Front Porch Politics: JD Vance, Tim Walz, and Appalachian masculinity.

By Skylar Baker-Jordan

From an attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion and an his­toric with­draw­al from the race, the 2024 elec­tion has already had more twists and turns than an Aaron Sorkin screen­play. I should be for­giv­en, then, for how emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed I became in the veep­stakes. I did not imag­ine ever car­ing this much about run­ning mates – I nev­er have in the past – but as in so many oth­er ways, this elec­tion is dif­fer­ent.

JD Vance and Tim Walz rep­re­sent anti­thet­i­cal con­cep­tions of American mas­culin­i­ty. On the one hand, Vance is your stereo­typ­i­cal patri­arch with an aver­sion to “child­less cat ladies” and a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with con­trol­ling those around him. His is a mas­culin­i­ty built around dom­i­na­tion and author­i­ty. He’s Al Bundy with a bit of mon­ey.

Walz, on the oth­er hand, rep­re­sents a mas­culin­i­ty that is pro­tec­tive but nur­tur­ing, strong but gen­tle. He squares tra­di­tion­al val­ues with pro­gres­sive sen­si­bil­i­ties. He’s Ward Cleaver after read­ing “The Feminine Mystique.” 

For me, though, the analy­sis runs deep­er – and much clos­er to home. As a work­ing-class gay man from the Rust Belt and Appalachia, I feel these two men are arche­types in my own life. JD Vance and I are so sim­i­lar that I can­not help com­par­ing myself to him. Tim Walz, on the oth­er hand, is the kind of man I wish I had known as a child – the kind of man who might have under­stood me and pro­tect­ed me from the homo­pho­bia I expe­ri­enced.

Tim Walz is the kind of dad I wish I had. JD Vance is the kind of son I fear my father wish­es he had. Together, these two men can tell us a lot about what it means to be gay, to be work­ing class, and to be from the mid­dle of America. 

I have often called JD Vance my “evil twin.” Born 18 months ear­li­er and 30 miles away from me in Ohio, his fam­i­ly hails from the same part of Kentucky mine does. Both our moth­ers are named Beverly. Both of us have mamaws who were some­times our pri­ma­ry care­givers but always our great­est source of com­fort and encour­age­ment. Vance is the first in his fam­i­ly to go to col­lege. So am I.

But JD is straight. I am gay.

Maybe that’s the dif­fer­ence: I’ve always had this sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that had I not been gay, I very well might not have devel­oped empa­thy for oth­er peo­ple and mar­gin­al­ized groups. 

Perhaps this is why I can hold space for peo­ple like JD, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who didn’t make it out of gen­er­a­tional pover­ty the way he did. I under­stand that the only dif­fer­ence between me and them is per­spec­tive. I come by mine hon­est­ly, and they prob­a­bly do, too. Theirs is skewed by what we unhelp­ful­ly term as “priv­i­lege” – straight­ness, white­ness, male­ness, and in Appalachia rarely but some­times wealth – but might more accu­rate­ly be termed as “blind­ers.” They can’t see what they can’t see.

JD can see. We know this because he showed com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing to a trans for­mer friend and his recog­ni­tion of class which is at the heart of “Hillbilly Elegy.” He sees injus­tice and choos­es to ignore it because it ben­e­fits him to do so.

I sus­pect ignor­ing injus­tice ben­e­fit­ed my teach­ers and prin­ci­pals, too. I have writ­ten about “the dai­ly cru­cible of homo­pho­bia” I expe­ri­enced in high school. What con­tin­ues to trou­ble me is how no one did any­thing about it, despite being well aware of just how bad things were. I couldn’t walk down a hall­way with­out being called slurs, and more than once end­ed up in the principal’s office because some­one had threat­ened me with vio­lence. Nothing was ever done, though.

It wasn’t any bet­ter at home. 

