By now it has become clear that the Democrats’ presidential ticket has simply changed out one old lying white guy for another. The latest revelation is that, despite years of claims otherwise, Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, didn’t actually conceive their daughter, Hope, with the medically invasive and potentially morally fraught in vitro fertilization (IVF) but instead with the less invasive and less controversial intrauterine insemination (IUI).
The Harris campaign and their surrogates in media have once again clamored to excuse these latest misrepresentations about his life as a minor mix-up with Walz again “misspeaking.” But why did he choose to describe his family’s fertility journey as involving IVF, a procedure that generally points to female infertility, rather than IUI, which tends to highlight male infertility issues?
By claiming that his family underwent IVF, he sidestepped any potential stigma associated with male infertility. Admitting to IUI, which is often necessitated by issues with male sperm motility, might have been an admission that he did not meet the traditional expectations of virility. In a society that continues to measure a man’s worth by his ability to sire children naturally, such an admission could have been seen as too emasculating — even for the Democrat Party.
It’s similar to his years-long façade about serving in combat and retiring as a command sergeant major, when his final rank was actually the less glamorous rank of “master sergeant.” With this lie, he sought to bolster his image as a strong and courageous leader,
