What We Talk About When We Talk About Bernie Bros

[SecularMotion]

I’ve tried, at least in public, to avoid the term Bernie bro. I understand why the many women and people of color who are supporting Bernie Sanders for president feel erased by it. I can see why lefty white men feel maligned by the implicit suggestion that they are rejecting Hillary Clinton out of sexism rather than idealism.

Nevertheless, the term gets at a particular flavor of sneering condescension that some of his acolytes show toward many women—and, I have to assume, many people of color—who are skeptical about Sanders. If you want to see what I am talking about, I invite you to watch this clarifying moment from a proxy debate between Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters that I took part in on Saturday.

The event took place at Judson Memorial, a storied radical church on Washington Square, and was hosted by the New York talk radio host Brian Lehrer. About 80 minutes in, C. Virginia Fields, former Manhattan borough president and current president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, criticized Sanders for his now infamous New York Daily News interview from earlier this month, in which he seemed to have only vague answers about how he proposed to break up large banks. “As a former elected official, if something is the heart and center of your campaign … you at least are expected to have some sense to be able to put forward a plan in leading that discussion,” Fields said.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/04/11/what_we_talk_about_when_we_talk_about_bernie_bros.html

[Kip Humphrey]

1. Bernie Bros = Obama Boys, pure invention by Fortress Hillary. Any "Bernie Bros" article that fails

to mention this fact is bullshit.

[anotherproletariat]

2. I had no idea that the term 'bro' meant anything other that a shortened form of 'brother'

and was meant as an ally of someone. I think before people get mad at others for using a term they don't like, they need to be sure that the definition they are using is widely known.

[CharlotteVale]

3. You can't justify using a term that erases female Bernie supporters, so

don't even try. Talk about "sneering condescension" - that term reeks of it. Hillary's campaign has been extremely sexist, with DWS, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright all proving the kind of rank hypocrisy fueling it.

[pdsimdars]

4. I just don't like the double standard

We have seen articles about "BernieBros" for MONTHS. And that term has that connotation of the sexism and the aggressiveness (bullying) along with it. Months and months of this.

Yesterday there was a thread about terms that people had thought of to push back to mirror that term. Many were pretty bad. But one I thought was pretty cute, I used, it had Hillary in it and bullying in it, I won't put the term because I got banned from that thread for it and was unable to post for a few hours.

What is that? Looks like a double standard to me. The term I used had no "sexism" connotation, but the bullying. Which makes it less contentious than the BernieBros with it's sexist connotation along with the aggressiveness. But I was banned and they are not. And there is no way to appeal that.

Let's get some equality or at least some kind of forum where we can discuss things like that. I don't think that is asking too much.

I really like DU and have learned SO much, but honestly, there needs to be some way to discuss or appeal things like that. I have some fear about posting this but I hope we can make some progress, this isn't to talk down DU but to improve it.
Thanks.