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REAL MEN ON TOP
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OVERVIEW
Extended overview available here.
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 creates hierarchies among women, that marginalized men experience gender-based discrimination and harm, and that those who experience ambiguity or fluidity between manhood and womanhood are stigmatized or erased.
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 only and always privileges men over women. But any path forward has to abandon this framework. More specifically, 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 cultural ideals of manhood and womanhood. We gender ourselves, and we gender others. But we also are gendered by social institutions' everyday operations. Patriarchy, on my view, is this institutionalized system of gendering.
Who does patriarchy benefit most? This depends on how different people fare when measured against their culture's paradigms of manhood and womanhood. But when we look more closely at what these ideals are and how they are enforced, we find that we cannot describe either without paying attention to the many ways these ideals and their enforcement reflect cultural values around skin color, wealth, sexuality, and ability. Experiences within patriarchy are not only shaped by what body parts you have (and what body parts others think you have), but by these things as well. Patriarchy, it turns out, doesn’t put men on top; it elevates those whose features are mirrored by our most powerful cultural ideals of manhood. 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 creates hierarchies among women, that marginalized men experience gender-based discrimination and harm, and that those who experience ambiguity or fluidity between manhood and womanhood are stigmatized or erased.
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 only and always privileges men over women. But any path forward has to abandon this framework. More specifically, 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 cultural ideals of manhood and womanhood. We gender ourselves, and we gender others. But we also are gendered by social institutions' everyday operations. Patriarchy, on my view, is this institutionalized system of gendering.
Who does patriarchy benefit most? This depends on how different people fare when measured against their culture's paradigms of manhood and womanhood. But when we look more closely at what these ideals are and how they are enforced, we find that we cannot describe either without paying attention to the many ways these ideals and their enforcement reflect cultural values around skin color, wealth, sexuality, and ability. Experiences within patriarchy are not only shaped by what body parts you have (and what body parts others think you have), but by these things as well. Patriarchy, it turns out, doesn’t put men on top; it elevates those whose features are mirrored by our most powerful cultural ideals of manhood. Or, put simply, patriarchy puts Real Men on top.
