I'm reading the short story collection rejection by Tony Tula Tamudi.

The first story is called The Feminist, and it follows a young straight man as he tries to figure out how to attract the affections of women who keep relegating him to the friend zone.

He tries aligning with them.

He parrots back what he learns in his gender studies classes to them. He eyes the men with wider shoulders with resentment. He feels stuck. He doesn't seem to know how to cut between what women say they want from men and what they actually go for. He doesn't know how to be.

I also read Ruth Whitman's book Boyhood last fall,

which is all about how she doesn't know how to be a parent of three boys.

How do you push them and long for them to thrive and also teach them how to make room for everybody else?

There's not obviously one answer.

And it's confusing because all the things we want from men can curdle into something we don't.

Like confidence can become arrogance.

Tenderness can be seen as weakness.

Americans are confused about manhood.

The Pew Center just recently asked how our culture views masculine or manly men,

and a quarter of Americans said people view them negatively.

40% said we view them positively,

and a third that neither positive nor negative.

We're pretty split. More men thought Americans viewed manly men negatively. More women thought they viewed manly men positively. Six and a half years ago, we asked our listeners how they think about manhood, how to be, what's hard, where they feel lost. It was during the first Trump presidency.

And we're sharing that episode with you again because it seems to be something we've been

scratching at over the last few months. Like Helena Rain and I talked about baby girl and

its fantasy of a dominating young man. Gary Goldman told me about the scars of bullying from other

men. We heard from male caregivers about the deep, tender work of being someone's primary

carer and its costs. So it felt right to share again what we heard from a bunch of you, our

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