"Real Men" is a song by English singer-songwriter and musician Joe Jackson, released in 1982 as the lead single from his fifth studio album, Night and Day.

[6] Jackson believed the lyrics remained relevant years later, when he told BBC Radio 2 in 1998, "I still think very much people don't know what a real man is anymore.

[8] Upon its release as a single, Neil Tennant, writing for Smash Hits, considered "Real Men" as a return to the "small-guy bitterness" of Jackson's early records.

[9] Mike Nicholls of Record Mirror called it a "portentous thought-provoking ditty" with a "nice tune", "mighty strum-und-drang production" and lyrics "intoned with so much of his usual boring venom one loses the drift of whatever the hell it is he's on about".

[13] Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone commented that it "solemnly blends string chamber music with echoes of Phil Spector, as Jackson sorts out the contradiction between the traditional male role of warrior and today's macho gay culture".