At first, the pod was concerned that it had made a terrible mistake. The natives had not reacted well to their change in biology, and panic had overtaken most of its nation-states. Eventually, however, cultural change unfolded mostly in line with the Pod's intentions. Mostly. While, as the Pod had intended, females took over the day to day running of human society, males were not relegated to the domestic sphere. Instead, unable to shake its patriarchal past, humanity raised them up into a special privileged caste. Males were expected to fuck, obviously. That was their *primary* role. But in addition, they were expected to participate in performative displays of manliness for the entertainment of earth's women. Mock battles based on various eras of military history, professional sports, and in a few countries even competitive sex were all must-see TV for the female masses. Every boy dreamed not just of being a man, but being one of the best men.
Each nation had a different process for choosing its men. In nations that had been particularly patriarchal before the change, like Saudi Arabia, elite male families still dominated the ruling class, and they would rig competition in favor of their chosen sons. In some countries, there was no process at all, and young men would change or not simply based on how they stacked up in their local community. Sam's home nation of Canada, however, had a standardized process, in which all men between the ages of 18 and 21 would be grouped into pods of 10(at random to ensure genetic diversity), and would live together in those groups while receiving a college education until nature took its course and only one of them remained male. Sam had just been assigned to his new school out on the coast, near Halifax, and was determined to be the man of his pod by the end of his time there.