This is a real essay that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote in 1972 for the Vermont Freeman, a long-since-defunct alt paper:
“She fantasizes being raped by 3 men”: Bernie Sanders’s bizarre 1972 essay on gender
Dylan Matthews was a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.
In case the text is tough to read, here are the opening paragraphs:
A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.
The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church, or maybe to their “revolutionary” political meeting.
You can read the whole thing at the bottom of the post.
The essay is just one of the many highlights that Mother Jones’s Tim Murphy dug up for an extraordinary profile of Sanders’s early years in Vermont. Some others:
- Sanders sent an open letter to President Ford warning of a “virtual Rockefeller family dictatorship over the nation” if Nelson Rockefeller became vice president.
- Sanders called for the “abolition of compulsory education” during his four statewide runs in the 1970s as a member of the Liberty Union party.
- As a Liberty Union candidate, he called for legalizing hitchhiking:
- In the late ‘70s, while living with University of Vermont philosopher Richard Sugarman, Sanders would greet him every morning by saying, “We’re not crazy.” (Sugarman: “‘I’d say, ‘Bernard, maybe the first thing you should say is ‘Good morning’ or something,’” Sugarman recalls. “But he’d say, ‘We’re. Not. Crazy.’”)
Read Murphy’s whole piece here, and the full Sanders essay below.
A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.
The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday — and go to Church, or maybe to their “revolutionary” political meeting.
Have you ever looked at the Stag, Man, Hero, Tough magazines on the shelf of your local bookstore? Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like “Girl 12 raped by 14 men” sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?
Women, for their own preservation, are trying to pull themselves together. And it’s necessary for all of humanity that they do so. Slavishness on one hand breeds pigness on the other hand. Pigness on one hand breeds slavishness on the other. Men and women — both are losers. Women adapt themselves to fill the needs of men, and men adapt themselves to fill the needs of women. In the beginning there were strong men who killed the animals and brought home the food — and the dependent women who cooked it. No More! Only the roles remain — waiting to be shaken off. There are no “human” oppressors. Oppressors have lost their humanity. On one hand “slavishness,” on the other hand “pigness.” Six of one, half dozen of the other. Who wins?
Many women seem to be walking a tightrope now. Their qualities of love, openness, and gentleness were too deeply enmeshed with qualities of dependency, subservience, and masochism. How do you love — without being dependent? How do you be gentle — without being subservient? How do you maintain a relationship without giving up your identity and without getting strung out? How do you reach out and give your heart to your lover, but maintain the soul which is you?
And Men. Men are in pain too. They are thinking, wondering. What is it they want from a woman? Are they at fault? Are they perpetrating this man-woman situation? Are they oppressors?
The man is bitter.
“You lied to me,” he said. (She did).
“You said that you loved me, that you wanted me, that you needed me. Those are your words.” (They are).
“But in reality,” he said, “If you ever loved me, or wanted me, or needed me (all of which I’m not certain was ever true), you also hated me. You hated me — just as you have hated every man in your entire life, but you didn’t have the guts to tell me that. You hated me before you ever saw me, even though I was not your father, or your teacher, or your sex friend when you were 13 years old, or your husband. You hated me not because of who I am, or what I was to you, but because I am a man. You did not deal with me as a person — as me. You lived a lie with me, used me and played games with me — and that’s a piggy thing to do.”
And she said, “You wanted me not as a woman, or a lover, or a friend, but as a submissive woman, or submissive friend, or submissive lover; and right now where my head is I balk at even the slightest suspicion of that kind of demand.”
And he said, “You’re full of _______.”
And they never again made love together (which they had each liked to do more than anything) or never ever saw each other one more time.
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