Source :
Bice: GOP guv candidate Bill Berrien scrubs links to sexually explicit social media accounts
Bice: GOP guv candidate Bill Berrien scrubs links to sexually explicit social media accounts
Daniel Bice
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Bill Berrien has campaigned as a conservative who is critical of transgender individuals.
- Berrien's social media account on Medium.com followed several sexually explicit writers, including a transgender porn star.
- After being questioned by journalists, Berrien's campaign confirmed he removed many of the sexually explicit accounts he was following.
As a Republican running for governor, Whitefish Bay businessman
Bill Berrien is campaigning as
a conservative leader who stands up for family values.
Berrien, CEO of Pindel Global Precision, is especially critical of transgender individuals, saying they are engaged in
"radical social experimentation."
"Take it from a dad and a coach, I will keep boys out of our daughters' sports and locker rooms," Berrien says in a
recent TV ad. A
new ad praises President
Donald Trump for "protecting our daughters' sports."
But Berrien's online footprint tells a different story — one that he quietly tried to erase in recent days.
On
Medium.com — an older online platform, similar to
Substack — Berrien, 56, has an account that was following a transgender porn star named
Jiz Lee and several other authors of sexually explicit essays. To "follow" someone on social media means you subscribe to their account and their posts show up in your personal feed.
Other writers he was following include
Octavio Morrison, author of “7 Types of Orgasmic Sensations" and "3 Terrible Reasons to Have a Threesome" and
Emma Austin, who calls herself “a wholesome perv with a touch of whimsy” who has posted items such as “Pegging is A-OK,” and “I Love Getting Jackhammered."
Not your typical
men's health magazine headlines.
Berrien also followed "publications," essentially blogs, like
"Sexography," which calls itself "an inclusive place for people to talk about and explore sexuality from all orientations, cultures, and perspectives," and
"Polyamorary Today," which promotes relationships with multiple partners.
In the past, he "clapped for" — similar to "liked" on other social media — an article on "Polyamory Today" entitled,
"My Husband Loves Watching Me Flirt With Another Man" and a post by Lee, who identifies as a
"queer, trans, non-binary adult performer," on
ethical porn. (His campaign maintains he didn't know Lee's gender identity.)
Berrien's campaign also said there was nothing hypocritical about Berrien, a critic of transgender rights and advocate for conservative values, following a variety of sexually explicit authors and blogs.
"It is absurd to suggest that Bill would know about a particular author’s personal choices or by reading one article by an author would agree with everything else they wrote," a campaign spokeswoman said. "We read
Dan Bice all the time, and we have no idea about his personal choices."
She added, "It is also absurd to suggest that reading articles about sex as a happily married adult man with three children is in any way out of line with conservative Catholic values."
But Berrien didn't act like someone who thought voters would understand. Consider this:
The
Wayback Machine, which stores snapshots of current and past websites, showed he was
following the accounts of 41 individuals, including business colleagues, news magazines such as
The Atlantic and
a blog promoting the hiring of military spouses,
and seven publications on Jan. 23.
The Journal Sentinel asked the Berrien campaign on Monday, Sept. 15, about his past history on the online platform. The next day, someone scrubbed the account of 19 individuals and publications that he was following, including most of the sexually explicit ones. That left him following
22 people and blogs.
Even after the changes, Berrien was still following as of Sept. 18 the "Sexography" blog and two individual accounts with sexually provocative content:
Sherry Mayle (e.g.,
"The 9 Types of Couples Who Want to Have a Threesome with You") and
Missy Garcia (e.g.,
"3 Parts for Transformative Orgasmic Pleasure").
A spokeswoman for the campaign acknowledged Berrien was behind the changes.
"When you brought this up, he logged in on Tuesday and started messing around, which resulted in some folks being deleted" from his account, she said.
Berrien campaign officials confirmed he set up a Medium account in 2018 but said he has used it rarely since 2019.
The Wayback Machine showed, however, that someone was on his account even earlier this year. That's because Berrien just recently began following
Jonathan Healy, an investor at
Cathay Innovation and
a strong advocate for reindustrialization. Berrien has made reindustrialization a major theme of his campaign, writing about it in a 442-word story last month on
LinkedIn.
Berrien's Medium account also continues to follow several individuals with whom he apparently has a professional relationship. Berrien did not stop following any of his business associates when scrubbing other individuals from his account.
Initially, the campaign had indicated that the Journal Sentinel might be able to talk to Berrien about his Medium account. Berrien officials later decided against doing that.
Washington County Executive
Josh Schoemann, the only other Republican candidate for governor currently in the race, declined to comment on Berrien's online activities. Also refusing to issue a statement was the state Democratic Party.
But one experienced Democratic strategist not working for any gubernatorial candidate said this is a clear case of hypocrisy and that voters don't like such behavior.
"If you want to go and criticize people's freedom to live the way that they want to live and try to restrict those freedoms, on one hand, and expect that you yourself can do whatever you want, that's exactly the kind of hypocrisy that people have concerns with," the strategist said. "You can't have it both ways."
The strategist added that Berrien's decision to try to scrub his own account after being alerted to the issues was further proof that he is "not ready for prime time."
Of the sex-related accounts Berrien followed, they varied in how often they publish and how many people followed them.
Austin, who has been on Medium since 2019 and has 80,000 followers, posts once or twice a week on a variety of topics, including vibrators, sex dolls, condoms, masturbation and rough sex. Morrison has 2,200 followers on Medium, where she last wrote in 2020. She also has a Substack account on "sex, love, soul, mind and body."
Lee, the trans porn star who uses they/them pronouns, has been on Medium since 2015 and has 1,500 followers. They have only one post, "Ethical Porn Starts When We Pay for It," which Berrien clapped for. But Lee's page directs people to their personal website, where they post stories fairly regularly on their blog, most recently on Aug. 25.
Williams College, a prestigious Massachusetts school,
came under fire in 2022 for inviting Lee to speak on campus to discuss their experience with porn and its relationship to personal empowerment. Lee has appeared in more than 100 films but is a strong critic of traditional porn for presenting heterosexuality as the preferred sexual orientation.
abcnews.go.com
even got coli followers
