Bernie and Unconscious Misogyny — The Beat Goes On
Sometimes we read something and then lose the citation to the sands of time. A few years ago I read a journalist opine that the world is divided into those who believe in the unconscious and those that don't. Now I can't find the quote. You'll have to believe me that someone else said it, and if they didn't, I'm saying it now: the world is divided into those who believe in the unconscious and those who don't.
I do.
And here is my challenge: what if the Bernie movement really is just an unconscious projection of misogyny. Hear me out. I know I am not winning friends among the folks I know who enthusiastically support him, even now.
Are there any indications that Bernie himself may harbor unconscious misogynistic feelings? Yes, there are. First, his writings on sexuality. In an essay he suggests that women long to be gang raped, that it is a sexual fantasy of ours. He extolls nudity and sex for thirteen-year-olds, and he suggests that very young women should rebel against their mothers and have sex with their boyfriends. And for good measure, he hypothesizes that adolescent sex might prevent female cancers. To be clear, these are not positions that Bernie Sanders is currently forwarding, but they are positions that he has not repudiated. He campaign merely suggested that they were possibly satiric, but there is no evidence to support that. To many feminists his writings read as predatory and unsavory.
Just as telling was the lack of female operatives in the upper echelons of his 2016 campaign. Men filled all ten top campaign posts. And who can forget his rude dismissal of his wife and supposed ally, Jane Sanders, at an open mike. He didn't even attempt politeness. She interfered with his plans, and he rudely dismissed her. I am reminded of Trump leaving Melania to fend for herself on inauguration day, 2017.
Bernie expressed the same exasperation toward female reporters, shoving hands out of the way, and angrily ordering a reporter to "not whine to him about Hillary Clinton." His verb choice was telling.
To enthusiastic Bernie supporters I pose this question, "Why did Bernie run for president only in 2016, when he was already the oldest candidate to throw his hat into the ring?" Surely, his long career in the Senate gave him other opportunities to run. Perhaps in the same way that Trump's anger at a non-white president fueled his presidential run, Bernie was motivated by a need to dismiss and defeat a female candidate. He did not announce his candidacy until HRC announced hers.
Bernie repeatedly dismissed women's issues as trivial. He used scathing rhetoric against the frontrunner of the party he said he was embracing, rhetoric that hurt her in the general election. Perhaps his need to defeat a woman was greater than his desire to defeat Donald Trump. A memo for a scorched earth endgame for the primary season has recently surfaced outlining continuing anti-HRC rhetoric long after Bernie's chance to win the Democratic nomination had been eliminated as a mathematical possibility.
And let's look at his behavior now that Trump is president. He is forwarding a false narrative that HRC lost an election he would have won because of her disavowal of the white, working class. Although this analysis has been discredited with facts, this story continues to beguile Bernie's minions who choose to ignore realities, such as the reality that Bernie primarily won primary challenges in caucus states (some where HRC later won non-binding primaries) with very low voter turnouts.
The class analysis of the evils of Wall Street and seeing white trade unionists as saviors is a narrative that is over a hundred years old, and one that did not bring a desired utopia in countries that tried to implement a socialist/communist government. Totalitarian regimes seem to follow on the tails of economic dogmatism. Tiny Scandinavian societies with homogeneous populations are not relevant examples for large, diverse countries such as China, Russia, and the United States where outcomes are very different.
Bernie has appealed to youth in a demagogic fashion and is continuing his campaign post election. His reductionism of HRC to tired liberalism fails to see that independent analysts found her proposals more workable and ultimately more progressive than his. If you don't agree, then compare their lists of endorsers. HRC represents a worldwide eco-feminism that is newer and more relevant than the insightful analysis offered by Marx in the nineteenth century. Yes, insightful for the nineteenth century.
Sanders' supporters have bullied women on line with the same intensity as Trump supporters and the same misogyny, too. Is it any wonder that we can't tell them apart? Actually, that isn't true. Bernie and his supporters inflict greater psychic pain in that we thought them our allies and find they want to dominate us and dismiss our concerns as well (though I am relieved that an anti-choice agenda does not come with their misogynistic taunts.) Bernie did not have the best record on women's issues, supporting the rights of men if he perceived a conflict, for example when he insisted that HIV-positive convicted rapists should not be compelled to reveal their HIV status.
Why is it so hard for the Bernie camp to consider that their almost seventy-five year old leader is a man of his time, misogynistic and nostalgic, and that his time has passed. His continuing war on HRC and the Democratic party suggest a war on women and people of color unless we want to consider that he too is serving Russian interests. He certainly doesn't serve the interests of American women and people of color, and it isn't surprising that we have difficulty separating him and his supporters from Trump and his supporters at times.
This article by Laurel Brett appeared on Medium on April 23, 2017.
.
Laurel Brett, PhD. teaches English, Women's Studies, and Intellectual History at Nassau Community College and is hatching several books at this time.
###
April 24,2017
Addendum. And recently there was Sanders' endorsement of Heath Mello, the anti-abortion candidate for Mayor in Omaha, Nebraska.
According to CNN this morning, Sanders on Sunday stood by his decision to back a Democratic candidate whose anti-abortion record and position has drawn fire from many in the party. Sanders' supporters Keith Ellison and Nina Turner also dismissed the outrage at Sanders' endorsement as "identity politics" which turns out to be Sanders' folks' code for we don't need to care about women, people of color, LGBT, etc.
Hey, they also need to be reminded Sanders lost the primaries. Bigley. Despite whatever help he got from Russia and Wikileaks like some other Misogynist too.
I don't understand why Brett says Unconscious Misogyny.
Enough.
