Mansplaining Texas

It’s a Saturday morning in late August, and each door the volunteers approach promises the opportunity to connect… or the possibility that it will be swiftly slammed in their faces. Some homeowners peek out of their window blinds and refuse to answer the knocks on their doors. If the canvassers encounter one of the many ‘no soliciting’ signs that say things like, “No politics!” and “Unless you’re the Amazon delivery guy, Jesus or Joanna Gaines, I’m not home…” they back away slowly and head to the next house. If a home has a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign in the yard, Kiera Dixon, the leader of these Beto O’Rourke block walkers, passes them by.

“I’ll just mark that house as ‘strongly against,’” she says. 

Dixon heads towards a home with a Panda Ice truck in the driveway. It’s always awkward approaching someone on their own property, but this homeowner, Karl Martin, kindly takes a break from cleaning his truck to sit and talk to a stranger holding pamphlets. 

“I haven’t done my evaluation of the candidates,” Martin says, inspiring Dixon to share her reasons for choosing Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke, not incumbent Republican Greg Abbott, as the next governor of Texas. Protection of the most vulnerable citizens is important to her, Dixon says, and O’Rourke cares about things like women’s rights and gun control. Abbott, who is seeking a third term, refuses to consider gun-safety measures, even after tragic mass shootings in El Paso and Uvalde, and he’s helped pass some of the most severe abortion measures in the country.

In 2022 Texas, nothing is predictable and anything is possible.

“I also know how hard it was when we lost power for days during the winter storm,” Dixon says. “Beto O’Rourke has plans to help fix the state’s electric grid, and that’s important for all of us.”

You never know what you’re going to get when you bring politics to people’s doorsteps, especially in a race like this. Does the person appreciate Abbott’s lower-key Trump-ish machismo, or take a shine to O’Rourke’s more progressive, inclusive message. At a time of rising extremism when hyper-masculine organizations such as the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and Three Percenters are finding their ways into the social and political mainstream and Congress members are sending out Christmas cards of the family posing with AR-15s, the question has national implications. In 2022 Texas, nothing is predictable and anything is possible. What sort of man this rapidly growing and changing state of nearly 30 million people chooses for governor provides a window into a parallel battle for the future of America, and sheds light on what brand of masculinity voters will embrace.

Dixon and Martin talk candidates on a sunny August Saturday morning. Photo by Dina Gachman

Back at the Panda Ice truck, Dixon and I brace for Martin’s reaction.

“The incumbent is not a favorite of mine,” Martin says, explaining that he has daughters. “I’m big on female empowerment.”

Being pro-female-empowerment would seem to make the choice pretty clear, but Dixon, a 16-year-old high school senior, shows a remarkable amount of restraint with this uncommitted voter. She simply thanks Martin for his time and tells him she hopes he will go to O’Rourke’s website and find out more about what the candidate stands for.

Martin gives Gatorades to his sweaty visitors, who have been pounding the scalding asphalt for more than an hour. He wishes us good luck, and we thank him for his time. We will never know which candidate Martin will choose, and with Abbott’s seven-point lead over O’Rourke, the run up to the November election has many Texans on edge.

***

I met Dixon earlier that day outside of the Pflugerville Public Library so I could shadow her while she hosted a Block Walk for Beto. About a dozen people showed up to follow her instructions and knock on doors in hopes of tracking O’Rourke’s supporters and maybe even convincing an undecided voter, like Martin, to lean O’Rourke’s way. 

Dixon, wearing a tank top, shorts and sneakers, jutted her arm out for the kind of handshake you might expect from someone who is not messing around — someone with a purpose, no time to waste and no lack of confidence. It’s the handshake of a burly man running for office or closing a business deal, or, in this case, a high school cheerleader with a passion for politics.

