Letter to a targeted person in a #MeToo.

By Cristina Massa

Dear Gen Xer who is watching in horror and disbelief on Twitter an at-arrow followed by your name and the much-dreaded hashtag MeToo:

You are probably a white male (or close to it), upper-middle or upper-class Mexican, educated, with a leadership position in an important company; athletic, an active member of your community, informed, married first or second marriage, with children from one or both marriages enrolled in the best schools in Mexico.

You have worked hard all your life: you are a product of hard work and no one has given you anything for free. You went to a good university because of your good grades, and you obtained a postgraduate degree abroad with a combination of scholarships and credits. You have been economically successful, hard-earned, because you are competitive and have become the best at what you do. Meritocracy works, no doubt. Your drive (and that of your buddies) has resulted in today's top management positions and board seats. Who knows what happened to all those women-half of your generation in college-who looked so abused, but you don't run into them at a single board of directors or industry leaders' meeting.

You drink in moderation except at a few office events, and when you see your most trusted friends. You have done psychoanalysis and cognitive-behavioral therapy because you believe in the constant improvement of the human being. You've tried meditating even though you don't really see the great benefit of mindfulness.

You travel several times a year to the United States and have been to Europe many times. You and your family ski, go to museums, opera and theater when you travel. You are convinced that a well-rounded education is the best inheritance you can leave your children. You want them to be citizens of the world, but with values.

You vote in all elections, whether federal or local, and that defines you as a citizen and as a democrat. You believe, in principle, in the rule of law, although you recognize that in this country it is impossible to survive without some flexibility. You view with horror the attack on institutions by this government because in general you are a believer in previously known and, in an ideal world, efficient processes and procedures. You are on the verge of registering your household workers with Social Security, you pay Christmas bonuses and you hardly evade taxes, although sometimes you take advantage of the "no invoice, güero?

You are starting to worry about climate change and are considering whether your next car will be hybrid or electric. You are concerned about the polarization on racial issues in the United States - thank goodness there is no racism in Mexico - and you are in favor of feminism, because you have daughters and sisters, but without falling into excesses. Everyone has their role in nature and in society.

You have a comfortable asset position, but it is always susceptible to improvement, so you are attentive to all opportunities and trends. You can't afford to become obsolete because you've had years of good salaries, diversified investments, and moderate risks.

You know that information is power, and that's why you regularly read a couple of national newspapers, at least one American one - surely the New York Times or the Financial Times - and subscribe to the major analytical magazines, say The Economist and the New Yorker. The essential non-fiction books of each year and even some novels are in your bureau. You don't miss an article or podcast available on artificial intelligence or cryptoassets, you understand ESG principles and think there should be more diversity and inclusion in companies, to reflect that of consumers. A company that sells products and services of, by and for men is leaving money on the table.

No one is going to pay you back for the many years of sleepless nights working at the firm, consulting firm, brokerage house or investment bank where you started your career. No one is going to tell you what it's like to be all the way down the corporate food chain, growing up in the company, coming back from a long-awaited vacation because of a firefighter, or spending time at the hotel on calls or reviewing documents.

You married a woman with a university degree, who works to this day -without neglecting the children- or at least worked during the first years of marriage. (It is no longer fashionable for the secretary to marry the graduate: no more social mobility by mixing classes. One marries people like oneself). You had "school girls" that you didn't take seriously, and also several girlfriends, your wife being the last of them. To the serious girlfriends, you always treated them like a gentleman: you went through them, paid the bills for dinners and nightclubs, took them home sober or drunk, without anyone ever even discussing whether this made any sense. You finally gave a ring, had a big wedding in a spectacular destination and honeymooned in an exotic location.

Your marriage is defined by understood and shared values. Your wife is in charge, whether or not she works outside the home, of most of the child rearing and household matters, but with the help of the household staff, which is the best investment in happiness. You have the utmost gratitude and appreciation for your wife because she is a super mom and you do your best to help her. Occasionally you take the kids out for a while so she can rest, and you even cook on Sundays on your Green Egg with the help of some great YouTube tutorials. Your family has learned to live with the routine of your weekday absences. Quality time is what you give. Sometimes you feel like you're in their way if you're home longer than usual.

Every group of cuates you've ever belonged to has its own chat room, but curiously enough, they all have a very similar dynamic. You die laughing at the same jokes and anecdotes they've been telling your whole life. You're always wary of those chats when the boys are around because we all know what men's groups are like. There isn't a vulgarity, a vulgarity, a scatological comment, a sexually explicit meme, a joke about blacks, Jews, whores, old women, Indians, prietos, nacos, mentally retarded (sic), that isn't welcomed and celebrated in cybercarcassades, with their respective dirty GIFs. Comments of the butts and tits of all the women in the world, known or not, except for the mothers, wives and daughters of those present, keep the chat alive where you also find out everything there is to know about sports and politics. When you forward something you find particularly funny to the mixed office or family chat, you apologize to the ladies in advance for the vulgarity, but it's worth it.

Sometimes you take advantage of the fact that in these chats with friends you are in confidence, to raise your eyes to heaven -via emoji and colorful language- before the ridiculousness and absurdities of these times: inclusive language, non-binary people, fluid sexuality, feminists who destroy monuments and, even worse, who do not shave their moustaches and armpits, let alone their bikini line. It is obvious and evident that in nature there are only males and females, it is so established in birth certificates, and articles and masculine and feminine pronouns are used to refer to them and them respectively. Now it turns out that you can choose at any time of life that nature was not right, that you have to call people as they request, put unisex bathrooms, and even modify nouns in ways that are not consigned in the Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (which you never consult for any other purpose). Companion? For God's sake.

You have been surrounded your whole life by messages that have shaped, perhaps without your knowledge, your ideas about femininity and masculinity. Boys don't cry, be a champion. A leader is ambitious, takes risks, is courageous. You have to be strong to stand up for yourself and for those who are weaker than you. You can show your emotions, as long as they are not feminized, so in your range of expression is laughter and anger. Women in general are more emotional beings, more vulnerable, and that's why they must be respected and take care of themselves twice as much. We all know that men go as far as women allow them to go.

You love working with women: they are more orderly and less aggressive in negotiating their compensation; they rarely ask for raises and are grateful for the flexibility you give them when they are moms. You assign them, sometimes without even realizing it, the less visible work. They prepare ahead of time for the presentations you give and let you shine, rather than trying to get attention and give themselves credit. They can be confrontational, yes, especially if they are on "their day" or worse, if they are already menopausal, so you try not to let them work too much together on the same project. You can't stand it when they cry at work; it seems unprofessional to you. There may be an ambitious and aggressive one or two, a bitch, but usually someone else in the team puts her in her place.

You are very careful in your relations with your subordinates, so that there are no misunderstandings, but you also do not think that fraternization should be prohibited outright, as in gringo companies. We are human beings, adults, and attraction always arises when people spend so many hours a day together. After so much stress at work, sometimes you have to go out and relax with the people in the office, generate bonds beyond work, and you know that sometimes what happens in the heat of the mezcals happens, but they are grown up and these incidents do not happen during office hours or in the workplace. They are not your problem.

You grew up hearing that men's sexual urges are what they are: constant, unbridled, irrepressible. Men always want to fuck, and whenever given the opportunity, they will take it. Of course, there are limits, a minimum quality control that excludes the very ugly, very fat, or handicapped to any degree, unless it's a gamble.

The world in which you have lived, of heterosexual and cisgender people, needless to say, is clearly divided between men -without subclassification- and women subclassified into decent and sluts. The former not only do not have unbridled sexual impulses, like men in general, but they are the ones in charge of managing their unbridled passions and ensuring contraception, because in the end they are the ones who get pregnant, what not? If a woman says she is taking pills or that it is not a fertile day or that she has an IUD, we will have to believe her because the incentives are correctly aligned, since she knows perfectly well that this way, she is not going to get you. There is no need to ask her for proof of sexual diseases because she obviously is not and has not been promiscuous.

Decent women of your generation, and those of the next (and according to you, so on ad infinitum) are socialized to say no to sex right off the bat even if they want to say yes - lest they be mistaken for sluts. But you think ... I know you want it, as Robin Thicke would say. You know it's a matter of winning them over and convincing them, without ever making this maxim explicit. You have to assure them that those sexy pictures, those home videos, those provocative underwear, those sexting sessions, are in the best hands. You do everything to teach your daughters to respect each other because you know perfectly well what's on the other side.

You can't understand how it is that every now and then there are scandals from the other women, the sluts, the ones dressed in tight and flashy clothes, the ones who sleep with one or the other just to get along. They bring condoms in their bags, dance like teiboleras and take their uber alone at dawn to go back where they came from. On top of that, they drink like Vikings, and then wonder how for them the consequence of a drunkenness is not a cruda (as it is for you), but an unwanted sexual approach. What did they think was going to happen, with that behavior, with those clothes, with that language? They are looking to be propositioned, if they take whatever they are given and paid for, and then complain about waking up with a guy on top of them, inside, sometimes even beaten, their bodies outraged, and the acts in semi-consciousness or unconsciousness memorialized on social networks and passed from cell phone to cell phone.

You have a similar opinion about women who are victims of domestic violence. It's a mystery to you how they can get involved with the kind of bad guy who would beat a woman, but even more so, why they don't leave him at the first assault, as you obviously would if you were in his shoes. You're sure that's how your daughters would do it because you've taught them to immediately come to you if a so-and-so raises a hand.

In the world you recognize, sexual harassment and bullying are unidirectional and selective: they only go from men (no qualifier) to decent women, who were not given a pass. They said no, peacefully, clearly, repeatedly and forcefully, and they still received sexual approaches that offended, intimidated or made them uncomfortable. They have every right to complain - for that there are fair and expeditious protocols, processes and procedures, as you like and as it should be - and to have justice done. If someone did something like that to a daughter of yours or your sister, you wouldn't stop until you recast them. The place for sexual abusers, rapists, let alone pedophiles, is jail and/or hell, which in Mexico are one and the same thing.

You consider that victims who do not report become accomplices of the system. You prefer not to stop and think about the dozens of times you have not gone to the corporate and jurisdictional instances of justice when you are subject to any transgression, from a bad service or defective product to an armed robbery, because this is a country of impunity and re-victimization. And why did you go out with such an expensive watch if you already know how things are, güero?

It must be said, however, that unlike theft, the issue of harassment is highly subjective: one is not a fortune teller to know what offends and makes each woman uncomfortable and it is not as if there were a manual of what is forbidden and what is allowed. It's all in the context, in the intention. But in these times even good-natured compliments and acts of chivalry can get anyone into trouble. What's more, all kinds of excesses are being committed in order to create a culture of denunciation in the hands of these feminazis who want to burn men in green firewood for anything. What these feminazis need is a good fuck, although you don't sign up for that because they are not your style.

But the point is, you would be incapable of forcing yourself on a woman. You are a man who enjoys a good flirt, like anyone else, but not a being capable of sexual violence of any kind. You know perfectly well what consent consists of. The response to a message from you that hints at further intentions is proof positive that the recipient is on the same channel, even if she just says "hahaha".

In fact, as the man that you are, what moves you is seduction, conquest, not necessarily sex in itself, and much less sex that is not sporadic, which could get you into marital trouble, cost you a significant part of your patrimony and break up your children's home. If it's just about getting laid, there's your wife, who by the way is still gorgeous thanks to exercise, dieting, expensive creams, and the occasional cat's paw.

In short: you have no need or interest in forcing anyone to do anything. You just want to have a little fun, to share a nice time that may or may not end in bed. You detest violence in all its forms, and sexual violence more than any other. There is nothing erotic about subjugating a woman.

So... how is it possible that you found your Twitter feed on fire this morning with horror?

A woman made a complaint, probably anonymous and informal, that reached the social networks or your company's complaint box, and from there other opportunists started to come out who are jeopardizing your career, the stability of your marriage, your prestige.

It is true that you recognize some of the facts they describe in their messages, that you clearly or vaguely remember exchanges you had with them, but evidently everything was always consensual. If they had told you no, if they had put a so long, there is no way you would have moved on. It's not as if they had blocked you from WhatsApp and you had shown up at their house to threaten them, or if you had drugged them or locked them in the bathroom to force them to have sex with you.

You have it perfectly clear-in fact you have evidence because you never delete your WhatsApp history-that they responded to your approaches with laughter, emojis, sometimes clearly reciprocating (or not?) and giving rise to more. In meetings where they coincidentally sat freely over mezcals with you and didn't slap you when you told them in all naughtiness what you'd do to them if you could. They blushed and laughed. Some even went with you to a private place. They came and went on their own two feet, not dragged by the braid or forcibly subdued as if you were a Neanderthal.

Despite the above, there it is on social media: @tunombre, followed by the infamous hashtag. Me Too. It opens thread, and others jumping on the bandwagon, when some of these things happened years ago and they never said anything. What a coincidence. You can't believe the insults, insults, threats to destroy you, celebrations for your possible downfall.

You're angry, scared, watching your personal stock price fall like it's Black Monday on the stock market. You deny it vigorously by all means at your disposal. You use the absence of a track record and your solidity as a citizen as proof of the negative. You can't prove a negative, so how can you prove that you didn't do anything wrong, at least not with that intention, that you never intended to hurt anyone? How can you apologize if you were misunderstood or offended the sensibilities of a free adult woman? You want to shout that it is not what it seems, that you do not deserve the scorn, the calls from Tyrians and Trojans demanding your separation from the company, a thorough investigation, or simply condemning you for the mere saying of a woman.

You begin to wonder if you need a lawyer, a firm that handles reputational risks, a marriage therapist, some talking points to talk to your children according to their respective ages, to face the lies you are being subjected to by scorned women, backward feminists who do not understand how lightly they can destroy decades of work and construction of an impeccable image, when they voluntarily and freely participated (and enjoyed, right?) in the dalliances of the past.

After the vigorous denials you have made in public and in private, the wave does not stop. Now it turns out that every exchange with every woman, even the most remote in time and innocent in spirit, is subject to public scrutiny and ventilation. Yesterday's behaviors, analyzed by today's standards. Now you understand the poor girls whose nude packs are hanging around in chat rooms. It feels like being naked in the middle of a hecatomb.

What to do, then?

It is time for us to review your paradigms, your mental stripes. That we talk about how your privileges, your blind belief in meritocracy, the tinted glasses that success put on you, your socialization on the seduction of women, and the little time you have dedicated to understanding the dynamics between power and sex, to reading about feminism and gender in general, led you to conclude, erroneously, that your presence and pretensions are always welcome. May we question whether your assumption that for a woman your desire to conquer her is a fortune, and it is her power to freely refuse, holds true.

You forget that a man in your position, upon receiving a clear and unequivocal refusal, may consciously or unconsciously retaliate, affecting the intended in a more or less subtle way. Even if you think that you would be incapable of quid pro quo, that is, of conditioning a better qualification, contract assignment, access to letters of recommendation for graduate studies, jobs or promotions, project financing, etc., on a sexual favor, you do not realize that telling you plainly and simply no, may in fact result in you naturally losing interest and enthusiasm for that person and for attending to her request for support or candidacy.

You have failed to see that you are already placed on a stepping stone that prevents exchanges with women from being one-on-one on an even floor, that are completely untethered to your money and power, even your physical strength. That as a mentor, teacher, investor or hierarchical superior you can be the vehicle for talented (and even untalented) women to access their desired positions, whether they genuinely deserve them or not; but that you can also be an obstacle if you feel rejected, offended or simply unappreciated or unappreciated.

That you will show more enthusiasm for the projects of women you find pleasant and approachable than those you find unpleasant, cramped, bitter and incapable of having a good time. It's as easy as turning to the next candidate.

Have you ever wondered what you would do if any of these same women, with exactly the same talent or project, subtly or explicitly offered you sexual favors in exchange for your support? Not only would they provoke an immediate turn off because they would put an end to that fascinating game of seduction, but they would most likely lead you to deny them your support. With their behavior, they would jeopardize the transparent justification, in good conscience and in accordance with ethics and morality, that you supported them because of their talent. Perhaps with that you can see that the game cannot be played bilaterally and therefore, the playing field was never even and the dynamics were never fair and equitable.

It is time to become aware that the use of formal mechanisms for reporting and attention to these types of cases are deeply marked by the culture of impunity and patriarchal protection in this country. The lack of their use is not indicative of your good behavior or that of your peers, but of the distrust of the recipients of unwanted sexual attention that serious, exhaustive investigations will be carried out, without revictimizing them, free of unconscious bias and retaliation.

As you begin to process some or all of this information, you may be compelled to apologize. To make public that you made a mistake and that it hurts and grieves you if you offended or hurt someone, because it was not your intention. To ask society not to make summary judgments and to respect the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. To make clear your respect for women and your commitment for them to develop in a safe environment because you have sisters, wives and, above all, daughters. To ask the offended women to educate you, to explain to you where you have failed so that you can correct your course.

To your surprise, your apologies fall on deaf ears, or worse, unleash worse accusations. He doesn't understand anything. He thinks that harassment has to be with bad intentions, not that there are acts that hurt, intimidate and offend in themselves, and even more so if they come from someone who considers that his attention is so valuable that it has to be welcomed. Puts the burden of educating him on third parties. He justifies the wrongs in his ignorance or in his supposed good faith, and offers no redress.

