difficult paradigm shift. It requires us to identify and upend a worldview that is deeply ingrained in our cognition: a worldview that says that being a man or a woman is a matter of nature, prior to any social interactions.
My hope is that Real Men on Top will help you make this shift. My view begins from a fundamentally different starting point. The received view starts with the idea that your experiences under patriarchy are explained by a feature that you have: being a man or a woman. I’ll start from the idea that these experiences are explained by your place in the relational process of gendering. We all are caught up in and also part of gendering. It occurs when we are regulated in accordance with ideas of what men and woman are, and what they ought to be. We gender ourselves, and we gender others. But we also are gendered by the everyday operations of large institutions, such as governments and financial markets. Patriarchy, on my view, is this continual system of self-, other-, and institutional-gendering.
Who does patriarchy benefit most? This depends on how different groups of people fare when measured against their society's most powerful ideas of manhood and womanhood. But when we look more closely at what these ideas are and how they are enforced, we find that gendering is a process that is deeply shaped by meanings and values of race, capital, sexuality, and ability. Your experiences within patriarchy don't only depend on what reproductive parts you have (and what parts others think you have), but also by how others perceive the color of your skin, the contents of your bank account, your sexual behavior, and your physical and intellectual capacities. In the end, we discover that patriarchy doesn’t put men on top. Within patriarchy, ideas of manhood and womanhood are used to legitimize routine forms of exploitation, marginalization, and violence that target both women and the majority of men. Patriarchy is a system that, by design, funnels wealth and authority to one small group: men among the political and business elite. Or, put simply, patriarchy puts Real Men on top.
We need a new model of patriarchy. The received view—that patriarchy is a system that privileges men over women--fails us. It overlooks or ignores the fact that gender generates hierarchies among both women and men that denigrate bodies and activities coded as feminine, persecute deviance from heteronormativity, and favor those from historically privileged groups.
These problems have led some to wonder whether we should abandon the concept of patriarchy. It won’t shock you to know that I think the answer is no. We don’t need to give up on articulating a common system of gender injustice simply because it cannot be characterized as a system that privileges men over women. But any path forward has to abandon this binary framework of 'men versus women'. Even more fundamentally, it has to abandon the idea that gender is a feature we have--much less something we are. This is a difficult paradigm shift. It requires us to identify and upend a worldview that is deeply ingrained in our cognition: a worldview that says that being a man or a woman is a matter of nature, prior to any social interactions.
My hope is that Real Men on Top will help you make this shift. My view begins from a fundamentally different starting point. The received view starts with the idea that your experiences under patriarchy are explained by a feature that you have: being a man or a woman. I’ll start from the idea that these experiences are explained by your place in the relational process of gendering. We all are caught up in and also part of gendering. It occurs when we are regulated in accordance with ideas of what men and woman are, and what they ought to be. We gender ourselves, and we gender others. But we also are gendered by the everyday operations of large institutions, such as governments and financial markets. Patriarchy, on my view, is this continual system of self-, other-, and institutional-gendering.
Who does patriarchy benefit most? This depends on how different groups of people fare when measured against their society's most powerful ideas of manhood and womanhood. But when we look more closely at what these ideas are and how they are enforced, we find that gendering is a process that is deeply shaped by meanings and values of race, capital, sexuality, and ability. Your experiences within patriarchy don't only depend on what reproductive parts you have (and what parts others think you have), but also by how others perceive the color of your skin, the contents of your bank account, your sexual behavior, and your physical and intellectual capacities. In the end, we discover that patriarchy doesn’t put men on top. Within patriarchy, ideas of manhood and womanhood are used to legitimize routine forms of exploitation, marginalization, and violence that target both women and the majority of men. Patriarchy is a system that, by design, funnels wealth and authority to one small group: men among the political and business elite. Or, put simply, patriarchy puts Real Men on top.
