Tim Walz becomes the target of the right’s gender-centric criticism

Elif Ozturk was a student at Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, Minn., when she contacted state Rep. Sandra Feist (D) to discuss something about which she felt strongly: the availability of menstrual products at schools. Ozturk had been advocating for making such products available since middle school, and Feist was responsive. The legislator introduced a bill that would provide state-funded tampons, pads and other products in public-school restrooms.

“We do not expect students to bring their own toilet paper to school,” Feist and other legislators wrote in an essay for the Star Tribune as the bill was under consideration. “We shouldn’t assume that all students can afford and provide their own menstrual necessities either.”

As the bill made its way through the legislature, its gender-neutrality spurred pushback. The language in the bill didn’t specify that the products should only be in girls’ restrooms because, as Feist argued, “students who menstruate who are not female face even greater barriers to asking for those products when they need them.” An effort to amend the bill to restrict the availability of the products was rejected.

The proposal passed the legislature as part of a broader school-funding measure. And in May 2023 it was one of several budget-related bills signed into law by Minnesota’s governor. The governor’s news release about the signing didn’t mention the funding for menstrual products but instead noted that it “establishes 5,200 new Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten Seats, decreases the Special Education Cross Subsidy by 50%, and provides unemployment insurance for hourly school workers. The bill also provides funding for schools to hire mental health professionals and counselors and improves resources for American Indian students.”

In fact, the governor — Tim Walz, now Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate — does not appear to have ever weighed in on Feist’s bill, much less on the bit of controversy about the bathrooms to which it should apply. He just signed the budget bill that the legislature had put on his desk.

Despite that, the online right granted Walz a new nickname in the hours after Harris selected him: Tampon Tim. There was much giddiness about the name, what with the alliteration and its utility in drawing attention to this issue — specifically, to the idea that Walz is egregiously sympathetic to trans issues or to women or both.

It was, fundamentally, a paroxysm of excitement about being able to portray the Democratic ticket as anti-masculine without having to use Harris’s gender as the vehicle.

The extent to which the presidential race has aligned with the gender divide is by now obvious. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson adeptly outlined it just last month. Walz himself characterized the GOP as forming a new iteration of the “He-Man Woman Haters Club,” a reference that won’t help close the generational gap even if it aids with the gender gap.

The right’s nickname wasn’t “Trans Tim” but “Tampon Tim,” encouraging guffaws at the association of a man with a product associated with women. It is, for the time being, still unacceptable to say that you won’t vote for Harris because she’s a woman. But you can highlight ways in which you think Democrats are effeminate.

One of the most direct articulations of the approach Republicans are taking was offered by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in an interview earlier this year. Sure, maybe the party’s embrace of machismo and disparagement of non-masculinity wouldn’t appeal to women, but there was an upside.

“For every Karen we lose,” Gaetz said, referring to Donald Trump’s base of support, “there’s a Julio and a Jamal willing to sign up for the MAGA movement.”

In other words, if Trump sheds White female supporters out of concern over, say, mockery of making menstrual products available to students — so what? There are Hispanic and Black men who come on board. (If you’ll forgive the sanitizing of Gaetz’s cringey formulation.)

The problem with that is that there are a lot more White women than Black or Hispanic men. Analysis of 2023 Census Bureau data suggests that there are nearly twice as many, in fact.

Polling conducted by Marist University for NPR and PBS NewsHour in June and this month shows that the gender divide has grown slightly since early June and the replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket. Trump had a seven-point edge with men over Biden and has a nine-point one over Harris. But Harris has a 13-point edge with women, compared to the seven-point advantage Biden had.

Harris has also narrowed the gap with White voters while holding steady with non-White voters. Those voters are much more receptive to Trump in Marist’s polling than they were in 2020 (according to Pew Research Center’s analysis) but Harris has gained enormous ground with White women who don’t have a college degree.

Trump led Biden with non-college educated White women by 32 points, similar to the 29-point edge he had in 2020. Now, Marist has Trump leading Harris by only 15 points. About half of White women don’t have a degree; the group is about as large as the non-White male population.

It’s not as though the “Tampon Tim” thing is a deliberate effort to court specific voters, obviously. It is, instead, the product of a right-wing conversational bubble in which the championing of masculinity and the policing of gender norms play a central role. It’s a reflection of a strain of rhetoric on the right, one that smears Walz as effeminate because it views anything short of the right’s vision of masculinity as weakness and a point of attack.

Then you step back and realize what the attack actually consists of. The governor signed a school-funding bill that included a new policy that allowed students to have access to menstrual products that will hopefully make it easier for them to stay in school. It’s like the “controversy” over Minnesota’s new flag, but, somehow, with less self-awareness from Walz’s critics.