Photo: Office of Governor Walz & Lt. Governor Flanagan via Wikimedia Commons
Tim Walz and Kamala Harris
Tim Walz and Kamala Harris
Upon the announcement of Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, as Kamala Harris’s vice presidential running mate, the internet went wild. It did not take long for the Trump campaign to latch onto the lunatic left insults, calling Walz Tampon Tim. Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler approved of this moniker, tweeting “That one word tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about Tim Walz’s dangerous radicalism.”
This insult came on the heels of the National Association of Black Journalists meeting in Chicago, where Republican nominee Donald Trump shrugged his shoulders and commented that Vice President Kamala Harris “all of a sudden … became a Black person,” claiming that he had known Harris “indirectly” for a number of years, but never as a Black woman. Trump also attacked the moderator—a woman of color—as rude and working for fake news.
The personal attacks on Harris are nothing new. She has been called a “ding-dong,” criticized on video mash-ups for laughing too easily, and critiqued as “not a particularly nice person.” She has been interrupted in Senate hearings and in the vice presidential debate. She is a woman in a long line of professional women who have been attacked because of their gender.
Walz, on the other hand, was a man previously unknown to many people outside the Midwest; the scramble to insult him butted heads with his proudly uncool Dad vibes and social studies teacher energy, which charmed and delighted people immediately.
Sexist, Tasteless GOP
These comments expose how the Republican party plans to handle the Harris-Walz ticket: feminizing Walz and reducing Harris to her racial identity and labeling her a “token DEI hire.” The attacks draw on the long history of the power of the patriarchy, particularly the patriarchy of Whiteness, to define who other people are and decide their value, an attack that particularly derides women. The nucleus of these attacks relies on the premise that women are less than and that feminized labels are powerful insults. It will not be surprising when the GOP portrays Harris as “a barren cat lady and a welfare queen who has slept her way to the top.”
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The remarks, while racist, sexist, and tasteless, are also unoriginal. The attacks against Harris echo Trump’s birther attacks on Nikki Haley in January of this year, on Ted Cruz in 2016, and of course, on Barack Obama in 2011. (For the record, Haley was born in South Carolina to immigrant parents; Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother; and Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and Kenyan father.) They are also in line with Trump’s attacks on four congresswomen of color, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, telling them to go back to the crime-infested places from which they came. (For the record, only Omar, a Somalian refugee, was born outside the United States.) Further, they match his attacks on Black district attorneys, calling them animals and rabid. Prior to questioning Harris’s background, the most that Trump seemed capable of was repeatedly and intentionally mispronouncing her name.
These tired barbs are double-edged: They will undoubtedly energize the Republican base, while simultaneously, rallying the Democratic youth vote. Since Harris’s campaign began, she has received tremendous social media support; young influencers have created TikTok edits for her that have gone so viral that her team has emulated the format on her official social media accounts. Walz became immediately popular and an instant meme; social media users swiftly quipped that all daddy issues are now solved and commented, “Wow, I miss politicians making sense. It’s so refreshing.”
Childish Name-calling
The insults lobbed at Harris, the ease with which men interrupt her, and the childish name-calling are all executed so seamlessly because she is a woman of color. The intersection of gender and class primes her for character attacks. Male public figures are also interrupted, are not very nice people, possibly laugh too much, and can be called inane names, but they are not attacked in such a way because they are men. Instead, the attacks on men feminize them, or, in the case of Walz, reduce them to products associated with mysterious and perplexing parts of women’s bodies.
Harris is attacked in precisely this manner because she is a woman and Walz is attacked as a woman. According to Trump, her suddenly “becoming Black” gives her a calculated and unfair advantage in the upcoming election. With this comment, he has played his hand. He is clearly fearful of, and intimidated by, Harris. He cannot attack her on policies, so he resorts to character attacks. In other words, he employs the worn-out tools of the patriarchy, which are no longer blithely overlooked. Trump will undoubtedly continue to attack Harris because she is a woman of color, but it is no longer an effective tactic. Harris will in no way be flabbergasted into silence.
We argue the gendered insults lobbed at them can be re-framed as compliments. Both Harris and Walz are committed to women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. Harris is the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic and is not afraid to use the word “abortion” when talking about women’s health. As governor, Walz signed into law a bill that required public schools to provide menstrual products, free, to students in fourth through twelfth grade. The state would pay about $2 per pupil, per year, for the supplies. The bill grew out of years of student advocacy and made Minnesota one of 28 states that provide free menstrual products for students.
The conservative right’s “Tampon Tim” moniker rests in a quibble with the wording of the law, which states the products will be available for “all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students.” This lack of gender specificity makes Walz a radical liberal. In actuality, the language leaves the decision of where to place menstrual products at each school’s discretion. In addition, it is but one small section of an enormous bill, which provided high school students with other useful resources such as guaranteed personal finance education.
Period Poverty
Here’s why we like “Tampon Tim”: One, it centers the word tampon, inviting us all to learn more about the challenges posed to all humans who menstruate, as well as those who share expenses with a menstruating person, including the high cost of period products. Period poverty is a serious issue and the struggle to afford period products—which a good portion of the population will need to purchase regularly for around three decades of their lives—has negative ripple effects on what choices a person might need to make about other needs, such as food or the electric bill. Two, it forces all of us to say an uncomfortable word, one that conjures up age-old fears about women and their bodies. Three, it reminds us that “women” is not a homogenous category and we need to think more carefully and conscientiously about the all-too-often shame associated with menstruation or its absence.
While the right intends to use these attacks as insults, we see them as compliments and aim to reclaim their power. This moment in time, and the evocation of tampons, may go down in history as the death knell of the power of patriarchy: Insulting women and employing insults ascribed to women’s bodies highlights those who center and protect women and those who respect women’s roles in society. This centering dismantles some of the fears and discomforts around “women’s issues” by illustrating that they are actually human issues.
Allison Butler is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Chair in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She serves as the Vice President of the Media Freedom Foundation. Butler is currently working on a manuscript that explores how women are centered, and silenced, in pop culture, for the Censored Press.
Paulina Ortiz-Orive is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she double-majored in Communication and Journalism. She is currently a research assistant as part of the RISE (Remedying Inequity Through Student Engagement) program and will pursue the Isenberg School of Management’s Business Analytics MA program beginning in Fall 2024.
