What Did We Learn From the Overheated Bernie Sanders ‘Rape Fantasy’ Story?

Now that the saga has run its course, it's worth dissecting. On May 26, just an hour after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders held a kickoff rally for his presidential bid, Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy appeared to bury a lede. He published a profile on Sanders’s early days as a shambling left-wing activist, working odd jobs and crashing in friends’ homes. Sanders even contributed “a stream-of-consciousness essay on the nature of male-female sexual dynamics,” wrote Murphy.

That was the cue for “Man and Woman,” a 1972 essay by “Bernard Sanders” on the subject of sexual repression in a time of sexual revolution. “A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy,” wrote Sanders. “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.”