Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Randolph, recently made offensive comments about Vice President Kamala Harris on social media. (Will Price | West Virginia Legislative Photography)
West Virginia has the nation’s lowest rate of women lawmakers — out of the 134-member Legislature, only 16 are women. There are 32 women running for a seat in the Legislature to join a handful of incumbents in the upcoming election.
The Legislature can feel like a boys club and I imagine more women don’t run because they don’t want to deal with the misogynistic atmosphere.
The things that some male lawmakers say during the session or on their social media is despicable. Unfortunately, the rise in former President Donald Trump’s popularity has emboldened people to say offensive things without fear of embarrassment or punishment.
On Oct. 12, state Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Randolph, posted on X a link to the New York Post article, “Harris’ doctor reports she’s in “excellent health.” Karnes added, “ Other than sore knees and a strong gag-reflex, she’s the picture of health.”
This is sexist and racist, and surely he wasn’t raised to think that type of comment is OK.
What is he saying about other women in private if he says something so offensive publicly?
This vile post was still up as of Monday night.
Karnes also has numerous posts calling Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz “Tampon Tim.” Conservatives started the nickname because the governor of Minnesota signed a law last year that required public schools to provide pads and tampons to students in 4th through 12th grade. Menstrual products can be expensive, some people can be unprepared — how is it a bad thing? Periods should be talked about and understood — not treated as taboo or a thing to joke about.
Karnes lost in the May primary to Robbie Morris. Morris, of Randolph County, is the executive director of the Randolph County Development Authority and the West Virginia Wood Technology Center. On the Morris for Senate Facebook page, he has wished his two daughters a happy National Daughters Day and gave a shout out to his wife for working hard on the Forest Festival — his tone has been respectful toward women.
Unfortunately, many male lawmakers in West Virginia time and time again show no respect for women.
During the regular session earlier this year, Black women told their own stories of being discriminated against because of their hair to the Senate Judiciary Committee in an effort to get lawmakers to pass the Crown Act, which would ban racial discrimination based on certain hair textures and hairstyles.
The bill didn’t go anywhere because of concerns of potential costs for the state — some thought it would lead to more litigation. So it seems like they do believe that people are being discriminated against, but it’s not worth the cost to Senate Finance Chairman Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, who did not have the committee take up the bill for consideration.
In 2022, Del. Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, argued against abortion exemptions for rape, saying that it would lead to more false rape accusations, when women are pregnant “out of wedlock.”
First of all, let’s not shame people for getting pregnant out of wedlock, especially when sex education is lacking in our schools. West Virginia received a C grade for its overall policy on sex education. All schools must include instruction on abstinence, but there’s no requirement to teach consent and no regulation on medically accurate sex education. Also parents or guardians can opt-out of their children taking the class.
We’ve all heard stories of people believing old wives’ tales like Mountain Dew will make you infertile. (For the record, it doesn’t.)
Second, more than 63% of rapes go unreported, according to the Federal Bureau for Justice Statistics. Only about 2-10% of reported rapes are found to be false, which is the same the same as most other violent crimes, according to the National Sexual Violence Resouce Center.
Steele also said that rape could be a “brilliant, bright example of God’s love for the woman birthing it.”
Birth is no easy task. It may take six to eight weeks to heal from the birth, and it can take a body up to a year to fully recover. Forcing someone to go through that is just more punishment on top of the trauma of rape.
Our lawmakers also aren’t doing much to help women. West Virginia has more than 6,000 children in foster care. Child care centers have been closing all year because they’re losing pandemic aid, uncertainty with state funding, staff shortages and more. The state needs more than 20,000 child care spots.
When a family doesn’t have money for child care or can’t find an open spot, who ends up being the stay-at-home parent? Well, 79% of stay-at-home parents are moms.
And what did the West Virginia Legislature do to help with child care during this month’s special session? They passed a tax credit of around $227 per month for a working family, but not without insulting women first.
Del. Henry Dillon, R-Wayne, worried that the bill might encourage women to leave their homes and get jobs. But who will cook dinner and do laundry if the women work? (Hint: It’ll still be the women. Working women do more than twice as much housework as working men.)
The other child care bill, which would have given $5 million to start a pilot program to open five new day care centers, died in the House.
During the regular legislative session, Republican lawmakers tried to act like they supported women with the Women’s Bill of Rights, which was just an anti-trans bill that did nothing to help cisgender women and attacked transgender women. It failed to pass.
Republican male lawmakers are also targeting Democrat Del. Kayla Young, the only mother of school-age children in the 100-member West Virginia House of Delegates.
Young, D-Kanawha, posted a TikTok saying she’s the No. 1 target of the GOP. She says it’s not just that they want her seat, but they want her gone because they say she’s “too smart” and they don’t like that she does videos on TikTok explaining how the state government works. Young has 34.2K followers on the app, and uses the platform to explain issues going on in the Legislature and how processes work.
Keep in mind, the things I’ve written about are just some of the things that are on the record. You’re not hearing about the conversations in the Capitol or the text messages that women receive from lawmakers that are inappropriate.
Slightly more than half of West Virginians are women. Might be in the best interest of these lawmakers to keep that in mind, and log off their social media, start biting their tongues or just grow up.
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