MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president posed a query Wednesday that no one was actually asking: why, if a lady criticizes him, he isn’t thought-about sufferer of gender violence.
Mexico has strict political laws that forbid questioning somebody’s competence primarily based on their gender.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador fell afoul of these guidelines when he prompt final month that opposition presidential hopeful Xochitl Gálvez was a puppet manipulated by highly effective males.
An electoral courtroom selected Aug. 2 that match the definition of “gender violence,” and ordered López Obrador to cease it.
However López Obrador — and surprisingly, his feminist spouse — questioned the equity of that, saying Gálvez has criticized the president, however he hasn’t been thought-about a sufferer of gender violence.
“Every part that they are saying to me, is not that gender violence?” López Obrador stated at his morning media briefing. “Or is gender solely about girls?”
That ignored a few details: Gálvez has by no means prompt López Obrador is fallacious as a result of he’s a person, or that he’s manipulated by girls.
It additionally ignores the overwhelming proof over millennia that saying somebody is not able to one thing due to their gender is a tactic that has been used nearly completely towards girls.
López Obrador claims, maybe rightly, that he by no means stated particularly that Gálvez had been promoted and manipulated by highly effective males. He did name her a “puppet” who had been “imposed” by a bunch of males whose names he talked about.
It will all seem to be an odd factor to struggle about — the president speaks off the cuff for about two hours per day at his media briefings, and has sometimes made some seemingly unsupported statements — however then, as has develop into common, his supporters doubled down of their protection of the president.
His spouse Beatríz Gutiérrez Muller — herself an instructional specializing in literature and different themes, who has requested not be known as first girl — got here out on her Facebook web page to ask whether or not the president could be proper.
“Gender-based political violence is barely punished when it’s males towards girls? When it’s males towards males, or girls towards males, cannot you take into account it gender-based political violence? It is a critical query,” she wrote.
Political analyst Denise Dresser wrote in a tweet, “he has no concept what gender violence is.”