“The revolution comes when two strangers smile at each other…and when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has ‘taught’ her and accepts her boyfriend’s love.” — Bernie Sanders

This isn’t a new conversation. Many of us have been trying to tell you that Bernie Sanders makes our skin crawl since 2015. His writings from the 1970s depict an oversexualized image of activism and revolution that essentializes women’s sexuality. He puts his hands in front of women’s faces while they talk, dismisses gender issues, talks over women, and is an odd proponent of young people having sex.

My mother was a political revolutionary in the 1970s and has long described the kind of leftist man who saw women’s roles as making coffee and sleeping with the men. These types of expectations of women were described from women in the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground. These beliefs are sexually coercive by link women’s value to sex and their revolutionary choices to who they sleep with.

In unearthed videos of Bernie’s public access show as mayor he also acts bizarrely towards children. When giving a lecture supposedly on prejudice he instead describes every stereotype he can think of including that Jews like deviant sex. He also tells young children they should be more friendly…to the strange man talking to them from a car.

The infamous essays he wrote on female sexuality for The Vermont Freeman from 1969 to 1972 reveal some pretty exploitative views about women. And although these pieces were dismissed as satire or youthful indiscretions when he first ran in 2016, we must include Bernie in a conversation about problematic histories on women and gender issues in 2020.

In his 1972 essay “Man and Woman,” Sanders describes men fantasizing about abusing women and women fantasizing about being gang raped by three men. A typical man’s fantasy is described as “a woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused,” while a woman “fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously” as she has “intercourse with her man.”

Not only is it disturbing for Sanders to assume these violent fantasies are typical, he also casts women as “slavish” breeding “pigness” in men.

In another essay, entitled “Cancer, Disease and Society,” Sanders suggests that women’s health and sexuality are linked, arguing that more orgasms and less sexual repression will protect young women from cancer when they are older. “The manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things,” he states.

This was a pet idea of Wilhelm Reich, the fringe revolutionary psychologist. Reich built an “orgone box” (a type of hyperbaric chamber meant to encourage orgasms) that led him to be jailed for fraud. Sanders repeats Reich’s ideas despite the fact they had been long discredited.

In the same essay, Sanders argues for the importance of teenage girls having sex. “How much guilt, nervousness have you imbued in your daughter with regard to sex? If she is 16, 3 years beyond puberty and the time which nature set forth for childbearing, and spent a night out with her boyfriend, what is your reaction?”

Sanders seems to imply that 16-year-old girls are ready for sex and their mothers are intrusive busybodies coming between young women and their boyfriends.

He doubles down in another essay “The Revolution is Life Versus Death,” claiming that change can only happen “when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has ‘taught’ her and accepts her boyfriend’s love.”

Instead of insisting on the need to protect children, he focuses on children as sexual beings whose mothers should be dispatched so their female offspring can have sex with their boyfriends. It should be noted that Sanders voted against the Amber Alert in 2003 — a system of notifying the public when a child goes missing. (Bernie claimed he voted against it because of an add-on limiting judicial power on sentencing).

Sanders also voted against a measure that would give rape victims the right to find out if their perpetrators have HIV and AIDS. (He cited privacy concerns).

With all this, Sanders does not seem to prioritize the protection of women from sexual violence. In his own personal life, despite advocating for women to submit to the love of their boyfriends, Bernie refused to work, instead running unsuccessfully multiple times on the Liberty Union Party in the early 70s. Without contributing financially to his son’s upbringing, the mother of his son was forced to be on welfare.

We can’t dismiss these writings as mere satire. Stylistically, there is nothing to suggest this, and they are not followed by disclaimers, nor has Sanders disavowed them even now. One of the few public explanations he’s made was to dismiss them as “something like Fifty Shades of Grey” on “Meet The Press” in 2015.

After a town hall in Iowa he said, “It was a poorly written article dealing with gender stereotypes of the period, in the sense that a lot of men have the feel to be all powerful and controlling…Women have the feeling they have to be dependent. It was very poorly written in a way I certainly would not write it now. But if you read it, what you find is that is a bad situation for both people: women shouldn’t be dependent. Men should not be oppressors. We want a society where people are equal. That was what it was about.” While this quote admits some of the language used wasn’t good, he still defends the ideas in the rape essay. He believes his piece was commenting on women thinking they need to be dependent, rather than understanding that society forces this situation on us. He doesn’t really reckon with the harm done by talking about women as pigs who fantasize about gang rape. This quote also doesn’t address any of the other problematic writings.

Sanders is often touted as the most consistent man in politics, offering the same message for 40 years, so it only seems fair to ask if his message on female sexuality has changed. Without him fully explaining these writings, we have no idea if his views have truly evolved.

Today the rhetoric may have advanced, but many of these beliefs haven’t. I’m an outspoken liberal woman living in Brooklyn trying to date. So I meet a lot of men who fancy themselves feminists and call themselves ethical non-monogamists. When I say I’m not interested in that type of relationship at this point in my life, they usually launch into a lecture about the feminist nature of polyamory and the importance of these types of relationships in overthrowing patriarchy. They assume my refusal is due to some puritanical understanding of sex and that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Linking sexual choices to revolution and politics is highly problematic. As long as women have full agency over their sexual pleasure they ARE being political and revolutionary. This includes people of all sexual orientations and preferences. You can be a feminist revolutionary if you’re gay, asexual, poly, bisexual, or even straight and monogamous. If we force people to see their sexual choices as needing to be a certain way in order to be feminist and political, those choices become coercive because they are no longer focused on the person’s sexual preferences and boundaries.

Men continue to be in the news for touching women inappropriately even if it doesn’t rise to the level of sexual assault. Not only are we told to sleep with men to be revolutionary but now we’re told our silence is needed as well. If we speak up we are told we’re ruining progressive politics. Men’s reputations and political work are constantly placed above women’s bodily autonomy and safety. How many women are we losing this way? How many women are silenced and pushed out of political spaces? How many women are coerced sexually because their sexuality is politicized?

**Some of this has been written in pervious medium pieces I’ve published.

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride/