Unsubtle Sexism: The BernieBros vs. The HillaryBots

Luckily, Sanders doesn't even *have* a charity for women,
which is much better than having one!

During this primary, certain (mostly middle-class, educated, able-bodied, straight white male) Sanders supporters have been attacking Clinton with obvious sexism, but also harassing Clinton supporters and even people who simply criticize Sanders or don't support him enough. There's been hilarious levels of mansplaining, obvious sexist derision, accusations that female Clinton supporters fall into the negative female tropes (liars, whores, sluts, bimbos, morons, ignoramuses, people who are acting only emotion rather than logic, and "vagina voters*"), and of course, rejection of claims of sexism because obviously women are too ignorant to know what "actual" sexism is. The guilty have been dubbed: The BernieBros.

The BernieBros

To hear Sanders' fans tell it, the BernieBros are a phenomenon made up by the media, and by media, they mean "a whole lot of feminists online who noticed an uptick in certain sexist behaviors that we have to put up with in order to express any opinion, and pointed out that there was a distinct contingent who were concentrating this behavior towards Clinton supporters to harass us into shutting up, and eventually, a few media outlets decided that maybe they should report on this thing even though women can't be trusted." I mean, they didn't even go #NotAllSandersSupporters, which would be missing the point but at least not a straw man. The went #NotAnySanderSupporters #ButAllClintonSupporters.

I have never seen anyone claim that all Sanders supporters are Bernie Bros-- except for Sanders supporters who don't want to accept that some of their lot might be less than "progressive."

The HillaryBots

After "BernieBros" became a popularized term for the phenomenon of anti-feminist Sanders supporters that was straw manned into "all Sanders supporters" by these same anti-feminists, the Bros and other Sanders supporters decided that they needed a name for all Clinton supporters to be used as an insult like BernieBros is. They decided on HillaryBots and this term spread past the anti-feminists and chauvinists, out to women who to have a strong streak of internalized misogyny, manifesting as the discounting of the opinions of other women.

The BernieBros vs The HillaryBots

Citations?!?!??!!? Piffle.

And so the War of the Bros and Their Foes began. There are a few problems with treating the BernieBros and the HillaryBots as equivalents:

1. BernieBros are "a subset of internet commenters who behave in a sexist way in their pro-Sanders/anti-Clinton posts, especially when responding to female Clinton supporters."
   HillaryBots are "any person who ever says anything positive about Hillary Clinton or less than positive about Sanders, but primarily women and racial minorities."
2. BernieBro is a name used when dismissing an opinion because of the obvious sexism in that opinion.
   HillaryBot is a name used to dismiss an opinion because it was stated by a Clinton supporter, no matter the validity of the content.
3. Bros are men.
   Bots are not people.

This is really telling to me-- because sexist men are being labeled "men" and any woman or Black person that opposes them on politics is being labeled not a person. Men are being called exclusionary for the details in their opinions that expose their bias; women are being dismissed by sexists for supporting a female candidate, since their support proves the inferiority of those women.

Simply put: HillaryBot is an attempt to dehumanize female Clinton supporters, so that any opinion that we have is inherently illegitimate. Of course, the primary people who buy into this Bot nonsense are sexist Bros.

The "No True Logical Person" Logical Fallacy is Logical!

Brocialism and "Bourgeois Identity Politics"

Anti-feminist SJW jazz hands.

Before there were BernieBros, though, there were Brocialists. Brocialists believe that the only discrimination is class discrimination and that once class discrimination is fixed, it will have magically taken racism and sexism with it, because jazzhands. I encountered one of these in a feminist community a few years back and for some reason, it took a while for a lot of the community to realize that he was an "anti-feminist SJW*2." His talk about equality for everyone sounded nice to a lot of people and it only occasionally slipped out that the "correct" way to achieve equality for everyone is to achieve equality for poor white guys like himself, so the rest of us better stop pretending otherwise.

