My opinion is that this "fantasy" as played by the corporate media is purely sensationalised and overblown. Every news story I read refers to about three lines of a rather straightforward essay about the entrapments of tradition on a society that was starting to shake that type of stuff off. (when taken in context to the whole idea) The news report on "Meet the Press" actually referred to him as "possibly dangerous".
Yet reading this essay, you plainly see he's actually just someone in the normal process of shaking off old customs. The line where he refers to "a man going home" is played by the corporate media to mean "Bernie" himself... but he's not talking about himself. He's talking about the hypocrites who have such concepts and perversity amidst attachments to old roles...but then find themselves going to church on Sundays being super holy-holy (like a GOP getting caught in a rest stop bathroom or something similar).
But then he takes it a step further and even extends it to include "the revolutionaries" of the late 1960's that existed (and who prided themselves as being "hip" and all about equality).... as being part of the problem-- because they too are holding to these oppressive concepts that don't serve modern life in their animalism. And neither gender is really managing to achieve the communication that (in the last lines) he refers to as having once been so dear to them both...but is now lost forever to the oppression of the expectations put upon them.
At least, that is what I get off of it....and I have had to argue with a few people now who are thinking Bernie is a pedo or something DUE to this story catching fire and moving. It originally broke on Mother Jones which is a liberal paper not read by conservatives so my gut is the story was dug up by an opponent of his presently running and an opponent whom it might serve in a way to color Sanders as something other than 100% FOR women's equality (as his rating with NARAL proves) and he so is not what some of these people are saying he is. He was being "revolutionary" and questioning his role as a male who both supports and understands the necessity for women's equality - but who found himself IN HISTORY of the era...(even today we struggle with this)
These lines in particular show his struggling to answer questions -sure, by today's standards, society has already answered these issues -- but that's only because there WAS a time when people had to ask the questions. Bernie was right there asking them. He wasn't afraid to find the boundaries in what was an extremely new Women's Liberation movement and in his way he was identifying that both genders dance in this way over and over....to no end. But these lines here stood out as exemplary of what people involved in the early "movement" were dealing with and talking about. That it should be MORE shocking today almost implies we have become less tolerant to soul searching which is intrinsic in life.
"How do you love — with-out being dependent? How do you be gentle — without being subservient? How do you maintain a relationship without giving up your identity and getting strung out?"
And then you compare it to Hillary Clinton's stance about gender on Public Record from around the same era. And she is accepting money to defend a known 41 year old child rapist and her plan to reduce his sentence was to blame it on a 12 year old girl. That to me...IN ACTION FOR MONEY...is FAR more offensive in tone than Sanders' essay could ever be.
The story regarding Hillary's defense of the rapist broke in June 2014 and the victim is still traumatized by the event. You can google the whole story. In comparison, questioning gender roles got played by the media as "possibly dangerous" and Hillary's story "regarding rape" gets ignored when she blames it on the victim as "having a history of accusations of sexual abuse" and what she essentially thought was a bad attitude for a kid.