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Foreigning me today on IHIP News is Robin Dembroff, an associate professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of the new book Real Men on Top that comes out this Monday. Robin, thank you so much for coming in.
C
STUDIO thank you so much for having me. I am very happy to be here.
B
Okay. I want to talk about your background. You were homeschooled in an evangelical household and went on to study at Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Tell me about that journey.
C
Yeah. Well, I grew up not only homeschooled in an evangelical community, but also in a very rural area. And my family lived out in the countryside. And so I spent most of my childhood either by myself or at church. I those are kind of the two worlds that I inhabited. And then I went to Bible College at 16 and got my minor in biblical studies, did a major in philosophy, and I think I ended up doing a major in philosophy because I could sense at some level that it had tools that I needed to survive. And shortly after undergrad, I was outed. I was excommunicated from the church, and I had to choose whether I was going to build a reality that I could live in or continue to try to fit myself into a reality that had no space for me. So I ended up going on my own. And here I am.
B
Now, what's so fascinating about that to me is it is implied very much right now by the Trump regime that kids need to be raised in Christian homes and that these labor unions of teachers are radical and they're doing all of these terrible things to children. And in your case, you were raised according to the way the Trump regime would want in a good Christian home, homeschooled, went to Bible school, studied the Bible, and you're a non binary person that they claim purpled haired teachers union produce in some sort of public school in some blue state. That's a really interesting component because I grew up in the Bible Belt as and obviously all of the gay people I know or trans people that I know or non binary people that I know. Their parents were big Christian Republicans.
C
Oh, that's so funny and totally surprising.
B
Yeah, yeah.
C
I think when you grow up in that world, you learn how to be an outsider in some ways. And so by the time I came to know who I was more fully, not only in the sense of having access to the feelings in my body, but even more importantly, having access to the concepts that I needed to to interpret the feelings of my experience and in my body, I think at that point it was like I was so used to being on the outside. I mean, I was taken to protest in front of abortion clinics by the time I could walk, you know, and so when you're used to being in that place, you're kind of like, it doesn't feel like as much of a cost to stand out in another way because you've been standing out in some ways your whole life.
B
Are you still religious or a believer?
C
No, I stepped away from all religion and spirituality for a while after I was outed and I had to kind of reconstitute my stories of myself and figure out who I was. And at this point, I'm coming back around to a connection to something that is greater than me, that I feel like as soon as we try to put words to whatever that force is, we always reduce it. And so I'm okay with just leaving it in the realm of the non articulable, you know?
B
Yeah. I identify as an atheist, but I like the idea of thinking that there is something that you can't put words into. Because every time a higher power is described, it sounds very human.
C
Yes.
B
And I would like to think that if there is some force out there, it's not us.
C
Right.
B
You know, flawed and all of the things that we are. How did you deprogram your faith and what was that process like? Did you feel grief? Did you feel like you lost, you know, a life partner?
C
Yeah, I mean, I felt like I lost who I was in an important way and not. I don't mean that in a negative way, though. I mean, we all tell stories to ourselves of who we are, and different components of those stories have more centrality than others. And for me, being evangelical, being Christian, being Republican, being a patriot, those things were all extremely core to my identity. You know, I protest in front of abortion clinics. I protested in favor of the Iraq war as a kid. You know, I was really in that world 120%. And so when it came to a point where I had to choose between everything about who I had been and who I had known and the possibility of happiness and flourishing and family, there was a lot of grief. There was all the stages of grief, probably grief, anger, confusion. But ultimately, I think I trusted my sense of where the love was. You know, it was like once I could see that the world that I had been told was demonic and evil and everyone was going to hell, and they voted to Democrats, which definitely meant they were going to hell. Lots of problems with that. But as soon as I could tell that that was a lie and that actually this. This place that I'd been told was hell itself was actually a place where people were welcoming me with open arms exactly as who I was, then the whole thing just started to crack and shatter. There's a lot of internal contradictions in the worldview that you have to hold when you're raised in that world.
B
Yeah. You know, I always thought I had so many religious friends growing up, and they were also tortured, like, about spiritual warfare and about, like, they wanted to talk in tongues. And their sole purpose, they were so consumed with remaining virgins. Of course, those are the ones that lost their virginity first. The atheist on the cheer squad was the last to go. Not that it matters, but. But do you think. Because I feel this, and I'm wondering what your opinion is, don't you think it's abusive to emotionally blackmail kids like that about existentialism? And I don't think the parents intend to do it because they're just doing what was passed down. But as I look back on a lot of my friends I grew up around, I feel like they were just so abused and emotionally blackmailed, and their autonomy was taken away from them at a very young age in finding their own life path.
C
Yeah, there's a very narrow path that you're supposed to fit, and it's a very conformist one. So, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, people. People recognize all kinds of captivity. And I think one kind of captivity that people don't pay enough attention to is psychological captivity, spiritual captivity, you know, and when you're raised in this world, like all things that operate close to whatever. People define cult in all sorts of ways. But one thing I think is definitely true of cults is that they create, like, a knowledge barrier, an epistemic barrier. You can only talk to people who are inside the walls, and you not only aren't supposed to talk to, but you have to see as completely other than you, the people who are outside the walls. And that's how psychological captivity works. Right? Because now you're cut off from information and you experience shame if you even go and look for the information. And I absolutely. I think that that is definitely abusive. Tried to kill myself many times as a teenager. And even that in and of itself was also shamed. It wasn't recognized as a symptom of my environment. Instead, it was understood as a symptom of me, which only then adds to the feeling of there's something deeply wrong with me and I'll never flourish in this life.
B
Let's talk about that, because that's something right now. Something that really irritates me that some people in the Democratic Party are flirting with is throwing trans and non binary people under the bus and allowing the right wing framing to capitulate to that. And when I, in the 80s, I was. I'm. I have a wonderful mother. She's very open minded, perpetually curious. We had a trans hairdresser. And when I first went to them, it was Roland, male and rather effeminate. And I said, mom, what's going on with Roland? She's like, well, darlin, he's gay. And I was like, well, why would somebody be gay? And she's like, all you need to know is nobody in the Bible Belt would choose that. That would be insane. And then about a year later, my mother told me, we're gonna go see Roland, but now they're a girl, and it's Renee. Now it's probably 12 or 13. And my mother just showed Renee radical compassion. And my mother told me years later that Renee had opened up to her about having a really abusive father who bul. Because she wasn't masculine or butch enough, and that she had, you know, suicidal ideation and really, really struggled. Because Oklahoma is incredibly, incredibly conservative and judgmental as a community. And so speak to me as well, as much as you're comfortable about the suicide and what goes on inside trans, non binary members of the LGBTQ community, this. The rates of suicide are so disproportionately, so much higher for this group. And I think it's really important that we discuss it.
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that the first thing I really want to emphasize is that when people condemn trans people, when they want to throw trans and non binary people under the bus, what they're really doing is throwing themselves under the bus. Because I think what trans and non binary people show us is that this very thick and restrictive and prescriptive mythology that we all live within of who's a man or a boy or a woman or a girl. And what that means about how you should live. We're all in that psychological captivity. And what trans and non binary people show is there's an escape hatch, there's a, there's a door that we can all walk through that will bring us into a way of being that will give all of us more freedom to be who we are and to form relationships that are meaningful to us. So the first thing I want to say is, you know, often in these political conversations it's like, well, the trans people are the X percent, the 1%, the 3%, whoever, how you want to count it. And so they, they don't matter enough for us to stake our platform on them. And I think that's a fundamental mistake because I think it's just showing where we're all at, not where a small minority is at, but that's also wrapped up with the suicide piece. Because if you live in a world where everyone around you is committed to a deep denial because their own sense of self, their own existential attachments are all wrapped up in those stories, then they by necessity have to shame you and exclude you and tell you there's something wrong in order to fortify their own stories of how they are. Right? And of course that's going to create all kinds of mental illness and self loathing and suicidality because you're being told that there is no place for you in a way that is cemented in other people's being, which gives you no, no real space to break through until they, until they break through their own denial, there's going to be no space for you to live with them.
B
It's just a lot of self loathing because you feel a certain way and society's defining you in a way that you don't feel matches up, right?
C
But I think, way to put it for everyone, right? It's a matter of degrees. So one of the things I often say is, you know, there's this binary that a lot of people have now assumed. There's the, there's the male female binary, but here's another binary, cis, trans. As if there's a binary among people who is CIS and who is trans. And to me, no, the issue is that we all have our bodies interpreted through a certain mythology that says you are an X and X, what it means to be a good ex, let's say woman, you're a woman. What it means to be a good woman is different than what it is to be a good man. As soon as you've said that, you split the moral Universe. Right. You've split people into two different kinds of morality. Those who are supposed to be good women and those who are supposed to be good men. And I think that all of us, in our own ways and in our own context, we chafe against those prescriptions and those expectations. And so I think what CIS trans is really picking out is not a binary, but it's more of polarities and who is willing to go against those prescriptions and in what ways and how much it costs to go ahead and do that. You know, earlier you said something like no one would choose that in the Bible Belt. And I totally hear what you're saying, and I think there's a deep way in which that's true. But I also think that when you're faced with a situation of, okay, either I can continue to try to conform in a way that undermines my basic well being, or I can try to shore up my sense of self and form the communities that I need to be safe in order to try to forge a way of being, then that's something that. Yeah, of course it's a trans narrative, but it's also an everyone narrative. Yeah, we all experience that. So one thing I really hope people will come away with is that trans is not a kind of person. It's a way of being being where you allow yourself the freedom and honestly, the self esteem to choose what you need to flourish instead of other people's expectations.
B
I love that. Okay, talk to me about how you think about the patriarchy and how it has led to the problems that we're seeing today, particularly this fascist regime.
C
Oh, man. The real man drag playing out in Washington. Oh my God. And it has real world consequences. Right. Like it's funny. And I love to laugh at them because they hate being laughed at, but at the same time their commitment to the idea of the real man as the figure of legitimate authority.
B
Yeah.
C
Causing global destruction. It's destroying people's lives, it's destroying men's lives, it's destroying men's well being. And I think that's something that we really have to get clear about. Patriarchy is not about men versus women patriarchy. To go back what I was saying before, it's a mythology. And it's a mythology that centers around a particular story of what the identity man is, where man is understood as this tripartite identity of the male human adult who is seen as over woman, over child, over animal. And it creates the moral grammar of legitimacy. If you are more of a man, you deserve more power and if you have more power, you're more of a man. So who's that going to be in favor of? That's a stacked game. The people with the most wealth and authority are born into real man status.
B
Right.
C
And then that becomes also the excuse for their misuse of all of that power.
B
And just to be kind of petty here, I just want to point out that the President is somewhat exercises some non binary type things. He wears a full face of makeup. He's very into things that we define women as being into, which I think is perfectly fine for men to be into interior design and projects like that. But in the MAGA world, that's what women are interested. And so we have this juxtaposition where we have this toxic type of masculinity that they want to project that the President has. But every time I turn around, he's talking about how hot he thinks men are. He's engaged in his decorating projects. He was telling this UFC wrestler, like, you're so good looking, your muscles are so great. And I don't know if you remember on the campaign trail, he simulated with striking familiarity a blowjob on a microphone. And. And so it's just.
C
I missed that thing.
B
No, it's insane. He couldn't get the microphone on, so then he starts acting like he's giving it a blowjob. So speak to that. To me, that juxtaposition of this, to me, it's such a scam, this whole, like Pete Hegg said, like, we're a lethal military and we're firing all the dei. And it, to me, it's just such a bullshit. It's just total bullshit. To me, it looks like weakness. Trying to just put up some veneer of masculinity. Because behind that, these men don't feel like that on the inside. And they want to be that.
C
Absolutely.
B
They idealize that.
C
Absolutely. Because, yeah, that's, that's the figure of legitimate authority in our society, you know? Well, I do. I joke with my partner that there's a nearby possible world where Trump is very happily a gay and totally. He is not causing destruction and he has a very happy life. Unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in. But one thing I do want to note, and I think Ruth Ben Guillot talks about this in her book Strongmen. You know, Hitler used to cry all the time. Being able to show feminine qualities actually often enhances a strong man's power, not undermines it. You know, there's another piece by a historian named Kuna about what masculinity looked like in the Third Reich. And he calls it a protean masculinity because on the one hand, you had to be unfeeling and cold and able to shoot Jews against the wall, but you also want to be able to push your child around in the pram and be a good dad and cry when your fellow comrades are fallen and so on. And I think that Trump is. We're seeing a version of that again, where his ability to be emotional and over the top in these ways that might be coded as feminine in some ways also enhance. They make him seem more fully human. They make him seem emotionally connected to his base in a way that enhances his power. You know, Pete Hegseth doesn't have the connection to people that Trump has because he isn't even able to do that protean masculinity. He's just trying to be hard all the way down. And that's not very appealing.
B
Yeah, it's not. It's not appealing at all. I want to talk to you about how the patriarchy hurts men too. And I want to talk about it in something I think is an important national discussion to have right now. So I believe that some of the men in the MAGA world, like, it's. This is just my opinion that, like Mike Johnson and probably Josh Hawley, I think they're very gay. Curious. I. Once I graduated from high school, I got away from all the evangelicals that were trying to recruit me and hang out with gay men for the rest of my life. Those are my best friends or gay men. So I have excellent gaydar. So I think there is a segment of the MAGA men that are in the closet. And typically, I have a lot of empathy for people who are passively in the closet. Growing up in the Bible Belt, I know how difficult that journey is. And if they're passively doing, that's nobody's business. But these men are ostracizing the LGBTQ+ community during the day and then fetishizing them at night. So I think there's that component. And I oftentimes on the podcast will go of these old queens. But at the same time, I want to be cautious that I'm not insulting the gay community when I do that, that I'm reducing their form of masculinity as some sort of critique, like, oh, well, they're just closet gaze. But I also think that this regime represents broken straight men, the breakage of heterosexuality, like Ted Cruz, that it is just a broken Completely broken straight man. So will you talk to me about that? Like, how we navigate that? Because I do think there's a reality that a lot of these men are closet cases or when they're watching porn, they got a little bit more excited about the man. Maybe they're bi curious or something. That they might be a little bit more sexually fluid. Sexual fluidity might be a little bit more common. And these guys feel that arousal and then they freak out, oh, my God, that was gay. And then. Then you have these nuts out here with this regime. Can you speak to all of that for me and help me be a better messenger of that and my audience absorb that stuff better?
C
Yeah, I mean, I always have the question. It sounds like you do too. Like, why do you care so much? You know, when they.
B
Why is Grindr always crashing when you
C
all are together in the Republican Convention? Grindr. CR. Yes. And the thing is, the man box is not only small, it's always shrinking because masculinity is set up as a zero sum competition. You have to be over women and in competition with other men. And so no matter. You're always looking for things that make you lesser than. And so for some men, it might be. Yeah. That they get sexually excited by other men. And that's the thing that they get down on themselves about. But it could be anything else. It could be the fact that they had a real emotional connection with a woman that. That makes the thing that then that's gay. Right. So it's just like if it's not one thing, it's three others. Right. But I think the thing that we're seeing now that's really important to point out, that's related to the breaking of heterosexuality is that when there are economic crashes like we are seeing now, like we saw in the 30s, men lose faith in the marketplace as the place to prove their manhood. And so they often turn to what I call the book Heterosexuality Crusades, which is not crusades of heterosexuals. It's crusades to reinforce heterosexuality as a way to say, I am a man because I'm not a woman. I am a man because I sexually dominate women. And part of that is about. I mean, this is why we're seeing all these men be obsessed with bodybuilding right now. The same thing happened in the 30s, during the Great Depression. All the businesses were crashing. Bodybuilding gymnasiums became a booming business.
B
Really.
C
Carl's, Atlas, Superman, they're all from the 1930s. 30s, because it's free to bulk up. I mean, I Know, they pay a lot for steroids and stuff, but it's free to march in heterosexuality crusades and say, my maleness is what sets me apart. My maleness is what gives me dignity. And since I'm not proving my maleness with the amount of money that I'm making, I'm gonna prove it in these other ways. And I think that even these rich man men you're talking about, like Holly and so on, I mean, I don't know how much is in his bank account, but he's definitely, you know, he's fine.
B
Yeah, yeah.
C
But I think that this is just the culture of masculinity that we're in right now, where even the men who have money are still swimming in that water of needing to bulk up, put women down, put children down, kill animals, show all the ways that they are not woman, child, or animal, or instead this, you know, elite man figure.
B
And this hurts men.
C
Oh, totally. I mean, one of the things that I think we've been told about patriarchy and gender that I think is incorrect is that the prejudices operate at the level of biology. That men and women are. What they are is defined by their biology. And patriarchy helps men and hurts women. But for me, the way I see it is that patriarchy is fundamentally about this mythology. That is biological storytelling, but it can be weaponized regardless of your biological features. So the way to think about it is you have kind of four identities that make up the framework of this mythology. You have man in contrast to an oval woman, animal, and child in order to be the male, human, adult. Right. That's supreme. And because it's set up that way, to be identified as or likened to woman, child, or animal, which is to say to be feminized, to be dehumanized, or to be infantilized is a form of degradation. And those are forms of degradation because we've already degraded woman, child, and animal as identities. And men of all people, know how easy it is to be feminized, dehumanized, or infantilized. You could have any body parts, and in fact, people do have any body parts and experience those forms of degradation. And men are constantly weaponizing these things against each other, calling each other a little girl, calling each other an animal, calling each other a boy. You know, they find all sorts of ways to undermine each other's manhood in the moral grammar of this mythology.
B
I think all of that stuff is so fascinating. Okay, what are your thoughts on this crisis of masculinity that we're seeing in this country, I mean, we hear this a lot, that there is a. A, A masculinity crisis. What are your thoughts on that?
C
It's an economic crisis that is happening in a culture where economic status is masculinity status. I think it's really important that we remember that. You know, the. The author Joseph Conrad, who is a guy who wrote about manhood all the time, said, a man is a worker. If he is not, then he is nothing. And that is the Puritan worldview that even for those people who are not Christians, who are not, not Puritans, is seeped into the culture of America. And if you look at the stats of how men understand their own manhood, like something like 86%, I don't remember, over 80% understand being a provider as the main responsibility and in some ways the main definition of what it is to be a man. And so when you're in our moment where so many men not only can't provide for other people, but can't even provide for themselves, that's going to not only create all the usual kinds of economic insecurities and anxieties that it would for everyone, but it has an extra layer of undermining your most fundamental sense of self. So, of course it's going to create all kinds of havoc.
B
So to me, it seems like, because I've had Ruth Ben Guy is a friend of mine, and I've had her on the pot a lot, that this type of this would be like pouring gasoline on the fire when you need toxic men to be the fascist regime. That this just keeps it on a loop by making men feel like they need to compensate for things all the time and to continue to demean the LGBTQ community, to demean women, to demean children. And so it seems like it really feeds fascism, this component of plundering the economy.
C
Absolutely.
B
Plundering the economy makes men feel weaker, makes men. Men be more brash and brazen with stereotypical masculinity, patriarchy type shit.
C
Yeah. And I'd add something else to it, too. It's not only plundering the economy and, you know, cutting men's wages, getting rid of their jobs, training, outsourcing their jobs, all of those things that they're doing. But it all works because there's a trust issue. Men often look to other men, and particularly other men who they see as higher on the masculinity hierarchy than them, for their sense of reality. And so in that. In that water, it's so easy for these men with a lot of Power to do their demagoguery on other men and tell them, you know, whose fault it is that you can't make your rent. You know whose fault it is that your wife can't put food on the table when you get home from work. You know, even the most traditional, so called traditional families, they can easily take these men's anxiety and their anger and their. And they just funnel it towards people who have even less than them. And that works because for some reason still so many men continue to trust other men with power to tell them what's true.
B
This finally explains to me why people think Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are so cool. Because to me they're just like such horrible people. Objectively, like, it's not even, it's one of these things like I couldn't even have a conversation about. They're just objectively horrific people regardless of what their gender is. But you're saying that they provide aspiration for this type of toxic masculinity that feeds in these fascist economic downturns?
C
Absolutely. It's an hyper individualism that says, you know, everything that I have, I earned and I deserve and I can do with it whatever I want. Which is a mentality that can work at all the different levels of wealth and power.
B
Power.
C
And I think they give, they create a permission structure for that to be the way that a lot of men operate. Even if they have and do have much, much less power and wealth than them.
B
Does a country's economics contribute to this? Like we are capitalistic societies, does that tend to feed it more compared to like maybe communist China? And then if you think about like, like Iceland, with which I think has some of the closest parity in gender that we've seen. As close as you can get. Can you speak to that? Like economic systems of government that feed this or help this?
C
Yeah, I mean I think the, the trope of manhood being defined around the role of being a provider exists across a lot of different economic structures. But what we're seeing in the US with our hyper capitalist structure is that it's not just about being to provide, being able to provide for others. It's a bit about being the richest. So it's not just, it's not pro social even in the same way. Yes, you're supposed to be a provider, but like do you drive a Bugatti? You know, that's what will make you a real man is not putting food on the table, it's being able to flash your wealth around. And of course that's going to make the. That's going to undercut even more a man's ability to feel like he's made it to the economic status he needs to in order to be a man. Of course, it's all set up so that you never really can feel secure that you've achieved that status. But I feel like this just puts that insecurity on steroids.
