The Sanders people say this was intended as a “dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication” that “in no way reflects his views or record on women”, and “was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the '70s”. I don’t think this is the correct interpretation (assuming conventional meanings of the terms “satire” and “attack stereotypes”).
From reading the essay ISTM pretty clear that Sanders was in fact claiming that these rape fantasies were typical of people - he was not saying that as satire or claiming that these were stereotypes that don’t reflect reality. His point in the essay is that these types of attitudes were based on gender roles that were imposed on people by society, and which were harmful to both men and women. IOW he was deploring these things, which he felt were real and reflective of larger societal issues.
[FTR: I don’t think these are a big deal in terms of whether he should be supported in his presidential campaign, which is why I put the thread in this forum.]
It seems that “rape” is a highly attractive poison to politicians. They can’t help going there, even though it never does them any good.
And, yeah, people have really garish fantasies. Research fetish porn sites some day. A great many of those sites are poisonously misogynistic. (A lot of very ugly racism also seems correlated with extreme fetish web posting. No idea why.)
Hard to read all that but it’s just an essay from 40 years ago. He is pointing out extremes, unless there’s a lot more in the part of the text I can’t make out then it takes a leap to consider that he is considering those extremes to be typical of everyone.
This guy’s been ranting for decades and this is the best they can drag up?
…and there is really no need for “interpretation” – it’s clearly a commentary on the shocking fact that people have public personas utterly at odds with their private thoughts.
So is it every time you read a sentence that starts with “a man” and talks about “his typical fantasy”, you think it applies to all men? That’s the core of your argument? That the phrase “his typical fantasy” somehow actually means “all men’s typical fantasies”? You’re hinging your entire interpretation of a 43 year old essay/story/article on that?
Rape fantasies aren’t exactly uncommon. Has Bernie been accused of sexual harassment or rape? If not, so what? I’ve written far more embarrassing things and stuck them up on the internet.
Y’know ISTM that is part of what’s happening with this piece of writing – that the mechanics of English are so that when you say “a (wo)man” or "(wo)men you can mean “any one random individual or a random group of individuals”, or you can be figuratively speaking of “a representation of the whole group of (wo)men”. Context is our friend. And the 24h news cycle’s enemy.
BTW I must critique the Sanders team for a badly executed “satire” defense. Please. Be brave enough to say: yeah, he said SOME otherwise ordinary men have dominance fantasies and SOME otherwise ordinary women have “rape fantasies” and it does not mean either wants to actually rape or be raped. Are you saying that is absolutely not so? And Jesus on rollerskates, that was 40 years ago, howzabout asking what’s his position today?
(Nevermind 50 Shades, how about all those bodiceripper paperbacks?)
But beyond that, now everyone has to watch out what did they say for the last 50 years and to watch out on both the right and the left. We are suspicious of would-be candidates who have “spent all her life maneouvering to run for President” yet at the same time due to our demands and expectations the would-be candidates* had better * have spent their entire lives measuring their every word and step lest it be made public and judged by the standards of some unknown date in the future.
I wonder how many otherwise Presidential-competent aspirants did not, have not and will not ever even bother tossing their hat in the ring (especially in the online age), just on the basis of “OMG, they’ll bring up that thing I once did/said…”. It’s almost like you *have *to be shameproof and mildly sociopathic/narcissistic to press on.
My favorite story was the KGB’s attempt to blackmail Indonesian President Sukarno with movies and photographs of him having sex with honey-trap agents. When they showed him the pictures, he asked if he could have extra copies to take home and show people.
Don’t be so sure. Feminists never agree on anything, after all. There’s plenty of us who like Sanders’ ideas better than Clinton’s. It’s facile to pretend that all women will vote for Clinton or all black people will vote for Obama.
I was oversimplifying; I don’t think feminists are going to vote as a bloc, but I think there is enough consensus that it’s sensible to say the “feminist vote” is a thing.
I don’t think a non-negligible number of voters will be turned away from Sanders because this offends their feminist sensibilities – I would say most feminist voters (all but a negligible number) are either already voting for Clinton, or voting for Sanders because the totality of his career is more feminist, or feel Clinton’s feminist credentials are stronger but are voting for Sanders for other reasons, or are not eligible to vote in the Democratic primary. Feminists who were going to vote for Sanders before this came to light are (largely) going to continue to do so.
It looks like a young guy (he would have been about 29 or 30) scratching out some stream-of-consciousness yammer. Kind of lacking much in the way of coherent structure. Certainly no Kerouac.
Not sure what you intended with that. The quote you cite supports my interpretation, and contradicts those who have claimed here that Sanders was referring to the extreme fringe.