These days, it seems like large swaths of the country are looking to Texas for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they are thinking of moving here because they heard the cost of living is cheaper in places like Austin (news flash — it’s probably not) or the people are friendly (this is largely true). Maybe they are paying attention because they are puzzled by the fact that, in the wake of January 6 and the reversal of Roe v. Wade, our state seems to be on a rapid backwards slide toward the destructive vision of authoritarian, patriarchal rule that men like Donald Trump have been stirring up for years, striking fear into (mostly white) men by making them believe that every liberal person in America, like O’Rourke, is here to take their guns, money, freedom and, in turn, their manhood. It’s why some people believe Gavin McInnes — one of the Canadian founders of the seminal hipster media company Vice, self-described “Western chauvinist” and co-founder of the all-male, alt-right Proud Boys — when he says things like, “There’s a war on masculinity going on in the West.”

Right now, many Texans are weighing their choices. The people gathered at the block walk think O’Rourke represents the best of Texas: welcoming, iconoclastic, proud of where he comes from and with the goal of protecting and uplifting everyone in the state, not just a select voting bloc. He has plans to fully fund public schools, update the state’s border policies by guaranteeing legal pathways to citizenship, and create a Texas Nursing Jobs Plan to help pay for training and education to, hopefully, end nursing shortages in the state. The block walkers believe in his vision and want to see the state, and maybe even the country, head away from images of angry armed men wielding Confederate flags and attacking the U.S. capital and instead toward a more inclusive future. According to the George Washington University Program on Extremism, nearly 86 percent of those arrested for the capital riot were men. Texas was one of the states that many defendants called home, second only to Florida.

“We’re not trying to convert Trump 2024 people,” Dixon tells block walkers. “You’re going to come across some people who aren’t very nice, so just talk about the causes you believe in.”

O’Rourke closed on Abbott’s double-digit lead over the summer, and some say this boost is due to the state’s restrictive abortion laws after Roe v. Wade was overturned and the school shooting in Uvalde. In the winter of 2021, most polls had Abbott leading by double digits among registered voters. In August, that lead shrunk to about seven points.

Outsiders might assume that beyond the borders of Austin, Texas is a solidly red state full of “Trump 2024 people” who cheer when the current governor bussing migrants to Washington D.C. The myth of the strong, silent Texas cowboy still looms large in imaginations here and around the world. But the cowboy myth wasn’t about aggression or hate. It was more about the persona of the lone man out there rolling up his sleeves and trying to do the right thing, no matter the odds. Now, though, this notion that a “real man” is somehow against women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and any form of gun control, has hijacked the conservative narrative. O’Rourke represents a threat to the kind of Texas — and, the kind of country — they want to live in.

Tracking a close race in the weeks leading up to the election. Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight

But to Republican Party Communications Director for Travis County Andy Hogue, Abbott fits comfortably into the Texas mythology. “Greg Abbott is his own person,” says Hogue. “He does what Davy Crockett does.” 

Hogue is referring to the Tennessee folk hero who, legend has it, died valiantly fighting for Texas at the Alamo (some historians are skeptical and say that he surrendered to the Mexican army). It was Crockett who famously said, after losing his own Tennessee Congressional race in 1835, “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” It’s a quote you’ll find on mugs, shirts, flasks and hats in museums and shops across the state. I don’t have any special affinity for Crockett, but I do own one of those mugs.

Hogue calls Abbott a “cautious actor,” and says his quiet reserve is part of his appeal. Of course, to supporters like Hogue, so are his policies. “We want our AR-15s and our freedom and to be able to control our property rights,” says Hogue. “Today’s Democratic Party doesn’t represent that type of masculinity, and we’re seeing that type of ruggedly independent Texas male drifting to the GOP.”

When I ask Hogue about the influx of people moving to Texas from mostly liberal California, people who might vote Abbott out, he corrects me by saying that a good portion of those new residents are actually conservative. “They don’t want Governor Moonbeam, so they come to Texas,” he says.