I wasn’t under­stood by my fam­i­ly as a child.  I don’t think my father knew what to do with a son who want­ed to dress up as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for Halloween, or who pre­ferred con­coct­ing elab­o­rate fan­ta­sy sto­ries in his mind to play­ing foot­ball with the oth­er boys. I was phys­i­cal­ly weak, emo­tion­al­ly sen­si­tive, and men­tal­ly in my own world. 

When I came out as gay, it’s like my fam­i­ly final­ly accept­ed the bat­tle to mas­culin­ize me was lost. Before that they were hold­ing their breaths, hop­ing beyond hope that they could change the tra­jec­to­ry I was on. 

When I came out to my dad, he cried. Not because he was upset, he told me at the time, but because he was scared for me. He didn’t know how to help me or keep me safe.

Dad was a man’s man. A for­mer Marine and bik­er who fan­cies him­self a Hell’s Angel, he and my step­broth­er, six weeks younger than me, have the rela­tion­ship that Dad and I nev­er have. They bond­ed over foot­ball, over skate­board­ing, over rock music, over women. The day my step­broth­er fol­lowed in my dad’s foot­steps and entered the mil­i­tary was the proud­est day of my father’s life.

I look at JD Vance and see the son my father wish­es he had. Sometimes, I wish I was that son. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have felt so alien­at­ed from my own fam­i­ly. Perhaps I could have gone to Yale had I had some­thing or some­one to offer me that struc­ture and a roadmap. Like I said, JD had the mil­i­tary. That was nev­er an option for me; Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell wasn’t repealed until I was 25.

If JD Vance is the son my father wish­es he had, Tim Walz is the father I wish I had. Kind, com­pas­sion­ate, goofy, fun­ny, and pro­gres­sive, the Minnesota gov­er­nor very famous­ly became the fac­ul­ty advi­sor for a gay-straight alliance in 1999, a time when such a high school club was extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial. “It was impor­tant to have a per­son who was so well-liked on cam­pus, a foot­ball coach who had served in the mil­i­tary,” Jacob Reitan, the gay stu­dent whose com­ing out prompt­ed the for­ma­tion of the club, told the New York Times last month.

“A foot­ball coach who had served in the mil­i­tary” is about as “all-American man” as you can get. He’s prac­ti­cal­ly the hero of a Toby Keith song. 

I had no Tim Walz defend­ing me, though. Shortly after I came out, I moved out of my father’s house and in with his par­ents. It had noth­ing to do with me being gay – I’d been ask­ing to live with Mamaw and Papaw for years – but I sus­pect for my father, my com­ing out was the thing that final­ly broke his will. He’d tried every­thing to mould me into the son he want­ed. Realizing it was nev­er going to hap­pen, he let me go.

At my school in Kentucky, no teach­ers inter­vened on my behalf. When the prin­ci­pal did get involved, he blamed me for com­ing out even though I’d only told a few girls I thought were friends, one of whom then told every­one else. I had few teach­ers will­ing to step in on my behalf, let alone step up and help form a gay-straight alliance.

Part of what makes Walz such an excit­ing pick to so many Democrats is that he squares tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line val­ues with mod­ern pro­gres­sive ideals. He’s a strong man with­out being a strong­man, pro­tec­tive but not patri­ar­chal, a man’s man who is com­fort­able tak­ing his lead from a woman. 

Certainly, Walz reminds me of the kind of straight men I’ve always felt safest around. His goofy dad vibe reminds me of friends who have always made me feel secure, pro­tect­ed, and most impor­tant­ly accept­ed in their pres­ence. They’re the kind of men I didn’t have in my life as a child or teenag­er but who I am for­ev­er grate­ful came into my life as an adult. It’s just a pity they didn’t come into my life sooner. 

Skylar Baker-Jordan is 100 Days in Appalachia’s Contributing Editor for Community Engagement. Support his work and our con­tin­ued cov­er­age of pol­i­tics in the region by donat­ing here.

This arti­cle first appeared on 100 Days in Appalachia and is repub­lished here under a Creative Commons license.