San Francisco’s progressive political clubs have a “Bro” problem
Since 2015, I have been on a mission to convince the world, by contacting every reporter who would listen to me, that the “Bernie Bro” concept was a myth. I now regret it.
Looking back at old emails, I counted that I had contacted political reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle well over a dozen times in the span of five years urging them to cover the diversity of the Bernie Sanders’ movement and offering interviews with women, including many of color, who wanted to speak about their support of Sanders.
All that time working in the movement to elect Sanders, since before his campaign even started, I never met a single “Bernie Bro” until I started volunteering in San Francisco politics just after the Bernie campaign ended in 2020.
Suddenly, it was like putting on a pair of tetrachromatic glasses where I could now distinguish a sickening toxic masculinity perpetuating through the local political scene. It was flourishing as a result of an unsavory club elitism more dedicated to white male supremacy and moral superiority lectures than to progressive values and doing the work to win.
After what I am about to describe happened to me over the past six months, I can no longer in good faith continue to promote that the “Bernie Bro” does not exist when they are revealing themselves to me in plain sight in San Francisco politics and are enabled by those around them who refuse to call it out for fear of upsetting the movement. This movement will never succeed if we don’t call it out right now.
The whole journey started in the summer of 2020 when I shared at a San Francisco Berniecrats meeting that I was raped when I was five years old, and my perpetrator is in jail for doing the same thing to others. I shared those details as part of a testimony that focused on #metoo allegations involving the candidate for whom I was volunteering.
What I had not shared at that time was that San Francisco Berniecrats meeting was the first time I ever spoke publicly about my rape experience. I had to take a dose of prescribed anxiety medication to even get through the meeting, and I am sure few could see over zoom that I suffered severe anxiety attacks including shaking to avoid having flashbacks the entire time.
Many people might wonder why I would even put myself through this.
I felt it was important to share my story because I wanted people to know how much I understand the importance of believing everyone who comes forward. When other people came forward against my own abuser they were not believed, and it discouraged me from saying what happened to me — for decades I lived in silence and anxiety.
Since it is so personal, women’s rights and the #metoo movement is not a subject I take lightly. It’s the reason why I did not vote for Biden in the 2020 election, after allegations were made against him, since I live in a safe state. When women were arrested during the Kavanaugh hearings for protests, I was the one contacting the media with the press release about their arrests and the importance of believing all survivors. In fact, I was supposed to be celebrating my wedding anniversary with my husband at a fancy inn that day, but felt I needed to support my fellow sisters who were putting their bodies on the line instead. I spent that whole night sobbing and working away contacting media. The entire November following I walked around in a “believe survivors” hoodie registering people to vote. My outrage was raw.
Yet, when I testified that late summer evening at the Berniecrats meeting, I was also facing a moral conflict. While I advocate it is important to always believe survivors — I had also seen facts with my own eyes that what was being accused was not true in this specific case. In other words, the facts of the allegations in this instance were false. I was faced with a real moral dilemma. On one hand, I spent so much of my life for advocating for believing women. On the other hand, I knew and could verify that these women were lying about details that could easily be verified as untrue.
I handled it by testifying that I believe two sides of any story can be true at the same time. In other words, I will not argue with perceptions someone has from an experience, but I can argue with facts regarding an experience. The facts involved here simply did not line up at all. The candidate was very clearly falsely accused, and I believe there was a rush to judgement to convict him in the court of public opinion as guilty based on his race and a loyalty and group think mentality among the local political clubs. These clubs spent just a few hours on this, when I know from past experience that a white man would have gotten more due process.
On and after that call, where I was mustering up all my courage to speak, I felt that the men, not the women, had the need to give me lectures on how I am not believing women and expressing moral superiority. Some even went as far as to accuse me of running a smear campaign and other bullying. It was essentially a mockery of what I just said and failure to recognize the tremendous trauma and pressure I was facing to tell the truth.
No one seemed to really care about the treatment of women, or they would have tried to support me. They cared about loyalty to their friends. No one cared that I was being mistreated to the point of tears. At the time, I decided to let it go because we were in an election season, and now was not the time to air internal club grievances. The sake of the movement was bigger than this.
However, post-election season, I started to speak up about how I felt, so that it could be addressed and not perpetuate again. I first directly tried to approach the people who hurt me. This resulted in them ignoring me. I was told to “get a life” by one leader of the San Francisco Berniecrats.
Then someone else tried to take my concerns to the club. This resulted in them blocking me, because as a white male said “he felt like it.” I have been given no venue to express what happened and the hurt I faced. Each time I was denied from speaking, I sent to another higher forum. I told them if they continued to ignore me, I would go public. It is entirely upon them that this is where I am at this point. This does not sound like a club that cares about women. I have been begging them to address this with me directly, and no one has cared.
The same leader of the San Francisco Berniecrats who told me to “get a life” decided that he did not like that I called out his sexism, and so he sent me a gaslighting email accusing me of harassment. He then sent me multiple sexist emails following that exchange. He stressed over and over to me in emails that it was HIS club. Holding someone accountable for multiple instances of sexism is not harassment.
The next day, the same leader of the San Francisco Berniecrats felt it would be a good idea to put my name and city where he thought I lived online, effectively doxing me, which had he had the right location could have put me in danger. This was intended to intimidate me for speaking out about the sexism in the group. He had the wrong location thankfully. He was essentially retaliating against me for speaking my sexist experience with him during a club meeting.
He didn’t know that his actions were particularly dangerous because my perpetrator is currently up for parole. Due to COVID, he likely may get out of jail this time. I purposely have an incorrect and ambiguous location listed on my social media since 2016 for this reason when he started coming up for parole. I am a prison abolitionist personally, but I don’t want my former abuser to know where I live. The San Francisco Berniecrats’ inability to recognize this as a problem is very serious. I expressed this to the club, and despite claiming to care about women, I have received no concern over this matter.
This same leader of the San Francisco Berniecrats now says publicly that he does not believe the allegations made against the candidate now that more facts came out. This infuriates me. Not only did he virtue signal against me on that very topic, but he still didn’t get my point about how you talk about believing people who come forward. I will NEVER say I don’t believe someone who comes forward.
I thought that the club, having been so outspoken on the importance of being allies to women, would have done something to help me and heal my hurt over this. Instead, they retweeted the doxing on their own social media page, and some have even said it was okay since he had the wrong location. Toxic behavior like this is never okay no matter where someone is located. The act itself is wrong. Every single member of that club should be against this, or they have no leg to stand on in saying they support women.
When I came forward with my own story, my phone rang off the hook in the days following. It was other women and men who wanted to tell me of their story of rape that was just like mine. I spent hours upon hours listening to other survivors like me and understanding their wounds and the silence they keep. It seemed I couldn’t find very many people who did not identify as a survivor. Of all the support I offered other people, the fact that there was no support for me brought me to tears. People are so afraid of speaking out against the club leadership and this elitism mentality to not upset the movement that they are not doing what is right.
This type of behavior doesn’t represent Bernie Sanders and should not deserve his name. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant. We need to work together to fix this. In the meantime, I am still waiting for anyone to reach out to me from the San Francisco Berniecrats to help me heal my hurt and offer an apology. My number is 202–351–1757 and email patricia@matchmapmedia.com.
Update: I have since had productive conversations with San Francisco Berniecrats leadership after I posted this, and I am grateful to them for taking time to listen to me and learn.
Update 2: Since San Francisco Berniecrats leadership reached out to me, the behavior of the men seems to continue.
I also have been asked a few questions by many people that I will answer.
First, I am willing to give my phone and email address out because it is already public. I just do not want my address known.
Second, many people have asked me to speak more to the point about believing someone after I said they are lying. The point is that “believe” is a loaded term to a trauma survivor. From my perspective, it is abuser language that can cause a PTSD response. I am in no way trying to compare any club members to my abuser. I am trying to say why the language is triggering to me and other survivors.
And I prefer to say people and not women because men can be survivors too.
Abusers, especially child abusers, do something called grooming. Grooming is basically a mind manipulation — where they make you think that you are the one who is actually at fault and that if someone finds out either you will have severe consequences or no one will believe you.
That doesn’t have anything to do with the club members. I want to be very clear.
But some are using language that is offensive and super triggering to a lot of people who are survivors and they don’t even know it. Things like not believing women or trying to make them seem unstable — not something that I would ever do.
Even if the allegation is false, it does a lot of harm to say “I don’t believe,” even to adults who still carry the manipulation with them.
That is why I am traumatized by the words “I don’t believe.”
Additionally, I personally still believe everyone who came forward. People can lie and also still be telling the truth too. Trauma causes people to have all kinds of responses, and that is the reason why many abuse survivors change their story. This is why I say it is important to look more into this. These kinds of topics are not so simple.
My loyalty is to survivors here. And I tried everything I could to maintain their perspective in this.
I would recommend that anyone who hears a trauma story from someone to say to them, “I believe you, and it is not your fault.” Even if what they tell you makes no sense whatsoever.
As Tarana Burke founder of the #metoo movement suggests, believe all survivors doesn’t automatically mean neglecting all facts. It means giving people the benefit of the doubt in the areas where there are no facts. To me, the facts just don’t line up. So I am more than willing to believe their perceptions. I am not more than willing to buy their lies that I can easily prove as untrue.
I am well aware that one of the people who came forward against the candidate I worked with is mentioned in this piece. In fact, at least three of these women have used the #metoo movement to promote their careers in the past. That doesn’t mean that what they are saying now can’t be true. That’s just fact. Things like numbers and data some have provided just don’t line up with what they say. That’s fact. I and others have caught them in many glaring lies.
Essentially, nothing they have said that I could verify has been true. But I will still believe their perspective in areas I can’t verify. Trust me when I say, I know what coming forward and not being believed looks like. I do not take this lightly, but I am also not about to let a man of color be falsely accused either. I have told no lies in this process. It’s my job as the survivor of on the team to say I believe them. It’s journalists’ jobs to point out the facts. I was asked during my testimony about their motivations for not being truthful. I don’t know. That’s not for me to say nor is it for me to question.
I have always been supportive of people, including the women who spoke out in this instance, coming forward to speak their truth. I stand strong in that principle.