In their first go-round in attacking Gov. Tim Walz, the Donald Trump campaign bet that maximum hyperbole could hoodwink people into dismissing the "chill dad" demeanor of Vice President Kamala Harris's new running mate. "Tim Walz will unleash hell on Earth!" a Trump fundraising email said of the former high school football coach turned top Minnesota executive. The campaign followed up with a barrage of emails describing the affable Midwesterner as "Dangerously Liberal," in clear hopes that brute repetition would distract voters from the fact that Walz reads more like "Ted Lasso" than "Che Guevara."
The strategy had only gone on for a few hours, however, when the extremely online MAGA forces, who control the campaign to the extent of making one of their own Trump's running mate, got restless. Even they could tell that apocalyptic language about a guy cracking dad jokes is a hard sell. But it's not like the miscreants of MAGA social media had a better idea, mind you. Instead, they turned to their own weird hang-ups over gender and sexuality, attacking Walz for caring about the health and well-being of students in school.
"There is a genuine hunger out there — I see it in many of my students — for some kind of positive model of how to be in the world as a straight white dude."
Dubbing Walz "Tampon Tim" appears to have been kicked off by popular right-wing troll Phillip Buchanan, who goes by the Twitter handle "Catturd." As documented by Media Matters, the slur took off rapidly across the MAGA internet, with users photoshopping pictures of Walz surrounded by tampons. Within an hour, it had been informally picked up by the Trump campaign, with longtime Trump aide and speechwriter Stephen Miller amplifying the nickname. It all appeared to be a race to prove that MAGA is full of weirdoes with deep psychological issues.
The impetus for this freakout was a bill signed by Walz last year requiring public schools to make menstrual products available to students at no charge. The bill was the result of student activists and medical professionals making irrefutable arguments such as, "Teenagers don’t know when they will get their period," and "We cannot learn while we are leaking." Schools have toilet paper and school nurses, so why not provide this small amount of help? No one benefits, except the bullies, if students get blood on their clothes and on the furniture.
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This hysterical reaction to a banal student health program speaks to MAGA misogyny, but also to the twisted view of masculinity at the heart of Trumpism. As Walz said in the viral clip where he also deemed MAGA Republicans "weird," it's like they're all running for "the he-man woman haters’ club." In the Trumpist milieu, hate is what makes someone a "real" man: hate of racial minorities, of LGBTQ people, and especially of women. In this view, "real" men don't accept menstruation as a normal fact of life. Instead, men are expected to lose their minds at the mere mention of periods. One MAGA influencer even tweeted, "no holes left unfilled," as if using a tampon is an exotic sexual practice instead of basic hygiene.
Walz, in comparison, has an easygoing masculinity, one that is about love and not hate. He's a guy's guy, from his dad jokes to his career coaching football to his enthusiastic promotion of the basics of car maintenance. In one viral clip, Walz offers a "pro tip of the day" on how to fix a Ford headlight in 5 minutes with a $7.99 part.
As a male friend texted me, "there is a genuine hunger out there — I see it in many of my students — for some kind of positive model of how to be in the world as a straight white dude." Trump and his acolytes offer an exhausting and harmful model, that is entitled, rage-fueled, and its heart, deeply insecure. Walz, however, seems comfortable in his own skin. He shows there's nothing wrong with liking football and fixing your own car — both are fine uses of a person's time! All that "traditional man" stuff can live quite comfortably with "woke" ideas like "women are people, too." As Walz has persuasively posited, his is the more normal way to be. It's the MAGA try-hards who are the weirdoes. The phrase "tonic masculinity" — in opposition to the toxic masculinity of MAGA — soon started to spread online.
Tuesday, I went to two Philadelphia campaign events: A small gathering for Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, and then the smash hit rally later that day for Harris and Walz. It certainly underscored this normal vs. weird narrative the Harris campaign is pushing. The people who showed up at the Harris rally came in clusters, some families and some groups of friends, all of different ages, races and attires. At the Vance event, however, there were an unusual number of supporters who showed up by themselves, and nearly all were white men. The mood was a sour one. The audience only really got going when Vance started talking about "the media," which was taken as an opportunity to turn to the journalists in attendance and shriek hate at us.
Certainly, throwing a tantrum because a middle-aged male governor publicly acknowledged a basic fact of biology does little to discourage the "incel" image of MAGA men. Part of adulthood, for cis men and all the rest of us, is learning comfort with the biological differences we have from other people. It's childish and weird to act like even looking at a tampon box will emasculate you. Most of these MAGA guys like to talk a big game about their heterosexuality, but this behavior betrays a fear of vaginas that is incompatible with their hetero-hype. But this isn't just about sex. Being chill about menstruation is crucial if men want to be fathers of daughters, friends of women, or just people who wish to navigate the world comfortably, as it's heavily populated with people who get periods.
Perhaps recognizing this, the Trump campaign tried to pretend the "Tampon Tim" thing was about trans identities. They complained that the program covers all students who menstruate, even if they identify as trans boys or non-binary. But, of course, this objection doesn't make sense. "No one has to bleed on their clothes" is a good rule for all students, regardless of whether Republicans approve of the names and pronouns they choose to use.
All this whining about the pronouns and menstrual cycles of kids they don't even know only serves to prove that, for all the tough guy talk of Trump and his fanboys, the MAGA movement embraces a masculinity built on cowardice. Their entire worldview is shaped by fear. These supposedly strong men flinch in terror of literal schoolchildren whose gender self-presentation falls outside their rigid boundaries. They're so unsettled by differences that they can't handle thinking about how a uterus works. (Though they also feel entitled to tell those with uteruses what they're allowed to do with them.) These are men so afraid of intellectual challenge that even imagining what it might be like to be female or gay or trans causes them to shut down. They get so bound up in fear of emasculation that they turn into alienated weirdoes.
Walz, with his cheerful goober dad persona, offers a view of masculinity that is far tougher than that displayed by even the most steroid-inflated men of the MAGA world. He's a guy who isn't afraid of basic empathy. A man who is confident enough not to run from those who are different. A man so sure of himself that he can let a woman be his boss without acting threatened by her power. That's what real strength looks like. No wonder a weak man like Trump thinks Walz is the apocalypse.
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