The non-toxic masculinity that has been on display at the Democratic convention in Chicago this week has taken me back more than five decades to my high school years. My high school in northeastern Vermont was a relatively small public school (around 500 students freshman through senior) with a few boarders. We were proud of our sports teams (or at least some of them). Our ski team won the state championship two of the four years I was in high school, and our track and field team was always in the top three or four high school teams in the state. Our basketball team sucked (because every decent athlete in the school was on the ski team) and our football team . . . well, they really sucked.
Our football season was usually 10 games long; we won no more than two games in any of my four high school years. A caveat, though: My senior year we defeated our archrivals from the town eight miles down the Passumpsic River from my town on their field for the first time in years—our win ruined our rivals’ undefeated season. Everyone agreed that our 1-9 record where the “1” was a win over our archrivals was better than if we had gone 9-1 with the “1” being a loss to our archrivals.
As is often the case in small town schools, several of the coaches of our sports teams doubled as teachers in the high school curriculum. Accordingly, my World Geography teacher during my freshman year was our head football coach: Mr. Heath. Mr. Heath looked and acted like a football coach, over six feet tall with a buzz cut, a bit of a paunch, and lots of muscles. He was intimidating, did not suffer fools gladly, and had zero difficulty maintaining discipline in the classroom. But no one ever questioned his care and concern for his students.
I have no idea whether Mr. Heath actually possessed the needed qualifications to teach geography in high school; we all assumed he was hired to be football coach and that teaching geography was his side gig. But I loved his class. Even though the class was “World Geography,” we started the semester more locally. At the beginning of our first class, he handed out a map of the United States with the state borders drawn in but no state names. “Write in the names of the fifty states,” he said. “You have ten minutes.” Because I was a nerd and because I had already been in 45 of the 50 states since my family often travelled coast to coast during the summer, I aced the quiz the first time.
The class learned the next day that not only was I the only person to get 100 on the quiz (laying yet another brick in the foundation of my unpopularity), but also that everyone would take the quiz at the beginning of every class until everyone got 100. Really. As I recall, it took about three weeks until that happened. But wait . . . there’s more. The class had not even finished celebrating no more state name quizzes when Mr. Heath passed out the same US map with no state names and instructed us to not only write the appropriate state name but also the name of each state capital.
This time even I didn’t get 100 on the first attempt—who the hell knows off the top of their head what the capital of North Dakota is or that the capital of Nevada is Carson City and not Las Vegas or Reno, for God’s sake? But within a few more weeks everyone had aced this quiz as well—“Good job,” Mr. Heath commented as he handed them back—high praise from the coach. I haven’t been in touch with anyone I went to high school with for ages, but my bet is that if I contacted anyone who was in Mr. Heath’s World Geography class with me, they could name the fifty states and their capitals just as I still can. Some things you never forget.
Mr. Heath provided my fellow freshmen and me with a good example of non-toxic masculinity. Yes, he was an imposing physical specimen who could undoubtedly kick your dad’s ass, and no one seriously considered crossing him or acting out in the classroom. But he also was approachable and made a strong effort to get to know each of his students by inviting each of us individually to eat lunch with him in the cafeteria, asking informed questions about your hopes, dreams, and family. He also was unshakably fair.
I hadn’t thought about Mr. Heath and World Geography for years (perhaps decades) until Kamala Harris picked Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate in her candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. 
Tim Walz is a former teacher, football coach, and a veteran—just like Mr. Heath. Actually, not just like Mr. Heath, since Tim Walz’s football team won the Minnesota state football championship under his guidance a mere two years after they had a winless season. Walz oozes “normal guy” vibes in a way that is so unusual among today’s politicians that it is easy to forget what ‘normal” looks like.
During his speech last evening accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for Vice President, Walz spoke—as he has several times over the past month—of the struggles he and his wife Gwen experienced for years with infertility; when, thanks to IVF-style treatments their first child was born, they named her Hope. Anyone who watched their second child, seventeen-year-old son Gus, weeping with joy from his seat shouting “I love my Dad!” during Walz’s speech and did not cry along with him does not have a heart.
Then there is Doug Emhoff, aspiring to be the inaugural First Gentleman in American history as Kamala Harris seeks the Presidency. During his Tuesday evening speech, the love Doug feels for Kamala leapt through the television screen. His willingness to be self-deprecating and his comfortability in his own skin as he talked about his superstar spouse was both refreshing and exhilarating. Jeanne did not see the speech live; I told her the next morning that if she was running for President, I would have given a speech about her very similar to Doug’s.
Compare this to the model of masculinity regularly promoted by the other political party. I seriously doubt that we will ever see Walz or Emhoff ripping their shirt off a la Hulk Hogan in an attempt to establish their maleness and testosterone level. What Tim and Doug are displaying is not a show, a performance, or a stereotype. Just by being themselves, by being accomplished men who are not intimidated by powerful women, by being unafraid to display emotion, love, and vulnerability in public, by their willingness to be transparent and vulnerable about things guys don’t usually talk about in public, they are reminding the nation of what well-adjusted, non-toxic masculinity looks like. May they carry it all the way to the White House.
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