Midlife Lessons: I’m Just a Man—How Can I Ever Understand Women?

Being a father to two daughters has left him feeling both sympathetic and clueless about the female experience. Society expects him to care about their lives, but he will never truly understand what it's like to be a girl. This seeming impossibility of male understanding fuels the gender debate. He jests that insisting a man should understand something women inherently know is a classic female trap.

Even so, he remains happy to have two daughters and doesn't regret it. The transition from childhood to adolescence has pulled him out of the loop, leaving him feeling out of touch. While his wife is the high priestess of his daughters' rite of passage, he tries to make an effort. The question of what defines a woman remains contentious, even driving some to vilify figures like JK Rowling.

Despite his exclusion from the specifics of womanhood, he recognizes the importance of the topic, especially for his wife and daughters, and fears the implications of a vague definition of womanhood.