It would be worthwhile for you not to see this as a mistake, as a transgression where you knew the right thing to do but didn't do it, as if you had cheated on a test. And less that you convince yourself that you are the victim here, become exclusively defensive and learn nothing from this.

Rather, it may be behaviors that you carried out under the paradigms and understood values of your time, where having a position of power as a man implicitly implied the right to exercise it without making it explicit or questioning it.

Suddenly they changed the rules of the game, and no one sent you a memo with those new rules and the penalties for transgressing them. You've seen some cases in the news but you have nothing to do with Harvey Weinstein and company.

On top of that, the current mechanism for dealing with an alleged foul is implacable. It is public, violent in its language, with no guarantee of a hearing, no accompaniment of the parties, no proportional sanction, no procedure for rehabilitation and social reintegration, and apparently no possible redemption.

It is up to you to go out and build a different discourse. To recognize that your position prevented you from seeing your privileges, and the absence of them in others. That is why there is a structural inequality that you were comfortable ignoring because of its normality. To realize that by exercising your power without having visibility on its effects, you read in the absence of a no, a yes. You mistook your spontaneity for consent, because you have not fully educated yourself on what true consent consists of.

It is up to you to openly recognize your actions and the damage they caused, without qualifying them with the sensitivity of the victims ("sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable without meaning to"). You have the right to defend yourself, to not assume responsibility for transgressions greater than those you committed, to not be pigeonholed in a group that contains individuals who have committed faults of the same nature, to a superlative degree. But do not do so without first listening and reflecting.

It is up to you to carry out an empathy exercise to put yourself in the shoes of the other (or the other, in this case), but first by sitting down and listening carefully and as directly from the source as you can, what it is like to live in those shoes. It's not just singing If I were a woman, from the perspective of an empowered man. It's asking a lot of "them" what it's like to live every day on the losing side of pay disparity, non-proportional representation, double and triple shifts of care burdens, double moral and sexual standards, expectations of submission and conformity, obligation to please, and so many more.

It is time to review your vocabulary, your actions, the differences you make between your sons and daughters, between male and female employees, between male and female students. Of course they are different in some aspects, but is the differentiated treatment justified in each specific case?

It's time to identify your unconscious biases and work on correcting them. Don't ask victims or other women to educate you: do it yourself. There are excellent courses on new masculinities and dozens of books and articles on gender equality. Literature abounds on all the other axes of disparity that arise from the invisibilization of privilege of a dominant group: race, socioeconomic status, physical disabilities, neurotypicality, religion, weight, age. It's not about generating guilt for your position of privilege, but that through listening to-and eventually even participating in-podcasts, interviews, conferences, and debates on these issues, you can do better with this position that you partly constructed, but partly was given to you by luck, circumstance, patriarchy.

It is time to share the burdens that the women in your life carry today, to talk to your daughters, sisters, nieces, that they are not the guardians of morality, to reconcile them with their sexuality so that they can live it freely and responsibly; to build together with your sons a different definition of masculinity, which will allow them to get rid of the burden of always being strong, protective, competitive and conquerors. It is time to abandon your gender stereotypes and, at the same time, build new archetypes of men and women, and of humanity.

For that, take the opportunity to confront your relationships with other men, whether they are from your family, your colleagues, or your various groups of buddies. Analyze the complicity they build with those jokes, with the demand that they live their macho role permanently, with the use of any sign of emotion as an absence of testosterone, with the use of expressions of sexual submission to denote triumph. This is how violence is cemented. Stop celebrating it.

Don't expect that just because you ask for forgiveness, it will be granted and nothing has happened. In many other areas of life you have learned that actions have consequences, costs that do not disappear by decree. Have patience and perseverance. Do not victimize yourself, do not hide behind the supposed witch hunt. It is true that many acts similar to yours have gone unnoticed, but that does not exempt you from your responsibility. Don't assume that the page is turned and the episode is behind you. You will have to be critical and self-critical in perpetuity.

It is time to be transparent about the hard and unknown of this process, and join the train of equality today that you are in the dock and not in the chair of power. You will sit in it again because we all have the right to redemption, but men with economic power have greater access to it, legally and socially. Just don't do it without changing something on your way back to the top.

Farewell to you and many of you who have put me on the side that raises your voice and writes #MeToo,

Cristina Massa Sánchez

The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.