“Geez,” my partner said one night as we were driving on a cobblestone road. “Does this lady not realize there are sidewalks?”
The young woman in question was indeed walking exactly in the middle of the street. “No, that’s smart,” I told him. “It’s harder for someone to jump out at you from some dark corner if you’re as much in the open as possible. Besides, if anyone tried, others would be more likely to see it happen.”
I also told him about how most women, including me, walk with our keys poking out from our fists when walking alone at night. “If you go for the eyes, they’re less likely to be able to chase you.”
This is part of the wealth of knowledge shared among almost all women, especially urban dwellers.
Incidents of groping
President Sheinbaum’s groping incident — and the subsequent accusations of it being made up — have had me thinking a lot about unwanted touching on the street.
Thankfully for me, it hasn’t happened in a while. Part of the reason, I think, is that I’m older and therefore not as conventionally attractive as I used to be (to random dudes, anyway — I think I’m super cute). I’m also often with my partner and kid. Finally, people pay less attention to others these days now that they can read WhatsApp messages or check Facebook while they’re locomoting. It’s the sunny side of us all being smartphone zombies: creeps sometimes being too distracted to ogle and harass women.
There was a time, though, when I’d get my butt grabbed by a strange man on the street at least once a year. Usually, they’d walk straight past with a smirk, though once I had a particularly scary incident in the early pre-dawn morning. He’d grabbed me under my skirt, no one around, then stared at me for a few seconds as if deciding where to go from there. (Thankfully, my yelling made him “decide” to run off.)
It’s part of the reason I have a marked preference for big, scary-looking dogs. “That’s right! Better cross the street, dude!”
Even now, if there aren’t too many people around, I’ll stop and pretend to look at something on my phone or fidget with my keys until a strange man walking briskly behind me passes. It’s like the kind of response people who’ve been badly bitten by dogs feel when one starts barking. Pounding heart, panic growing: the response becomes physical and involuntary.
A sense of entitlement
The fact that this happened to the president of the freaking country does not surprise me at all. Why? Because I know from personal experience — and so do all women — that there are men out there who simply believe they have the right to do what they want with women’s bodies, the main obstacle being a reasonable chance of getting away with it.
It’s not the majority — thank goodness — but it’s enough for us all to have had experience with the gross shock of it. Multiple experiences, mostly.
It’s not just a problem in Mexico, either. Women politicians all over the world put up with the same behavior.
As for the PRI politician who suggested it was set up as a distraction, I’d argue the accusation itself is a distraction. From what? The fact that opposition to (the very imperfect) Morena movement can’t get good enough proposals together to move people, that’s what.
And it was an ill-thought-out tactic, at that: accuse the woman in question of orchestrating it? Read the room, man.
Security for AMLO and President Sheinbaum
AMLO, the father of the party that has since won a supermajority in Mexico, was famous for, among other things, eschewing bodyguards. He surrounded himself with “citizen helpers” (the “ayudantía,” in Spanish) instead. It’s a great political tactic, especially for a populist: “I don’t want to be separated from the people. I want to be with them.”
“You will have access to me if we’re in the same space” is a great way to convince people you don’t see yourself as above them.
La presidenta has continued this tradition, surrounding herself with a group of ayudantía of her own, and not necessarily with security training.
I love it for PR. I don’t necessarily love it for her actual security. In a country famous for its political assassinations and femicides and machismo, I’d personally want at least one extra layer. Even if it were discrete, it seems some sort of subtle secret service detail would be a good idea.
Scrutiny for the justice system
In any case, that’s her decision. I’m glad she pressed charges, anyway. This gives the justice system a chance to be scrutinized, too: What are you going to do about it? (As of this writing, he’s being held in the sex crimes division of the FGJ after assaulting two other women. Lovely guy.)
Pressing charges was also a great signal to the women of the country: these things are worth making a big deal about. They’re not, as many argue, “part of the job.” If you ask me, that’s a big, important change from the last administration. I generally — mostly — liked AMLO. But one of my biggest complaints about him was that he didn’t seem to take women’s issues seriously enough. Remember his complaints about the women’s protests?
Instituting gender parity in politics was a great move, but if we’re really to achieve equality, it’s got to be on all levels: the macro and the micro.
With Sheinbaum, I’m seeing his antidote: women’s issues are serious, and environmental issues are serious — exactly what we’d been missing.
President Sheinbaum isn’t going to solve the problem of sexual harassment in Mexico. But she is elevating it to the point that it gets the attention it deserves and is setting an important precedent. Through her actions, the message is clear: it’s not something to ignore and be embarrassed about. It’s a crime, and like all crimes, it begs for justice.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
