At a town hall meeting in Parkersburg, Iowa, last Friday, Sen. Joni Ernst (R) faced a boisterous room of constituents, with many in the crowd expressing concern about the “big, beautiful” budget bill on its way to the Senate, with proposed cuts to the committee that oversees Medicaid. When one audience member shouted that people would die as a result of health care cuts, Ernst responded, “Well, we all are going to die, so for heaven’s sakes, for heaven’s sake folks.”

The video went viral, prompting Ernst to double down in a bizarre offense-defense crouch. Over the weekend, she posted a mock “apology,” shot in a serene cemetery (nice touch). Looking straight into the camera she says: “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth.” Followed by a cute note of relief that at least she did not have also have to provide such clarity regarding the tooth fairy, she wrapped up with, “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”

Ernst’s callousness is a direct reflection of her party line and, to that extent, totally on brand. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN in response, “I think everybody in that audience knows that they’re going to die. They would just rather die in old age at 85 or 90, instead of dying at 40. And the reality is that, when you lose your health care, you are much more at risk of early death. … [W]hen drug treatment clinics close in Iowa and rural America because of this bill, more people will die at a younger age.”

Also on brand is her invocation of Christianity, echoing President Donald Trump, who openly questioned the separation of church and state. During a Rose Garden event last month celebrating the National Day of Prayer he quipped, “Separation? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I’m not sure. … We’re bringing religion back to our country, and it’s a big deal.” A recent executive order and accompanying fact sheet on religious liberty appear to cater directly to Christian nationalist groups, according to the Public Religious Research Institute.

In watching the Ernst video series, though, I found myself mostly reflective about Madeleine Albright’s signature statement: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” That surely applies to women in power who wield their power to do active harm, who know that harm is directed at other women and do so in purported service of the common good. Not coincidentally, this past weekend I also binged my way through the The Handmaid’s Tale to duly absorb the series finale. Ernst’s words are not far off the foundations of the not-so-fictional Republic of Gilead (as noted in Season One): “Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some.”

Ernst is very much our real-time Serena Joy, of the ilk who make me assess my own commitment to fighting for gender parity in political representation. (This is a topic I frequently wrangle over. Have a read of this Time magazine piece I wrote a few years ago, “Democracy is Feminist,” which provides a slew of correlating stats.)

Throughout Ernst’s political career, she has paid lip service to feminist ideals and willingly leveraged its camaraderie when it served her—say, by joining forces with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to address sexual assault in the military. And by making twisted pleas for equity central to her support for Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination. (Ugh, Ernst’s viral comment from the Senate Judiciary Committee floor, “This, folks, is what a mom can do.”)

Nor is Ernst alone. She is in the company of a growing cadre playing the same game in Congress, throughout the Trump administration, and across statehouses—feigning to embody feminism in the name of women’s collective political rise, all the while displaying reprehensible behavior and advancing the absolute worst policies for women, children, people of color, LGBTQ people, the elderly, and, quite frankly, for each and every one of us.

Fifty years ago, a group of revolutionary activists – Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisolm, and Fannie Lou Hamer among them—formed the National Women’s Political Caucus to prioritize women’s political representation and acknowledge that “legal, economic, and social equity would come about only when women were equally represented among the nation’s political decision-makers.”

I stand behind their belief that electing and appointing women to high places matters for the sake of policy, perspective, and visibility—and for what it reflects to future generations. Representational parity alone, though, cannot be enough to ensure a feminist democracy. Certainly not when women like Ernst believe they rack up clout by recording foolishly cruel videos.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.