Professor Robin Dembroff will be visiting the Institute in April 2023.  

The St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies is delighted to announce that Professor Robin Dembroff will be visiting the Institute in April 2023.  

Robin Dembroff is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. They work on feminist and LGBTQ philosophy, with a focus on what gender is and how it shapes social outcomes, experiences, and ways of knowing. Dembroff’s current book project, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Weaponizes Gender, is under contract with Oxford University Press, with a planned release in 2024. Their work has been published in professional journals spanning three disciplines, and appears in popular venues including Scientific American, The Boston Review, TIME, The Guardian, and The New York Review of Books. In 2019, Dembroff co-authored an amicus brief in support of gay and transgender employees, which was submitted to the United States Supreme Court on behalf of over seventy philosophy professors. They have given over a dozen keynotes and named lectures, and will be a panelist for the 2023 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Michigan. In 2022, Britannica named Dembroff one of twenty “shapers of the future” under 40 in academia and ideas.

These are the activities with Professor Dembroff

The Inaugural St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies Lecture  

April 18, 4pm-6pm, St Salvator’s Quad School II 

‘Real Men on Top’ 

Abstract: Most people think that patriarchy is a matter of men versus women. Patriarchy is widely understood as a system that works to privilege men while subordinating women. In this talk, Dembroff offers an alternative paradigm. Through this paradigm, patriarchy is not taken to privilege men in general. Instead, patriarchy is seen as reproducing the wealth and influence of men who conform to society’s most highly valued stereotypes of manhood. Patriarchy puts these “Real Men” on top. 

Arché Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory Seminar  

April 19, 3pm-5pm, Edgecliffe G03 

‘Reimagining Transgender’ 

Abstract: ‘Transgender’ often is understood either as the name of an identity, or else as a term covering the full spectrum of gender nonconformity. In “Reimagining Transgender”, Dembroff advocates for recentering our understanding of ‘transgender’ on the experience of costly and willful gender deviance. 

 St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies Graduate Student Masterclass  

April 20, 11am-2pm, Old Burgh School Lumsden Room 

‘The Metaphysics of Injustice’ 

Abstract: Patriarchy and white supremacy are unjust social systems, constituted by social practices that produce systemic gender injustice and racial injustice. Intersectional theory highlights that these forms of injustice are inseparable, but what does this mean? In this paper, Dembroff suggests that intersectional injustice is best explained by the overlap of unjust systems, or when unjust systems are co-constituted. They argue that, despite this overlap, unjust systems can be individuated in terms of their essential ideologies.  

This masterclass is registration only. Places are still available, so to register please email the organiser: Dr Jade Fletcher [email protected]. Lunch will be provided.