In a church speech, Mark Robinson points to his crotch and admonishes women to ‘get this under control’

In the 2022 sermon-like speech, Robinson also suggested women shouldn’t have access to birth control and said they should have sex only if they want to have a baby. 

During a church sermon in 2022, Mark Robinson gestured to his crotch and said that if women truly want to empower themselves, they should first “get this under control.”

Then he said women should not have sex until they want to have a baby, and suggested they shouldn’t have access to birth control.

Robinson is the Republican candidate to be the next governor of North Carolina.

Robinson, speaking to Hilltop Baptist Church in Thomasville, N.C., in January of 2022, mocked the idea of “female empowerment,” and suggested that any intellectual or personal improvement a young woman may pursue would be moot if they insisted on having casual sex.

“One of the things we love to tell our young women,” he said with a tone of sarcasm, “we want to empower you so that you can be strong in society. We want to help you to build up your mind.”

He continued: “Why don’t you use some of that building up of your mind and building up of empowerment to move down here to this region down here,” he said sweeping his hand toward his groin, “and get this under control.”

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In an uncovered sermon, Republican nominee for NC Governor Mark Robinson argued that women need to “get this under control” while pointing to his groin. #nc #northcarolina #robinson #markrobinson #bans #birthcontrol #governor

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Because, he said, still gesturing, “this region right here, that’s the only region on your body that can make life, and take life.”

The real way to teach young people to “be strong in society,” he added, was to teach abstinence until it was time to start a family. 

“If there’s anything we need to be telling our young people it’s they need to be responsible with their reproductive systems,” he said.

“That means you don’t lay down and act like you’re making a baby until you’re ready to have a baby.”

He continued: “All this giving out of birth control and advising people, ‘well, you see if you do it this way, you won’t have a baby, if you do it that way -’ Here’s how you don’t have a baby: You don’t have what you do to make a baby until you’re ready to have that baby.”

This was a message, he added, that should be taught to students.

“That’s a novel idea,” he said. “It has not reached our school system, sadly.”

A steady stream of misogynistic comments

This is not a new theme for Robinson.

Robinson, currently North Carolina’s Lt. governor, has a long record of implicit and explicit derision of women and women’s issues, saying that Beyonce taught women to be  “whores,” mocking the idea of women leaders, calling mothers who breastfeed in public “shameless attention hogs,” spreading conspiracy theories about Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby’s sexual assault charges, and saying that women should not be able to get an abortion “for any reason,” even when their own lives are at risk.

In a 2019 Facebook Live video, Robinson said, “abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It is about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

This is also not the first time he’s accused women of being promiscuous, criticized birth control, or framed the issues in heated rhetoric in a church setting.

In June, Robinson spoke in Tennessee to a far-right group that seeks to cut off access to some forms of birth control. The group, PreBorn, claims that birth control pills achieve the same result as abortion.

• At an event in August, the Huffington Post reported, he said that birth control pills were being “forced on very young ladies,” and that birth control made women “a little bit more inclined to be promiscuous.” Robinson’s comments were recorded secretly by a member of a Democratic group posing as a supporter. 

• Robinson, who has called abortion providers “butchers,” attacked LGBTQ North Carolinians enemies of God, and claimed public schools are dens of socialism, told a small church gathering in June that “some folks need killing.”

Robinson won the Republican primary this spring by a large margin, but recent polls show him falling far behind his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, who has vowed to “fight like hell” to defend abortion rights and other issues of reproductive health.

But polls are just snapshots of a single survey, and the election could very well be close.

Robinson’s record and rhetoric raises the question of how he will act if he wins the governor’s race and inherits its public platform, which is far bigger than the campaign trail or a church pulpit. 

If his rhetoric as Lt. Governor, and before that as a private citizen, is any example, his approach as governor may not be much different.

In one older social media post, Robinson, who recently acknowledged that he and his wife had an abortion when they were younger, suggested that women who have abortions were harlots.

“How you gonna scream ‘black lives matter’ if you done had 5 abortions?,” he posted with the hashtag #reallyheffer?

One of the comments on the post was from his wife, Yolanda Hill.

“Be nice,” she wrote.

That post was from 2015.