This was a stolen kiss, rammed, forced, without consent. A “violated kiss”, as Jean Baudrillard would say in his book “Of seduction”. The pathology of what is supposedly normalized is worrying. What is normal starts out being what is sociologically the majority and ends up being what is morally accepted. However, the laws against abuses of all kinds are not established in modern codes to defend the so-called good customs, but to safeguard individual liberties. It is the use of force or coercive threat that constitutes the penalizable offense.
While in a theocracy the repression against women consists of stripping them of any social status and removing them from public life, In our “neat” democracies, certain sexist excesses are taken as unimportant “funny things”. “If there is no longer freedom even to give a “piquito” you will tell me what free society we live in,” said a regional leader of the Spanish Football Federation.
That medieval conception of women as an instrument, as a mere object, reduced to an always available, disposable body. That machismo that is practiced with much more fervor than critical awareness. Certain sectors close to ultra conservatism believe that it is exaggerated, that things are getting out of hand, that this is an inhumane and bloody hunt for Luis Rubiales, top leader of the Spanish Football Federation, for the stolen kiss from Jenny Hermoso, champion of the world.
FIFA, the UN and a large part of international public opinion say otherwise. A president who immediately lashed out at “That false feminism that works as a social scourge”, and made it very clear that “Life and football are also balls issues”. Some balls that do not allow her to give up because she “has them very fat”, as he reminded one of the world champions. Her sudden fall shows that the ethical compass has changed: our moral ground is now another.
The non-consensual kiss scandal sparked spontaneous social condemnation, and became a total shock. Even so, Jenny Hermoso went from being a victim to a victimizer, to have connotations of shared responsibility. That blaming of the victim wielded from the proverbial innocence of the executioners. In the “comprehensive” report the RFEF “the evidence is conclusive and Mr. President does not lie (…). Jenny Hermoso was able to raise the federation president as a sign of affection”. He doesn’t say anything about the forced kiss. Said report (from which today they distance themselves) comes to tell us that the one who responds is as guilty as the stimulator. It reminds us of that phrase by Flaubert about a reflection by Voltaire: “When a lady says she doesn’t mean “maybe”, when he says “maybe” he means yes and when he says sí is not a lady”.
In the best of all possible worlds, where the advancement of women’s football occurs, when women have already passed the screen and claim the world with pride, dignity and equality, progress comes face to face with disprogress. What we have left over is the past, the future is what we are missing.