B
Yeah. What. What's the thing you want?
C
Pun intended.
B
Total pun intended. What's the thing you most want people to take away from your book? Real men on top?
C
I want people to take away that this is not a men versus women issue. Gender and patriarchy is not a men versus women issue. Gender and patriarchy is an inequality and abuses of power issue. And it's an of us having really fixed categories in our minds that are in fact, not fixed at all. Right. Ideas of what a man is constantly changing. You and your neighbor have different. I promise you, you and your neighbor have different ideas of what a man is. And you and someone from 50 years ago, 500 years ago definitely do. But these ideas get naturalized, and men especially are taught that these are definitions of their body that are simultaneously measures of their moral and social work. And that is going to be devastating for men psychologically, and it's going to be devastating for men economically and politically. And I think both men and women need to stop seeing this as well, the other side. Gender is worse for men, gender is worse for women, and always being a contrast and comparison, and instead see this as, no, these are stories that are being used against all of us by those with a lot of money in order to get us to fight with each other instead of pointing the finger where it belongs.
B
What's the antidote to this?
C
I think it is. It starts with looking into ourselves and looking at what stories and images we've absorbed about who we are and who we ought to be. Because I think until we can undo the self constraint and the self blame. You know, to quote one of my favorite philosophers, RuPaul, you can't love yourself. How in the hell are you going to love someone else? And gender and patriarchy is a system that teaches us to constantly be, you know, it's cop. Augusto Boel calls it cops in the head with headquarters and external reality. It teaches to have cops in the head be like, I should look different, I should act different. My muscles should be bigger. My wrinkles should be gone. And so if we're constantly judging ourselves, you know, every judgments we make about others are really judgments about ourselves, right? And So I think until we start to undo that, those existential hooks that gender and patriarchy has in our souls and our spirits, we're not going to be able to undo it at an external, political and social level level.
B
It's just all such fascinating stuff. I want to really promote your book, you guys. What a gift that we have a Yale professor here to teach us. I want to promote their book. It is. Let me put it on this camera. Real Men on Top comes out Monday. Buy it wherever you get your books. And can my audience follow you anywhere online? Do you do social media?
C
I don't do much social media. I do have an Instagram account for the book that my publicist convinced me to create.
B
How healthy of you to not be on social media.
C
I got off Twitter the day that Elon Musk bought it. I got off Facebook when that whole thing with Russia happened. And then Instagram went not that long after.
B
Yeah, I envy that. That's really nice.
C
It's a blessing to have a job right now.
B
So what is the Instagram for? Real Men on Top?
C
It is. I think it's Real Men on Top. Eelmen on Top, which was amazing. It wasn't taken. It was amazing. This title wasn't taken.
B
It's incredible that it wasn't taken because it could mean a lot of different things.
C
I love a double on Top.
B
I do too. I do too. And I also like a real man on Top. All right, that's all we have for today. Robin, thank you so much. Thank you so very much. I just enjoyed it. I love learning things and having discussions like this and they are trying to stamp this out. And I have noticed that every time I have a professor on, our audience just laps it up. We're so gifted that you guys are. We're so lucky that you guys are able to come onto these platforms and teachers us.
C
I would love to come back. Love to be here. Thank you so much.
B
Thank you.
Podcast Summary: IHIP News Episode: Trump Desperate to Keep This Hidden as His Facade Continues to Crumble (May 17, 2026) Hosts: Jennifer Welch & Angie “Pumps” Sullivan Featured Guest: Robin Dembroff, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale, Author of "Real Men on Top"
This episode dives deep into the intersection of gender, patriarchy, and current US political dynamics, focusing particularly on the constructed nature of masculinity and its political weaponization. Hosts Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan interview Robin Dembroff, a Yale philosophy professor and author of the new book "Real Men on Top." The conversation, both personal and theoretical, critiques the Trump regime’s gender politics, explores the harm caused by restrictive gender narratives, and considers solutions for healing a divided society. The tone is candid, humorous, and sharply critical of conservative orthodoxies, especially as they relate to gender and power.
Engaging, insightful, and laced with both humor and gravitas, this episode offers a roadmap for understanding how gender politics fuel our cultural divides—and how we might start healing them.