Gus Walz Was Bullied at the DNC Because He’s Neurodivergent

Republicans are horrible…and neurodivergent people are often targets.

Image: Chsdrummajor07, CC

A couple years ago I realized (thanks to prodding from friends and family) that I’m probably neurodivergent.

I’m still not exactly sure how or what I think about that, in part because it’s hard to tease out neurodivergence from just being me, the person I’ve gotten used to being over the last 50+ years or so. Neurodivergence isn’t exactly a disease or even a condition, like say, asthma (which I also have.) I can imagine myself without asthma pretty easily; I’d just be me, but able to breath better. Which would be nice.

But I don’t really know how I could be me and not neurodivergent. Who would I even be if I wasn’t hyperfocusing? Or making pointless lists? Or avoiding crowds and eye contact? Or obsessively writing this newsletter every day? Noah with lungs that work is still Noah; Noah with a brain which works completely differently seems like someone who might be nice enough, and perhaps more successful, but who nonetheless isn’t exactly me.

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Republicans target Gus Walz

I’ve been thinking about neurodivergence recently because of the ugly Republican reaction to 17-year-old Gus Walz at the DNC. Gus Walz is Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s son; he is neurodivergent and has ADHD and non-verbal learning disabilities.

During his father’s speech, Gus could be seen on camera mouthing, “That’s my dad!” and crying in happiness. Neurodivergent people sometimes express emotions more intensely or in a heightened way. Walz’s reaction isn’t caused by neurodivergence (different people are different and react to different situations in different ways.) But it’s consistent with the diagnosis.  

Various conservatives—such as right wing columnist Ann Coulter, New Jersey Republican Mike Crispi, and Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber —mocked Walz on social media. They all quickly deleted their comments after intense backlash. "I didn't realize the kid was disabled, and have taken the post down," Weber said.

Numerous Democrats have pointed out that it shouldn’t matter whether Walz is disabled or neurodivergent; attacking a teen for being proud of his dad is grotesque and ugly. As Amelia Robinson of the Columbus Dispatch succinctly put it, “Belittling a child — one with disabilities or not — for expressing love is in the sewer.”

Robinson isn’t wrong. At the same time, though, I think it’s important to recognize that Walz’s neurodivergence isn’t incidental to the bullying.

Weber says he wouldn’t have mocked Walz if he knew he had disabilities. But the fact is that neurodivergent people are targeted because people recognize that they are disabled and see them as abnormal and often as gender nonconforming. Creating an environment in which it’s okay to attack and bully people for behaving differently often, in practice, means attacking and bullying people who are neurodivergent (as well as people who are queer, or immigrants, or Black, or women.)

Or to put it another way, Weber and Crispi and Weber did in fact know that Walz was neurodivergent even if they weren’t thinking about that word. He and his neurodivergence aren’t separable; neurodivergence is a way of thinking about a certain group of people, rather than an affliction separable from some sort of healthy standard. Gus Walz is who he is. And it’s because of who he is that they went after him.

Bullying and neurodivergence

There’s plenty of evidence that neurodivergent people are disproportionately targeted. Kids with ADHD are twice as likely to be bullied in school as their neurotypical peers. Other studies have shown students with autism to be three times as likely to be bullied as non-autistic students. Nor do the problems end with graduation;  a third of autistic adults are bullied or discriminated against at work.

Like most neurodivergent people, I had my share of bullying in school and after school.

In college, for example, I would often rub my index finger in the space between my lip and my chin—I did it so often the patch of skin was visibly raw. In retrospect this was pretty clearly stimming—repetitive behaviors that neurodivergent people use to manage stress or sensory overload.

Mostly my friends ignored me sawing away at my chin, because they were kind and because they were my friends. But inevitably there was one guy, at least one time, who, apropos of nothing, one day out of the blue started to imitate my stim while laughing and sneering. And while I wouldn’t say it traumatized me for life or anything, I still remember it. Not fondly.

Or as another example: I didn’t date or have a relationship until I was 27 (when I met my wife.) Again, in retrospect, this seems pretty clearly related to autism. (Some) neurodivergent people can be slower to figure out how to negotiate intimacy, or can just be shy.

I very much wanted to be in a relationship in my 20s, and I absolutely loathed everything about dating (which, again, I wasn’t doing much of.) But compounding that was the knowledge that I was weird and different and failing at masculinity, not to mention at adulting. I wasn’t normal, and there were plenty of cultural scripts, from pop songs to movies to the default assumptions of peers, which made it clear that was not okay.

I’m married now, and don’t have to date, thank god. But those cultural scripts haven’t disappeared, and they’re not just disseminated by conservatives. Lots of Democrats and progressives make jokes about basement dwelling virginal misogynists, even though we all know that there are a whole lot of men who are married and have sexual relationships with women who are also violent, dangerous, or just generally awful. (Far right “incels” haven’t helped by creating an identity around celibate misogyny—but of course, there’s also a patriarchal identity of married misogyny, which is nonetheless seen as “normal” and is not generally weaponized by progressives in the same way.)

Again, my friend who mocked my stimming didn’t know I was neurodivergent. People who suggest that not being in a relationship is a character flaw aren’t really thinking through who that ends up stigmatizing (nor obviously are they thinking about the fall-out for women who aren’t in a relationship). Neurodivergence is recognized but not named.

Neurotypical people notice that neurodivergent people (of every gender) behave differently than “normal”—neurodivergent people express too much or too little emotion, they don’t make eye contact, they have odd interests and talk about them too much. And those differences are seen as threatening, untrustworthy, funny. They are to be stigmatized and mocked.

What’s normal and what’s weird

Tim Walz has famously, and effectively, charged Republicans with being “weird” because of their obsession with cruelty and bullying. And sure enough, many people suggested that Coulter, et al., were not just horrible, but weird and broken for attacking a 17-year-old expressing pride in his father.

Coulter is weird and broken—or, at least, I would like to live in a world where it is considered weird and horrible to bully neurodivergent kids, or for that matter neurodivergent adults. I’m not convinced we live in that world, though—not even among Democrats or progressives.

So while I understand and agree with those who say that no child should be mocked for being proud of their dad, I also think that Gus Walz’s neurodivergence does matter here. Republican partisanship, hate, and misogyny in this instance were also linked to, and I think triggered by, ableism. Certainly, the attacks on Walz reveal the ugliness at the heart of the GOP. But they also reveal the extent of stigma against neurodivergent people, and some of the dynamics of how that stigma functions.

Which is to say, neurodiversity is often visible first, not as an identity or a disability, but as a target. Which means, when you see a human difference that seems mockable or abnormal or ridiculous, it’s worth taking a minute to ask yourself whether that difference is wrong, or just different. Ann Coulter is horrible. But in bullying neurodivergent people she is, unfortunately, not alone.