Opinion
They called him ‘Tampon Tim’ as an insult. It backfired
Jacqueline Maley
Columnist and senior journalistListen up, fellas: there is a new test of secure masculinity. Can your sense of manliness hold up when your face is superimposed on a packet of tampons, and your name linked, in a catchy slogan, to this most discreet of feminine hygiene products?
If you’re “Tampon Tim”, aka Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the newly announced vice-presidential candidate for Kamala Harris, the answer is yes.
Republican opponents have given him this moniker in an effort to insult him. It is a reference to the policy he enacted as governor to put free period products in school bathrooms. But it has backfired. While Walz’s would-be detractors seem to think periods are something icky and embarrassing, the stuff of sniggering schoolboys, the rest of the world has moved on.
As many commentators have pointed out, menstrual equality is actually one of the few issues in the United States’ polarised politics to enjoy bipartisan support. In 30 US states including Illinois, Florida and Connecticut, Democrats and Republicans have teamed up to remove sales tax on period products. And no fewer than 28 states, including Walz’s Minnesota, now provide menstrual products free to schoolkids. That includes many Republican-led states.
Not everyone can afford period products, and it is well-accepted that disadvantaged girls can have their education disrupted by menstruation if not properly supported. Giving girls free menstrual products is a relatively low-cost way to uphold their right to participate in school and extracurricular activities like sports. Despite the misogynistic rhetoric of MAGA Republicans, and their creepy obsession with female fertility, they realise they need to do something to mitigate the impression that they have declared war on women.
So, Tampon Tim can wear his badge with pride. The term “toxic masculinity” gets thrown around a lot these days, perhaps, I sometimes think, to the detriment of boys who are seeking to form their identity in a healthy way. This week, as I read about Governor Walz and watched his speeches and the folksy video clips of him on social media, it struck me that he is an incredible model of positive masculinity.
One that stands in terrific contrast to the sneering, domineering and misogynistic style of Donald Trump. Not to mention Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, whose preoccupation with female breeding is Taliban-esque. This is a guy who opposed a health department regulation restricting access by law enforcement authorities to women’s health records. He believes prosecutors should be able to search women’s private health information to enforce anti-abortion laws.
By contrast, Walz seems to embody the relaxed “live and let live” style of America’s better angels. He is calm, secure, self-deprecating and has a gift for verbally taking down his opponents. He was a schoolteacher before entering politics. Teaching is one of the most highly feminised professions, and conservatives, in particular, often lament the lack of male school teachers, saying that boys need them for positive role-modelling.
Walz was that role model. He was even a sports coach, the most American-pie of social positions. He has been described as oozing “mid-Western dad energy”. Australia’s Scott Morrison styled himself, rather self-consciously, as a “daggy dad”. Walz appears to be the real deal.
The politics of masculinity is an urgent issue. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the disaffection of some young men with the advancement of women’s rights is linked to extremist ideologies, and growing partisanship within mainstream politics.
This week in Australia, spy agency ASIO lifted the national terror threat level from “possible” to “probable”. But, as ASIO boss Mike Burgess explained, the threat is not easy to isolate, nor discrete within the community. It is, as my colleague Matthew Knott described it, “diffuse and inchoate”.
Once, Islamic extremism was the biggest risk to public safety. Now, it is a proliferation of belief-systems which are illogical but which share the idea that “violence is permissible”, says Burgess. It is the prospect of a male terrorist carrying out a lone-wolf attack inspired by a grab-bag of internet conspiracy theories and hate-driven ideologies.
The sense of grievance might be grounded in some reality – Burgess gave the hypothetical example of a young man unable to crack the housing market. Blaming immigrants, he carries out an attack.
This grievance is turbocharged by loneliness and social isolation, a common problem for men and boys. Turning to the internet to connect, the young man falls into an algorithm-charged silo of “manosphere” content, conspiracy theories and anti-immigrant, far-right rubbish. Perhaps with a dash of some anti-government fulmination, and maybe an anti-science, anti-vaccine element thrown in.
Burgess said he was particularly concerned about “accelerationists”, a far-right ideological group who “believe in white supremacy and don’t like the way the world is run today, and want its downfall”.
The idea that whites are being “replaced” by immigrants shares much of the defensive paranoia of misogyny – the fear that women’s rights have “gone too far”, at the expense of men. According to this world-view, if others advance, it is to the detriment of white men.
As a feminist, I struggle with how much understanding we should offer men who worry that women or immigrants are taking their jobs, their houses, their rightful place in society. Because such men are simply being asked to share things which have, historically, been their birthright.
I am reminded of the masterful story by Irish writer Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day, which was called Misogynie in its French translation. The protagonist is a lonely, bitter man recently dumped by his fiancée. When they fight over his lack of contribution to their relationship, she says to him: “You know what is at the heart of misogyny? When it comes down to it? … It’s simply about not giving.”
If you feel besieged by economic disadvantage and social exclusion, generosity is impossible. That’s why positive political role models like Tim Walz are important. He shows young men, in particular, that they have nothing to fear by giving things to women – be they tampons, reproductive rights, or just some basic respect.
Jacqueline Maley is a columnist and senior writer.
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