The concern has been there all along, but now it’s being talked about openly: Are some men reluctant to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris because she’s a woman?

The vice president rarely references her gender on the campaign trail, but her key supporters are starting to make more direct appeals to male voters, hoping to overcome ingrained sexism — or just plain apathy — as election day looms.

Former President Barack Obama said he was speaking to Black men in particular when he suggested some “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Actor Ed O’Neill implores in a new ad, “Be a man: Vote for a woman.” And Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is helping lead “Hombres con Harris ” — Men With Harris — to help energize Hispanic male voters.

“I think, in many ways, it’s other people who need to be the messenger,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. She added of appeals to men by the vice president, “I don’t think she can get up and say, ”Shame on you.”’

“It’s sad, but I think she needs these outside validators,” Walsh said.

The clearest example is Obama who, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on Thursday night, stopped by a Harris campaign field office to “speak some truths,” especially for some Black male voters who aren’t enthusiastic about supporting the vice president.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” he said, adding: “You’re thinking about sitting out, or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

Keith Edmondson, a 63-year-old retiree from the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert who is Black and attended a Harris rally in Arizona on Thursday night, said he’s worried about whether young Black men will turn out for Harris. He said he’s trying to convince his three grandsons to vote for Harris even though their father, Edmondson’s son, is a supporter of the vice president’s opponent, Republican Donald Trump.

“There are more Black folks supporting Donald Trump than I thought,” he said, blaming what he called misinformation surrounding Harris’ background as a former prosecutor.

Trump has a long pattern of disparaging women. At a recent rally in Reading, Pa., Trump reacted to Harris’ appearance on ABC’s “The View” by saying about the former California attorney general and senator, “People are realizing she’s a dumb person.” He also criticized on his social media site “the dumb women” who host the ABC program.

Next week, Trump is set to participate in a Fox News Channel town hall focusing on issues affecting women. But he has more often prioritized doing interviews with podcasts that are popular with younger men. The former president entered the Republican convention this summer to the sounds of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World” and the proceedings were built around promoting masculine themes, including featuring personalities from the wrestling world.

The Lincoln Project, a Republican group that opposes Trump and often produces ads meant to irk him, produced an online spot voiced by O’Neill, of “Modern Family” fame, that urges men, when it comes to Harris, to “let her lead” before concluding: “Be a man: Vote for a woman.”

His message was far more direct than Harris often is. Despite making history as the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, she hasn’t publicly embraced the trailblazing nature of her candidacy like Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Instead, Harris used this summer’s Democratic convention to lean heavily into her experience as a prosecutor and to promise that the U.S. has “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

“She is speaking, in those moments, to the people that may well not be comfortable, or trusting, that a woman can lead at this highest level,” Walsh said.

In 2020, women made up a bigger share of the electorate than men. According to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of that cycle’s voters, 53% of voters were women and 47% were men. And in that election, men were more likely to support Trump, while women voters were more likely to support Biden.

Polling suggests that electing a woman president isn’t a top priority for men or women, but men in particular don’t see it as important.

A Pew Research Center poll released last year asked Americans how important it is that a woman be elected president in their lifetime, and found that only 18% of U.S. adults said this is extremely or very important to them. Some 64% said it is not too important or not at all so, or that the president’s gender doesn’t matter.

The same poll showed that 73% of men and 57% of women said the issue was not too important, not at all important or that the president’s gender doesn’t matter.

Among some key demographics, Harris’ support from men doesn’t keep up with levels among women. A majority of Latinas have a positive opinion of Harris and a negative view of Trump, but Latino men are more divided on both candidates, according to a poll released Friday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The Harris campaign rejects the notion that Harris herself can’t deliver a winning message to male voters. Instead, it argues, she is working to reach them personally and also complementing efforts by top male supporters and campaign advertising pushes aimed at things like top sporting events.

Rather than simply appealing to masculinity, the campaign says, it is presenting arguments that can appeal to men built around key issues, like the economy.

Harris is on the digital cover of the latest issue of Vogue magazine and recently taped an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, which is most popular with younger women. But she’s also sitting next week for a town hall hosted by popular radio personality Charlamagne tha God.

Senior Harris campaign officials nonetheless admit to being worried about Trump’s support among men — including white, Latino and Black Americans. They note Trump’s brash appeals to “bro” culture have resonated with some, especially young voters — and made some would-be voters more likely to support Trump or sit out the election.

In response, aides have urged the vice president to explicitly mention cryptocurrency in her speeches and interviews, knowing its salience among men. Trump has a crypto venture with his family, though he believes that it should be more lightly regulated than she does. The Harris campaign also is expected to launch an aggressive effort to have the vice president and Walz appear in male-skewing media in the race’s closing weeks.

Walz already has done some of that, helping launch the Hombres group in Arizona and having one of his rallies there livestreamed via Twitch — a forum popular with younger, largely male gamers — as a streamer on the site played “World of Warcraft” and offered commentary on the event.

Harris’ running mate also is attending a Friday football game in Mankato, Minn., where he once was an assistant coach, and plans a hunting outing this weekend.

During a “White Dudes for Harris” fundraising call this summer, Walz said this about the prospect of defeating Trump: “How often in the world do you make that bastard wake up afterward and know that a Black woman kicked his ass?”

Weissert and Miller write for the Associated Press. AP writers Anna Johnson in Chandler, Ariz., and Josh Boak and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.