This notion of the ruggedly independent, conservative male politician is obviously not a new phenomenon. Gender has played into politics for decades, whether it’s a woman running against a man, or, in the case of the current Texas gubernatorial race, Greg Abbott versus Beto O’Rourke. “Gender is always central in American politics,” says author, educator and filmmaker Jackson Katz. “When a woman is running, people start talking about gender, but when it is two men, people think gender is invisible. My argument is that it’s always there.”

Katz’s documentary The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Trump traces the rise of tough-guy masculinity as a conservative brand. There are clips of Ronald Reagan dressing up as a cowboy on the range, George W. Bush hauling brush at his ranch, Trump hurling insults like “Little Marco” to belittle political opponents such as Marco Rubio, and a Fox News commentator saying, “The left has tried to feminize this country in a way that is disgusting.” That comment came from a woman, by the way.

Maybe that’s why, when O’Rourke ran against Republican Ted Cruz for senate in 2018, he was called — horror of horrors — “metrosexual” and a “beta male.” Photos surfaced of O’Rourke wearing a floral print dress when he was in a punk band called Foss in his twenties, or donning a sheep costume on stage while playing guitar and singing Ramones covers. Conservatives tried their hardest to paint that evidence as damning and use it as proof that O’Rourke was not the man for Texans, because no real man would dress as a sheep. When O’Rourke fans rallied around his punk rock, skateboarding past, Cruz next tried to claim that the liberal Democrat would somehow criminalize barbeques. “If Beto wins, BBQ will be illegal!” tweeted Cruz, after PETA had protested one of his events.

“We tend to not like the establishment.”

Maybe the joke worked with Cruz’s base, but it failed to crush his opponent. Cruz ended up winning that election with a slim 2.6 percent margin, making it the closest U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1976. As a side note, if Cruz tries to use barbeque as some sort of masculine calling card again, maybe someone should tell him that one of the most revered barbeque pitmasters in the state is an 87-year old woman named Tootsie, who braves the fire and coals at Snow’s barbeque in the small town of Lexington.

Abbott has not used barbeque or sheep costumes to try and best his opponent. He has stuck to the narrative that O’Rourke wants to take everyone’s guns, curtail personal freedoms, and open the borders to a flood of criminals and gang members. 

Hogue, from the Travis County Republican Party, believes that Abbott is a “middle ground, pragmatic conservative.” He has met O’Rourke and says, “I myself have never had a negative interaction with the guy. I always enjoyed him, but those things don’t make him an alpha male.”

He thinks that O’Rourke’s irreverence, such as cussing at town halls or not taking PAC money, has appeal to the state’s independent streak.  He says he can see how the candidate’s off-the-cuff, man-of-the-people style might appeal to many who are tired of seeing the same older, conservative white man in charge for so many years. That is not his choice, but he can see why O’Rourke is striking a chord. “We tend to not like the establishment,” Hogue says of Texans. 

Dixon is one of those people. For her, it’s O’Rourke, not Abbott, who “perpetuates what politics is supposed to be, putting others before your own self. He fights for everyone.”

***

Dixon is one of the few liberal leaning students at the tiny Round Rock Christian Academy she attends. Her class has 38 kids, and the Academy has about 150 students in total. She is a championship debater, and was recently ranked number one high school female Congressional debater by the National Speech & Debate Association. To prepare, she took over 500 pages of notes. Her debate skills have helped her talk some students into voting for candidates like O’Rourke when they’re old enough to vote, or to at least think about it.

“I take credit for single handedly converting half of my class,” she says, with a slight smile over how she managed to tilt the balance to the left. “I like to say I have a little hate club. I talk politics to my cheer team and they hate it.”

Like many Texans, though, Dixon understands that each person contains multitudes, and that just because someone does not support your candidate doesn’t mean they are your archnemesis or that you have nothing in common. One of her best friends is conservative, and she relishes their conversations. “At least he’s well informed,” she says.

Dixon knocks on another door, waiting to see what type of response she will receive. Photo by Dina Gachman

A Block Walk for Beto is clearly a safe space for liberals in Texas. No one who spends a Saturday championing O’Rourke’s brand of politics would call him “metrosexual” as some sort of barbed insult. They would not care that he once wore a dress or skateboarded through a Whataburger parking lot on the campaign trail. In fact, they love the skateboarding video. They likely understand that when O’Rourke said he was going to take away AR-15s, he did not mean he will take all guns from all people. They might not love it if he decided to outlaw barbeque, but that is clearly not on his agenda, so it’s not an issue.

Ashlyn Simmons, a social worker and therapist at the block walk, says, “Traditional masculinity is harmful to people’s mental health and well-being. It’s not healthy for men to not express emotions. Beto breaks down that wall and that’s really refreshing.”

Lisa Traugott, a writer who is knocking on doors with her 15-year-old daughter Rylee — both wearing matching ‘Beto for Texas’ T-shirts — says of her candidate, “He’s a real father figure because he’s inclusive.”

Abbott is not exactly running a campaign based on being inclusive, but that does not stop his supporters, like Hogue, from seeing him as a father figure or a champion, for their causes, at least. To many in Texas and around the country, though, Abbott, who has been a major figure in Texas politics for decades, is still a little bit of a mystery.

In a recent Texas Monthly cover story about Abbott, writer Mimi Swartz calls the governor “the striver from Duncanville,” and describes him as a guy raised on a “steady diet of Boy Scouts, church, and sports — the rites and rituals that taught white, middle-class Texas boys how to take their place in the world.”

Swartz delves into his early dreams, his rise to power and the freak accident that left him paralyzed when he was jogging in Houston one day and an oak tree limb crushed his spine. Anyone who enters politics could be considered a “striver,” but it’s Abbott’s ambition that Swartz hones in on, his desire to “run and run, just to see how far he can go.”

***

In many ways, Abbott embodies the Trump ideology of “I alone can fix it,” making some Texans believe that a lone man in a position of power has got their backs, and if they vote for him, he’ll take care of everything, as when he said “I can guarantee the lights will stay on,” after the 2021 freeze. The slogan on most of his official merchandise is Securing the Future of Texas. O’Rourke’s is Beto for Texas, or Beto for Y’all. Abbott’s style is more formal and reserved. If some Texans are scared of becoming the next California — which they interpret as having higher taxes and a lower standard of living, even though California outperforms Texas on most quality of life indices — then Abbott’s stance of keeping California’s liberal values at bay gives many in the state a sense of security. Abbott will secure the borders and the status quo.

Campaign slogans seen along the block walk. Photo by Dina Gachman

Meanwhile, O’Rourke drives his pickup truck to every county in Texas. A former congressman who lost that senate race to Cruz (but not by much) and then dropped out of the 2020 presidential race, despite high hopes and impressive fundraising hauls, O’Rourke is the underdog in a milieu in which Texas recently played host to Viktor Orbán at the CPAC conference held in Dallas. There, to standing ovations, the Hungarian autocrat railed against liberal views on immigration, gender and family. “The globalists can all go to hell,” Orbán told the cheering audience. “I have come to Texas.” It’s probably no accident that he sounded a little bit like Davy Crockett.

The Texas Youth Summit, with a mission of training conservative youth to win the culture war, served up more of the same in Houston in mid-September. Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) addressed the MAGA-clad gathering on the same day The Washington Post revealed he had sought a pre-emptive pardon from President Trump related to a sex-trafficking investigation.

Katz, The Man Card documentary filmmaker who has devoted his career to breaking down and analyzing notions of American masculinity, says, “Beto and Abbott are both seeking the mantle of protector, but they represent very different ideas about what that means.” 

For O’Rourke, that means doing things like implementing gun safety measures and banning military-style assault weapons to protect all Texans, especially school children. It means reversing Abbott’s criminalization of medical care for trans youth and his draconian abortion laws. For Abbott, that means protecting a citizen’s right to own any gun they want, tightening border security (echoing Trump’s unsubstantiated rhetoric on the supposed criminality of migrants), and burnishing Texas’ reputation as a “law and order” state. 

Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a history professor at Calvin University in Michigan and the author of books like Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, says that even as the country, and Texas, may be changing, “gender stereotypes are holding up distressingly well.” 

She sees O’Rourke as “an interesting figure,” since he doesn’t play into the stereotypes. “He is challenging the notion that there is one commonly agreed upon universal definition of masculinity,” she says, citing his defense of trans-youth as a cause that he believes in, but one which might make him seem weak to some conservative. Opponents might try to question O’Rourke’s manhood, but they largely fail because those attacks don’t seem to bother him, and he always gets back in the fight.

“He’s not someone who backs down,” says Du Mez.

***

During the two hours that Dixon knocks on doors, she encounters a young mother who scolds us for waking up her baby, and a middle-aged man in a fishing T-shirt who says, “We’re a Beto house.” A young guy wearing camo shorts and working on a motorcycle in his garage confirms he’s voting for O’Rourke. 

Yes, that cowboy on the range mythology has endured for decades, but it wouldn’t take more than a handful of road trip stops for an outsider to understand how diverse this state truly is. The 2020 Census showed that the state’s Hispanic population is nearly equal to the non-Hispanic white population, and people of color accounted for 95 percent of the state’s population growth over the last decade.

“We are not a monolith,” says Brian Pena, treasurer of University Democrats at UT Austin. Pena grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and was raised in a very conservative family, but once he started listening to candidates like O’Rourke, he formed his own opinions about where Texas, and, ultimately, the U.S., needs to go. “We have been portrayed as a red state but that is absolutely absurd,” he says. “When you go county by county, there are pockets of really blue areas.”

A few hours after the block walk on Saturday, I head to an outdoor spot called Dale’s Essenhaus, in the town of Walburg, about 40 miles north of Austin. The beers are cheap, the food is greasy, and country bands play on an outdoor stage. At the next picnic table over sit Kari and Christina Edgar — a couple from Austin who are there with their three kids — and Christina’s parents. We start talking, and with the block walk fresh on my mind, I ask them who they’re voting for. For Kari and Christina, it’s O’Rourke. They’re basing their votes on “all the hot ticket items” like reproductive rights and gun control. They don’t get the sense that Abbott cares about people. 

They’re just a family who happen to have some radically different ideas about which direction Texas should go, and who should lead them.

Then, Christina good-naturedly urges me to talk to her dad, an older gentleman seated at the end of the table. He proudly declares, “I’m a conservative and have been all my life.” He tells me how strong he thinks the current governor is, how well he leads. According to the elder-Edgar, liberal politicians like O’Rourke, Biden and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are ruining Texas and the country with crippling economic policies that will launch us straight into socialism. “Abbott is a champion,” he says.

After we talk, I head back to my table and the Edgars get back to having fun. There’s no animosity, no fighting. They’re just a family who happen to have some radically different ideas about which direction Texas should go, and who should lead them. 

After the block walk earlier that day, when everyone gathered around to tell Dixon how their canvassing went, a woman named Carol Fletcher tried to boost everyone’s morale by sharing that when she ran for school board years ago, she won by just five votes, but ended up serving on the board for 18 years.

“You can say every single vote makes a difference,” Fletcher said before the small crowd dispersed.

Her story stayed with me. I wanted to know what inspired her to devote a few hours on a hot Saturday to knocking on doors, many of which would not open for her. When I called her a few days later, she explained that she had a “strong feminist tendency,” and that she’s tried to raise her two sons to believe that “there’s a right way to behave and a wrong way. Greg Abbott uses transgendered children as pawns to score political points. That’s not manly. That’s disgusting.”

When I ask what it is she likes about O’Rourke, she says, “Being a bully is not the same thing as being a man. Beto is willing to put it all out there to try and stand up for Texans who have not had a voice. Is that a manly thing? I don’t know. I think it’s just the right thing.”