The campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is distancing itself from a decades-old essay on sexuality in which Mr. Sanders, who is running for president in 2016, wrote lines that included a man’s “typical fantasy” as “a woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.”
The 1972 essay, revealed in a profile of Mr. Sanders this week in Mother Jones, was published in an alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman.
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told CNN that the article was a “dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication” that “in no way reflects his views or record on women.”
“It was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the ’70s, but it looks as stupid today as it was then,” Mr. Briggs told CNN.
Mr. Sanders is currently the only declared rival of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Democratic side of the 2016 presidential race.
“When Bernie got into this race, he understood that there would be efforts to distracts voters and the press from the real issues confronting the nation today,” Mr. Briggs told CNN. “He is determined to run a campaign that takes on the big problems facing the American people and not a campaign of salacious gossip and innuendo.”
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