Thank you for sharing this, Courtney.

It’s funny. I always joke that I can’t write men. And I do have projects with men—but I’ve found what you’ve found. The men I write tend to fit outside of patriarchal norms—or sometimes are very purposely situated within them.

A lot of my male characters are “women but make them men” or idealized versions of men. Not because these men don’t exist, but because we rarely see them on film and so that’s how they get contextualized. (We could also use more in real life, but that’s another story.)

I’m gonna shout out Cameron Andrews here because his latest film deals with these issues. We get a main male character dealing with his vulnerability and dealing with the effects of a toxic (at best) relationship.