Calling Bernie Sanders sexist is like calling Barack Obama racist. Not only does it make absolutely no sense, but it is also simply not grounded in reality. This seems to not have deterred Hillary Clinton’s campaign from making such remarks, however, in the weeks following the first Democratic Party presidential debate. Clinton first implicitly accused the Vermont senator of sexism when she stated “I’ve been told to, and I quote, ‘stop shouting’ about gun violence. First of all I’m not shouting. It’s just sometimes when women talk people think we’re shouting.” This followed Sanders’ retort to Clinton on the question of gun violence: “All the shouting in the world is not going to do what all of us want and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns.”

If actions speak louder than words, then people should look at Sanders voting history before any misconstrued soundbites. According to the National Right to Life Committee, the only time Sanders has ever voted pro-life was to support the ban on human cloning. This is why NARAL Pro-Choice America, a 501(c)(4) dedicated to making abortion services more available, has repeatedly given Sanders a 100% rating. In fact, Sanders has co-sponsored several groundbreaking women’s rights bills in the senate, including the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2014.

Furthermore, despite Clinton’s indignation, Sanders’s call for decency in politics is by no means a reproach of womankind. In a CNN interview in August, Sanders stated that, “coming from a rural state which has almost no gun control, [he] think[s] [he] can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other.” The only crime Sanders is culpable of is perhaps his tendency to reuse campaign phrases. Being accused of the very same discrimination Sanders is trying to end is nothing new to the senator. In August, a Black Lives Matter protest interrupted one of his rallies, despite the 100% rating the NAACP has bestowed upon him several times.

Clinton’s actions are reprehensible and ultimately delegitimize the feminist movement. The accusation of sexism should be taken seriously. Using it to gain political favor off the most inconsequential sentences taken out of context trivializes the term. In fact, Clinton has arguably said more sexist things in her political career. In 1992, during an interview, she said, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” In a sentence more condescending than any Sanders has uttered, she effectively invalidated the lifestyle of any stay-at-home mother. Clinton’s modern pandering is a sorry attempt to manipulate women voters across the country and must be stop immediately.


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A version of this article appeared in the November 16 print edition. Email Max Schachere at [email protected]