| If Kamala Harris becomes the first woman elected President of the United States, it will be a historic moment in the nation’s history. Yet much of the conversation about the Presidential race has centered on Donald Trump, not only on his attacks on decency and democracy but on the kind of man that he is and that he attracts. As Emily Witt has written, paraphrasing Michelle Obama, “in an election to potentially elect the first woman President, in which women’s health care and very lives are at stake, so much of recent discourse has focussed on how to uphold the ego of the American man, and which vision of masculinity should prevail in the nation.” The role and desires of male voters were central to the Republican campaign, even before Joe Biden left the race. In the course of our coverage of this unprecedented election season, Jay Caspian Kang wrote about angry young men; John Cassidy considered the crypto bros voting for Trump; and Brady Brickner-Wood broke down Trump’s appeal to terminally online men. As men appear to lurch rightward, female voters have rallied behind the Democratic ticket. Eliza Griswold and Jazmine Hughes have reported on the support Harris is receiving from swing-state strangers and Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters, respectively. The fight to restore and extend reproductive rights has been key to Harris’s messaging, as more draconian limits on abortion loom. Our writers have explored how the very idea of family, and the way we define it, has seeped so deeply into politics; Molly Fischer dissected duelling Party visions of fatherhood and Jessica Winter unpacked J. D. Vance’s story of his background. And on the Political Scene podcast, our correspondents discussed the problems that the gender divide creates between husbands and wives. Eight years ago, the last time a woman faced off against Donald Trump in the general election, gender and history-making were at the forefront of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. She wore a white pants suit when she accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination, an homage to the suffragists. And, when it seemed that she would become the first woman President, she prepared to give her victory speech under a metaphorical and literal glass ceiling at the Javits Center, in New York City. By contrast, the Harris campaign has deëmphasized gender in the 2024 election. As Molly Fischer writes in our live blog today, “her campaign has offered the implicit suggestion that a woman might run for President without particular emphasis on womanhood—a style that has contrasted with the fevered masculinity presented by her opponents.” We’ll soon find out whether the electorate really is more divided than ever along gender lines. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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