The president who said NO! By Virginia Robertson

There’s something both chilling and illuminating about the sight of a head of state being groped in broad daylight. It’s not only a violation of the body, but a stark reminder of how power and gender remain on parallel, unequal tracks, even at the highest levels of authority.

When Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum was assaulted by a man during a public appearance this week, an act captured on countless cell phones, the moment spread across social media like an electric shock. The footage is brief, but unbearable in its familiarity: a man approaches her from behind, reaching toward her body with entitlement that feels both individual and systemic. She flinches, steps away, the crowd murmurs, security intervenes. Her face controlled but shaken, says what millions of women have felt: even here, even now, it doesn’t stop.

It’s worth pausing to realize what just happened. A man put his hands on the President of Mexico. The symbolism is as striking as it is grotesque. Sheinbaum is not only the first woman to lead the country, she’s a scientist, a leftist, a reformer who rose from academia to the national stage but in that split second, she became something else: every woman who has ever been touched without consent, looked at as accessible, as someone’s opportunity for a grab or a thrill.

Her decision to press charges was swift and deliberate. “If I don’t file a complaint, what will happen to other Mexican women?” she asked at a news conference. The question resonates far beyond the steps of the National Palace. It’s a political act cloaked in moral clarity, both deeply personal and fiercely public. Sheinbaum understood, instinctively, that the incident wasn’t about her alone. It was about the pattern; the way violence and harassment against women are normalized, laughed off, or forgotten.

For decades, Mexico’s women have been marching, shouting, and mourning to be heard. Feminist collectives have painted the city’s monuments purple, raised the names of murdered women in plazas, and demanded that the state stop turning a blind eye. The country’s femicide crisis is not an abstract statistic; it’s a daily bruise on its conscience. Against that backdrop, Sheinbaum’s decision to take the case to court is more than symbolic; it’s a test of Mexico’s willingness to believe that no one, not even a president, should have to accept assault as part of public life.

The easy thing for a politician would have been to dismiss it as a misunderstanding, a “moment of excitement,” as so many male leaders have done when confronted with impropriety. Sheinbaum could have smiled tightly and moved on, offering the ritual call for “respect.” Instead, she chose confrontation over composure. It was a choice that announced, in its quiet way, a new kind of authority.

Sheinbaum’s gesture is revolutionary not because she is demanding punishment, but because she is demanding recognition, that what happened to her is a crime, not an inconvenience. For too long, women in power have been expected to absorb harassment as a hazard of visibility. From catcalls on the campaign trail to threats online, every ascent into public life comes with an unwritten clause: endure it, or you’ll be dismissed as hysterical.

But here was the President of Mexico, refusing that contract.

The image of Sheinbaum stepping back from her assailant will likely become a defining moment of her presidency, not because it reveals weakness, but because it exposes strength. It’s the kind of moment that dismantles the illusion of immunity. It reminds us that authority doesn’t shield women from misogyny; it only amplifies the contradiction of a world that still measures female power in proximity to male comfort.

There’s something almost poetic, and profoundly infuriating, about the fact that the man approached her from behind. It’s the angle of ambush, of presumption. His act was not simply physical, it was performative, the assertion of a small, desperate dominance in the face of a woman who represents something new. In that instant, he stood for every fragile man who has ever felt the need to remind a woman that her body is still public property.

In her calm response, Sheinbaum turned that performance back on itself. By filing charges, she flips the script: what was intended as humiliation becomes evidence, what was supposed to be a passing moment of disrespect becomes a political reckoning.

This episode will not, of course, dismantle machismo in Mexico. The rot runs deep, in institutions, in homes, in the unspoken codes of male behaviour passed down through generations. But Sheinbaum’s decision plants a flag on moral terrain that has long been ceded to silence. If the President cannot walk safely in the capital’s heart, then no woman can. And if the President refuses to tolerate it, perhaps no woman should.

Critics will inevitably accuse her of politicizing the event, of using it to bolster her image as a feminist leader. That, too, is part of the pattern: when women seek justice, they are ambitious; when men do, they are principled. But Sheinbaum’s actions are not a branding exercise; they are a statement of continuity with the women of Mexico who have fought, at unimaginable cost, to make their pain visible.

Her presidency was always going to be historic. No one expected that history to look like this, a blurred video on a cellphone, a flinch, a question that cuts to the heart of a nation’s conscience. Yet perhaps this is the truest kind of history: the one that exposes who we are when the cameras are unkind and the world does not behave as it should.

In the end, what Sheinbaum did was deceptively simple. She said no. She said it as a woman, as a citizen, and as the President of Mexico. And by saying no, she invited the rest of the country, the world, to imagine what it might mean if that refusal echoed beyond the steps of the National Palace.

In a country where too many women are still silenced, Claudia Sheinbaum’s voice was not just that of a president. It was the voice of defiance, the kind that reminds us that power, at its best, begins with the courage to name what should never be tolerated.

Because if they can do this to the president, she asks, what will happen to all women? The answer, if we’re listening, should not be another sigh of resignation. It should be the sound of a nation standing beside her, saying: no more.