 That's what they're about: equality for straight white dudes like themselves. Sadly, this is in line with old-school Marxism, which teaches that class is the "true oppressor," most likely not because Marx didn't "care" about racism or sexism, but because Marx's time was one in which women and racial minorities weren't exactly people. He died in 1883. The Civil War ended in 1865, black people in the US got the vote in 1870, and women in the US got the vote in 1920. Marxism was invented in a different historical context and most people have updated their take on it to include equality on axes other than class. But not the Brocialists, because they want equality for themselves, screw everyone else.

It's sort of like right-wing, libertarian socialism*2.

The idea of "bourgeois identity politics" is that people who are truly poor are too busy trying to solve being poor to solve being Black or female or gay. Sometimes, this is stated as "only middle class people can even afford to be gay," as though that means that only middle class people can afford to be female or Black. (We're in serious eyeroll territory here.) But let's pretend that I've never seen that and that what they meant is that "only middle-class people are well off enough to notice that being Black or female is a problem.

The funny thing to me is that they call the fight against racism, sexism, etc. "bourgeois," and it's funny mostly because of who is saying it.

Wait, Who's Bourgeois?

attribution

Many people think of themselves as poor even if they are middle class. They feel poor; they feel that they would be more comfortable if they had more money. Thus they declare themselves lower class. Since they are "lower class," their struggles are now the primary focus of socialism.

But the people who exhibit the behavior that I'm talking about here are guys who have computers and high-speed internet, a stable physical environment, higher education, and plenty of time to spend yelling at women on the Internet. These are not poor people who are trying to achieve upward mobility through free college. These are middle class white guys who imagine that they are poor, and so far as I can tell, 30+ year old white corporate techies with degrees from Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT that they try to hold against you in an argument because an upper middle-class education is the best way to understand "the poors," obsv.

That results in conversations like this:

Don't you know that CLASS is the TRUE
oppressor?

Person 1: "Poor women have fewer paths of escape from abusive relationships and abusive relationships often include forced poverty to remove escape paths. Women need special tools to give them escape paths from abuse or they will not be able to escape poverty."
Person 2: "Petty bourgeois identity politics! We need to focus exclusively on class!"
Reasonable people: "... but class... interacts with... wait, what?" 

Person 3: "Racist policing in poor black communities leaves residents with a choice between going to jail and paying an untenable fine (often resulting in jail time due to lack of payment), even for 'quality of life' 'crimes' like jaywalking. This causes unstable ability to work, which in turn forces residents to stay in poverty. We need to address racist policing."
Person 2:  "Petty bourgeois identity politics! We need to focus exclusively on class!"
Reasonable people: "But we... were... focusing on class?"

It's basically middle-class, educated white boy speak for "but they're in my outgroup!" It's just a way to dismiss the needs of people whose needs aren't universal, where "universal needs" are "things that can even affect white guys." It's a way of saying that race issues, women's issues, etc. shouldn't even be discussed until white dude problems are solved.

Syracuse's greatest expert on Black people.

They're middle class, educated white guys speaking on behalf of poor black people and women, to "educate" us that the true solution to our problems is free college, without bothering to find out even what our problems are. Then, if you don't accept that uninformed opinion as fact, POOF! You are no longer a person.

Rage Against the Machines!

On a related note, I posted this song by an anti-capitalist band to Facebook about 5 years back and the concept angered white guys who are now Sanders supporters who lecture me on what my best interests are. 

You have to be in pretty specific parts of the Internet to call gender discrimination "bourgeois identity politics" and have people keep a straight face (the cesspool that is reddit), so when the same people are in comment sections trying to dismiss gender and race issues as unimportant, they have to use a different technique. Thus, the people who bring these things up are "bots," computer programs, not people. It's not a stretch for them to refer to women and minorities this way because they obviously don't consider us their equals( or people).

Not only is it an ad hominem attack (but a totally logical, unemotional one, I swear!), it's a sexist/racist one. Our opinions don't count because we aren't people.

And if you look at the way that they treat the Southern Black vote, Southern Black people aren't people either.

"A lot of that came from the South," which doesn't matter. 

* Still not a thing.

*2 I don't know! My family has a house in a Republican commune. Reality is confusing.