I loved your piece! I study psychology and I’m especially interested in power and prejudice; lately I’ve been thinking of everything in terms of power dynamics.
This movement does not belong to Bernie Sanders.
It’s been building for a long time and he happened to be at the right place and right time to assume leadership where nobody else would. It is his campaign, though, so you can argue that he bears some responsibility, but I don’t think it’s completely fair to put the onus on him to make his movement less sexist.
There are equally poor representatives among Clinton supporters.
She has Hillary Bros (Hillary Hecklers?), too, who are condescending and insult Bernie by comparing him to things considered weak, feminine things. Unfortunately I see many female supporters of both candidates use these misogynous metaphors and criticisms — how condescending for a man to be like, “you have internalized misogyny, that’s wrong for you as a woman to say”? The problems are much larger than presidential campaigns, much larger than politics in general. Hillary Clinton is never made to answer for (brought to heel?) her supporters’ racism and homophobia or even her own racist and homophobic history. She gets a pass because — why?, President Obama and Human Rights Campaign?
Being issues-based
Never one to shy away from the opportunity to critique someone I support, there have been times when I wished Bernie would say a little bit more or tackle it more aggressively. But I think he’s trying to focus on the issues. He truly has run an issues-based campaign and every criticism he has of Hillary is issue-based, “negative” or not. When it is brought to his attention, he reprimands it, saying “we don’t want that crap” specifically regarding online sexism. But if he had to address every single sexist or improper comment one of his supporters says, he would never get around to the issues that he would have tangible power over as president. He does come from an earlier time and often specifies that paid family leave is for mothers and their newborns haha but in my opinion, and it’s a privileged one, somebody with the right ideas can be brought up to date with the latest rhetoric, and I prefer that any day to someone who can speak the right language (see: Hillary Clinton “intersectional”) but is morally suspect. (And Hillary Clinton’s photographic memory and maintaining up-to-date on the latest research and language is definitely something I admire about her! I think she’s easily a genius. But when it comes to this stuff, it’s all talk. There are things in her history, actions she’s taken, and explanations for those actions, that I cannot overlook.)
What really got me in the “corporate whore” situation was that everybody was quick to point the finger at Bernie Sanders, but wouldn’t look at the larger picture of Hillary Clinton’s responsibility in maintaining racism (and capitalism, and imperialism, and corporatism, and Neoliberalism), wouldn’t look even just a few days earlier when she was involved in a racist joke! Yes, I was disappointed to hear that that happened at a Bernie rally, but the response was lopsided. If Bernie Sanders must answer for his surrogates’ sexism, and he should undoubtedly chide it, should Hillary Clinton not have to answer at the very least for her whole 2008 primary campaign against Obama? (And don’t get me wrong, I can create a never-ending list of examples of her bigotry. I actually tried, but it got too overwhelming and disorganized.)
Recently I wrote up a piece about the way we talk about Bernie Sanders and how it relates to the “inevitability” of Hillary Clinton and the privileges being established/Establishment gives you, past the name recognition:
