The redefinition ignores the definition.
In a moment of forced narratives that feel obviously forced as they walk out the door into the public light, this one is the most contrived and awkward of them all:
“Tim Walz’s Masculinity Is Terrifying to Republicans.”
In an interview this week, “journalist” Jen Psaki tongue-bathed Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff with a statement-question about his remarkable cultural performance that has so bravely caused a bold redefinition of masculinity. You can watch that here, if you haven’t eaten for a few hours and have an empty stomach.
So.
Manliness in America is an idea with a well-developed cultural history. The story about Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff redefining masculinity, I just threw up in my mouth a little, is a story about a new and more caring man who tosses aside the old model of manhood: swaggering, muscular, defined by conquest and the hot blonde in the passenger seat of his Maserati. “Genitally focused,” let’s call it. This faked-up dichotomy is precisely like the story John Kerry tells about the old days when the media was a neutral, fact-grounded cultural referee:
It discards the past to pretend to recreate it.
The men who opened fire on British regulars at the Old North Bridge rushed to the scene from their farms and workshops; the ranking militia officer in the field went into combat in his leather apron, an image that speaks loudly. The masculine ideal of the founding era was centered on steadiness, self-control, discipline, reliability, calm under pressure, endurance, forbearance, quiet firmness.
I wrote a dissertation about military trials in the early national New England militia, and described court-martial after court-martial in which men were stripped of officer rank because they got drunk in public, sang a little too loudly at the tavern, took too much interest in other men’s wives, engaged in low gossip, and so on. A manly man’s man was quiet. His crops came up as planned, he could kill you if he needed to, and he was exceptionally calm and polite. The masculine ideal had no swagger of any kind, ever. “One coupon per customer, offer does not apply to Andrew Jackson.”
As farming faded behind industrial production (and farming became mechanized), historians of masculinity describe the archetype of the Heroic Artisan, working skillfully with his tools to make things. A manly man’s man was defined by his neatness. An unmanly artisan had a dirty apron and a messy workbench. His family thrived or starved on the basis of a man’s ability to produce things using tools, so a duty of masculinity was simple and consistent care for the those tools. There’s a great scene in Walk the Line in which Johnny Cash’s farmer dad sees that his son breaks a tractor because he can’t really drive it: unmanly.
Under all of that centering of calm steadiness and ordinary productive competence, the masculine ideal of the early republic demanded public participation. A real man was literate, rational, and engaged with his community, his state, and the nation. He spoke thoughtfully at the town meeting. Unmanly men didn’t care about the town; they withdrew from public life to their own degraded appetites. This famous image is a later depiction of masculinity in the same cultural line, a man standing before his neighbors to speak his piece:
Men wearing suits and ties listen respectfully to the man with the rough hands, the dirty pants, the work shirt, and the farm coat. He’s manly: firm, reasonable, thoughtful, worth the time his neighbors take to hear him out. He’s not a fool. He’s given the matter his careful thought. He’s got the town’s report folded up in his pocket, because he’s been reading it over with care, and now he’s on his feet to say something that needs to be heard. The term man has often been contrasted in historical rhetoric with the word boy. A degraded man wasn’t a woman; he was a child.
This image has deep roots in America. The historian David Hackett Fischer describes the moment when the men of Lexington, Massachusetts heard the alarm bell and ran to the town green with their weapons:
Sturdy yeomen; neighbors, kinsmen, and friends; men of property and independence who served on juries and ran the church; armed men who gathered in moments of crisis for calm and steady deliberation. That’s the historical masculine ideal in America. And I guess that in that sense the media narrative is actually correct: Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz are really redefining our understanding of masculinity, or trying to.
Honestly the whole situation is a perfect analogy for the Democratic party -- they picked somebody who checked the obvious boxes (White/Male) without realizing that simply checking the obvious boxes isn't enough. They literally thought that white men would vote for Tim Walz because Tim Walz is a white man - end of story.
This is a dude who went to the Minnesota/Michigan game AND ROOTED FOR MICHIGAN.
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITTH
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
This poem is in the public domain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow