When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz accepted the vice presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, almost immediately everyone zeroed in on his son Gus’ emotional reaction in which the teen said, “That’s my dad.” When Vice President Kamala Harris selected Walz as her running mate, the family spoke to People magazine about the fact that Gus a has nonverbal learning disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. That means Gus is multiply neurodivergent.
At the time, I wrote that the Walz family’s approach to Gus was a welcome antidote to how parents have long spoken of their neurodivergent children — because rather than trying to “fix” Gus, the family focused on making sure he can live a good life.
As the vice presidential debate between Walz and Sen. JD Vance approaches, it’s clear too many people missed that point. Too many people missed that point. Right-wingers engaged in cruelty, with Ann Coulter mocking the younger Walz’s show of emotion. This is wholly unsurprising, given the fact that ableism is now a defining feature of the Republican Party — from its mockery of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., for using a closed captioning device after surviving a stroke to ridiculing Harris for describing what she looked like for low-vision people during an event with disability rights activists. And who can forget Trump mocking New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a disability, during his 2016 campaign?
These sympathetic commentators provide a mirror image of the mockery that conservative pundits hurled toward Gus.
In response, plenty of liberals sought to use the moment to elevate Walz. Case in point, Ana Navarro, a co-host on “The View” who served as an emcee at the DNC, said, “Teens like Gus can have trouble regulating their emotions in social settings,” adding: “Leave him the f--- alone, you ghouls.” Author and minister John Pavlovitz responded to Coulter, saying, “He deals with ADHD, anxiety, and a nonverbal learning disorder. He was overcome with pride and love for his father.”
I understand the impulse behind wanting to defend Gus Walz and the way he expresses himself. But these sympathetic commentators provide a mirror image of the mockery that conservative pundits hurled toward Gus. While conservatives needlessly mocked Gus for the way he expressed himself without understanding his disability, his defenders almost provided an excuse and a rationale.
By saying simply that Gus has a disability and therefore it’s OK for him to express himself, they are still implying something is wrong with the way he expresses himself. The true beauty of that moment with the Walz family is not that they love Gus despite his emotionality. Rather, it’s that they recognize the way he expresses himself and the love he has for his family as valid and just as worthy as the way his other family members express themselves.
While many were understandably overcome with emotion watching the younger Walz, what made just as strong an impression on me was how mother Gwen and sister Hope reacted to his display for his dad. Rather than tamp him down, they allowed him to show all of himself on an incredibly public stage. They did not stop him or get him to tone it down.
Pundits have spilled gallons of ink on how Tim Walz offers a healthier version of masculinity. They pontificate about how he served his country in the military and was a defensive coordinator for the high school football team where he taught, along with the fact he served as the faculty adviser for Mankato West’s gay-straight alliance, as well as his willingness to discuss going through fertility treatments with his wife, Gwen. The Harris campaign has embraced his everyman aesthetic as part of its overtures to white working-class voters.
Walz’s embrace of his son Gus should be seen through that lens. Just as the governor sees no daylight between supporting his gay students and shooting pheasants, he seems to embrace how his son is growing into being a man.
Just as the governor sees no daylight between supporting his gay students and shooting pheasants, he seems to embrace how his son is growing into being a man.
This is a positive development. In recent months, I’ve been writing my second book about autism, neurodivergence and masculinity. While many autistic and neurodivergent women and people assigned female at birth find themselves forced to mask their symptoms, many times, autistic men also do it to try to avoid being ostracized. In the past, I’ve masked my stims or any visible neurodivergent traits out of fear of ridicule or because I was not “manly enough.”
But expressions of emotion are just as valid and worthy, including those by men, regardless of their neurotype. Gus may have expressed himself differently than others may choose, but he only expressed the feelings many sons would have if their dad said they loved them in such a public way. Incidentally, former first lady Michelle Obama had a more correct response than some other people. Rather than excusing Gus Walz’s expression of affection for his dad as a side effect of his disability, she correctly thanked him for “showing us all what real love looks like, Gus.” (Her late father, Fraser Robinson, lived with multiple sclerosis.)
This embrace of how Gus Walz expresses himself also has larger policy implications. If society chooses not to see neurodivergent behaviors negatively, then it can start from the point of asking what support systems neurodivergent people need in order to live their fullest selves. This reorients decades of policy that focused on “combating” developmental disabilities more toward serving them and changing the world around them.
Far too often, well-meaning people feel the need to defend neurodivergent or disabled people. But Tim and Gus Walz offer a challenge to those same people; not to consistently defend or excuse them, but to treat their types of love as valid as anything else.