Mexico president asks why, if a woman criticizes him, he isn't considered victim of gender violence

Mexico's president posed a question Wednesday that nobody was really asking: why, if a woman criticizes him, he isn't considered victim of gender violence.

Mexico's president posed a question Wednesday that nobody was really asking: why, if a woman criticizes him, he isn't considered victim of gender violence.

Mexico has strict political regulations that forbid questioning someone's competence based on their gender.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador fell afoul of those rules when he suggested last month that opposition presidential hopeful Xochitl Galvez was a puppet manipulated by powerful men.

An electoral court decided on Aug. 2 that fit the definition of "gender violence," and ordered Lopez Obrador to stop it.

But Lopez Obrador -- and surprisingly, his feminist wife -- questioned the fairness of that, saying Galvez has criticized the president, but he hasn't been considered a victim of gender violence.

"Everything that they say to me, isn't that gender violence?" Lopez Obrador said at his morning media briefing. "Or is gender only about women?"

That ignored a couple of facts: Galvez has never suggested Lopez Obrador is wrong because he is a man, or that he is manipulated by women.