Dems Are In Their Wife Guy Era

The DNC and RNC paint vivid and opposing pictures of American masculinity.

A bunch of middle-aged, white former football players are not exactly who you might expect to see on the main stage at the Democratic National Convention. But last night, they were out there, wearing their old jerseys and beaming widely. They came to Chicago to support their favorite former coach: Gov. Tim Walz.

Last night, Walz officially accepted his party’s nomination for Vice President. The governor embodies many markers of “traditional” masculinity — after all, he’s a former coach and veteran who eats meat, wears camo, shoots guns, and loves football. “I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress and I’ve got the trophies to prove it,” he said during his acceptance speech, to uproarious laughter and applause. And yet he also is the guy who tears up talking about how his wife Gwen and children, Hope and Gus, are his “whole world,” and the guy who became the very first faculty advisor of his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. He wields his “Jock Insurance” very wisely.

The DNC has, of course, been about powerhouse women, in no small part due to the fact that the party has nominated Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the ticket in November. But what I didn’t anticipate was how front and center the party’s vision of masculinity would feel. And that vision stands in stark contrast to the anxious and limited version of masculinity on the other side of the political aisle. The 2024 election is Mensches and Wife Guys vs. The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.

Walz is just one of many men on the Democratic side who seem comfortable in their own skin, and unbothered by the prospect of a woman holding the highest office in the land. Doug Emhoff has proudly embraced his role as the would-be first First Gentleman, quipping in his speech that his mother is the only person who says Harris is the lucky one to be married to him. And former President Barack Obama, who followed his own wife at the DNC, joked that he was “the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.” Democrats have officially entered their Wife Guy Era.

It’s no secret that Democrats have struggled to court male voters, something that organizers have tackled head on since President Joe Biden stepped out of the race. There was a White Dudes for Harris Zoom and a Win With Black Men virtual event. On these calls, left-leaning men challenged their peers. “I’m standing behind a Black woman to be president of the United States, and it doesn’t make me any less of a Black man,” Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul said. “I’m asking all of you all to do the same.”

For years, Republicans have owned the conversation about what it means to be a man in America. They have positioned their party as the place for men who feel lost or left behind by changing social mores, and the women who support them. In the MAGA era, that disaffectedness has morphed into a quest to reclaim what they see as rightfully theirs — unfettered power, privilege and dominance over those they deem to be the Other.

At the Republican National Convention in July, Donald Trump was framed as not just the party’s leader, but its anointed god; an embodiment of rage-filled, shirt-ripping, masculine drag. “America is Trump tough,” Donald Trump Jr. said in his RNC speech.

For the last decade, online discourse — especially in the corner of the internet known colloquially as “the manosphere” — has reflected a profound anxiety among right-wing men about their place in the world, expressed through overt rage towards women, but also towards men who aren’t threatened by the fight for equality, gender and otherwise. This ethos has infected the entire Republican party, and absolutely rules the MAGA wing. They whine about “cucks” and “soy boys” and “betas,” and try to get one over on men who plan to vote for Harris in November by diminishing their manhood.

Far-right influencer Gunther Eagleman tweeted that “dudes who vote for Kamala Harris pee sitting down.” J.D. Vance has lumped Pete Buttigieg in with the bogeyman of “childless cat ladies.” The MAGA camp even tried to mock Walz as “Tampon Tim” because he signed legislation to… supply menstrual products in public schools?

And yet, these attacks seem to be yielding diminishing returns, easily deflected by charges of an amorphous “creepiness” and “weirdness.” Part of the reason is that Democrats are more publicly modeling their own template of healthy masculinity.

The masculinity of the DNC is one that stands on its own rather than being defined by asserting dominance over women and non-binary people. A masculinity that finds strength in equal partnership. A masculinity that sees abortion care as a human issue rather than a women’s issue. A masculinity that embraces political joy over misdirected rage. A masculinity that understands that sometimes stepping up means stepping back and letting a woman stand in the spotlight.

Let’s go, boys. We’re counting on you come November.