“Heteropessimism” is all the rage — but really, there’s never been a better time to be looking for love. Go on, be a hetero-optimist.

“Heteropessimism” is all the rage — but really, there’s never been a better time to be looking for love. Go on, be a hetero-optimist.

The wife of Graham Platner, the Democratic candidate in Maine, told the campaign he had sent sexual messages to other women.

© Sophie Park for The New York Times

In the wake of #MeToo, changing workplace norms left many men unsure of how to behave. But was that confusion genuine — or just an excuse? On “The Opinions,” Frederick Joseph argues that many men became “childlike during that time.”

Films like “Inside Out” raise questions about how we portray boys’ emotional lives. “It just felt like every time that a male character appeared onscreen in that movie, they were an emotional idiot,” Ruth Whippman says on “The Opinions.”

Most states have had a woman serve as governor, but California is in the minority despite its progressive-minded electorate. Women who have reached the top elsewhere saw familiar roadblocks.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

© Illustration by The New York Times; photo by Raul Arboleta/Getty

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today.

The moms are not happy.

More and more, smaller families and a more manageable work-life balance are the goal.

Responses to a guest essay by Molly Jong-Fast, “I Tried to Become My Mother and Ended Up Becoming Myself.” Also: President Trump in China; a gift to Big Tobacco.

Some of this country’s most prominent girl bosses sound like they don’t even know how to read the room.

M. Gessen and Rachel Louise Snyder on the parallels between authoritarianism and domestic violence.

Readers offer their theories in response to a guest essay.