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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not expect students to bring their own toilet paper to school,\u201d Feist and other legislators wrote in an essay for the Star Tribune as the bill was under consideration. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t assume that all students can afford and provide their own menstrual necessities either.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the bill made its way through the legislature, its gender-neutrality spurred pushback. The language in the bill didn\u2019t specify that the products should only be in girls\u2019 restrooms because, as Feist argued, \u201cstudents who menstruate who are not female face even greater barriers to asking for those products when they need them.\u201d An effort to amend the bill to restrict the availability of the products was rejected.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s governor. The governor\u2019s news release about the signing didn\u2019t mention the funding for menstrual products but instead noted that it \u201cestablishes 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, the governor \u2014 Tim Walz, now Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s running mate \u2014 does not appear to have ever weighed in on Feist\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 specifically, to the idea that Walz is egregiously sympathetic to trans issues or to women or both.<\/p>\n
#TamponTim pic.twitter.com\/eBPyEOSWPC<\/p>\n
\u2014 Chaya Raichik (@ChayaRaichik10) August 6, 2024<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It was, fundamentally, a paroxysm of excitement about being able to portray the Democratic ticket as anti-masculine without having to use Harris\u2019s gender as the vehicle.<\/p>\n
The extent to which the presidential race has aligned with the gender divide is by now obvious. The Atlantic\u2019s Derek Thompson adeptly outlined it just last month. Walz himself characterized the GOP as forming a new iteration of the \u201cHe-Man Woman Haters Club,\u201d a reference that won\u2019t help close the generational gap even if it aids with the gender gap.<\/p>\n
The right\u2019s nickname wasn\u2019t \u201cTrans Tim\u201d but \u201cTampon Tim,\u201d 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\u2019t vote for Harris because she\u2019s a woman. But you can highlight ways in which you think Democrats are effeminate.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s embrace of machismo and disparagement of non-masculinity wouldn\u2019t appeal to women, but there was an upside.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor every Karen we lose,\u201d Gaetz said, referring to Donald Trump\u2019s base of support, \u201cthere\u2019s a Julio and a Jamal willing to sign up for the MAGA movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, if Trump sheds White female supporters out of concern over, say, mockery of making menstrual products available to students \u2014 so what? There are Hispanic and Black men who come on board. (If you\u2019ll forgive the sanitizing of Gaetz\u2019s cringey formulation.)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s polling than they were in 2020 (according to Pew Research Center\u2019s analysis) but Harris has gained enormous ground with White women who don\u2019t have a college degree.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t have a degree; the group is about as large as the non-White male population.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as though the \u201cTampon Tim\u201d 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\u2019s a reflection of a strain of rhetoric on the right, one that smears Walz as effeminate because it views anything short of the right\u2019s vision of masculinity as weakness and a point of attack.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s like the \u201ccontroversy\u201d over Minnesota\u2019s new flag, but, somehow, with less self-awareness from Walz\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}