Gus Walz, the 17-year-old son of Minnesota Governor and Democratic nominee for vice president Tim Walz, stole the show at the Democratic National Convention last month. As his father was speaking, Gus gave him a standing ovation, tears streaming down his face as he placed his hand over his heart and yelled, “That’s my dad.”
Tim had been talking about the fertility treatments he and his wife, Gwen, received to conceive his daughter Hope. “Hope, Gus and Gwen,” Governor Walz said to his family, “you are my entire world, and I love you.”
The response from the conservative side of the aisle was to ridicule this neurodivergent teenager, who lives with a nonverbal learning disorder and other challenges. The critics’ focus was on Gus’ violation of the masculine norm of suppressing emotions.
Right-wing author and provocateur Ann Coulter wrote on X, “Talk about weird …”, in an apparent attempt to defuse the label “weird” that Tim Walz has affixed to the Trump-Vance ticket. Another offered Gus a “tampon”, in reference to Governor Walz’s initiative to provide feminine hygiene products in Minnesota public schools. Another Trumpian activist called Gus a “puffy beta male”.
What makes Gus’ public display of emotion so noteworthy is that it happened at a time when young men are being exposed to a culture awash in exaggerated versions of masculinity. In this so-called manosphere, where concepts like “incels” (heterosexual men who blame women and society for their lack of romantic success) and “tradwives” (short for traditional wife, one who prefers to take a traditional role in marriage, including the belief that a woman’s place is in the home), are commonly bandied about, many are under the spell of “influencers” such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.
From the perspective of psychologists like us, who practise and conduct research in the area of men and masculinities, we hail Tim and Gus for modelling a healthy father-son relationship, and a way of being male in our society that doesn’t require the suppression of tender emotions. The masculine socialisation process hailed by those on the right pressures boys to avoid anything that girls do; they want boys to observe girls closely and act differently.
Young girls are freer to be emotionally self-aware and expressive, so those on the right want boys to restrict their expression of emotions, especially vulnerable emotions such as fear and sadness, as well as those that reflect a sense of being attached to another person, like fondness and caring.
Girls are much more likely to learn how to empathise with other people, to see and feel things from others’ perspectives. So those on the right want boys to avoid all that. Girls also learn how to feel compassion for someone suffering and to do what they can to help that person. They learn to discuss differences and resolve conflicts through conversation, and to deepen relationships and experience greater intimacy by revealing their own vulnerabilities. Those on the right want boys to avoid such behaviour.
As a result, those on the right want boys to approach the game of life without a full array of coping resources. But it gets worse, because those on the right also want boys to display aggression, dominance, hypersexuality and a tendency to “other-ise” girls, as well as those with non-heterosexual orientations, less conventional gender identities, and racial and ethnic minoritised groups.
Thus the version of masculinity that the right espouses fosters being aggressive, disrespectful and even violent, compared with the Walz version of caring and giving.
But boys such as Gus flaunt these destructive rules in favour of expressing their authentic selves. Politics, and wider society, could benefit if we were to change the narrative and follow the Walz version of masculinity.
Do you worry about the sorts of role models boys and young men encounter? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
