Okay, now the internet will blow up demanding my banishment from humanity, civilized or otherwise.
For readers on Mars, Spanish Soccer Federation President Luis Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso while celebrating her team’s triumph in the Women’s World Cup. The Crime of the Century! (The kiss, that is, not the victory.)
In fact, he kissed her on the lips (a detail never omitted in news accounts). While taking her head in his hands (a detail often strangely omitted).
Amid infuriated demands for Rubiales’s own head, he’s been suspended (temporarily, so far).
What Rubiales should have said: Oops, sorry, doing that was wrong.
What Rubiales did say: the kiss was consensual. Up yours, everybody (not an exact quote). The claim of consent was laughable — in what fraction of a second might Hermoso have had a chance to say no? (She denies she consented.)
So this didn’t help Rubiales. Nor did being seen grabbing his crotch in another gesture exulting in victory.
But that’s a separate matter.
I wouldn’t award Rubiales the Nobel Prize in Virtuous Sensitivity. Nevertheless — nevertheless — my judicious evaluation concerning this weighty contretemps is Oh Please. Big Deal. Lighten up, folks.
In recent times the “me too” movement has made society much less tolerant regarding unwanted male sexual aggression toward women. A very good thing. (The lesser tolerance, not the aggression.) This awful behavior has been far too common, and a lot of miscreants have been quite deservedly punished.
However, this soccer kiss was pretty small beer (non-alcoholic one might say) on the spectrum of sexual transgressions. Hardly a case of “grab them by the pussy.” (Again, the only grabbing was the guy’s own nether region.) Fair to say, the kiss had virtually no sexual element at all.
For a million years (literally, give or take a decade), human beings have been exceptionally social animals, and physical interaction has always been an important part of that, in a whole range of contexts. We’re biologically programmed to respond positively to the touch of another person, to crave such touch; it sparks the secretion of feel-good neurotransmitters in the brain.
Sports in particular has been a font of emotive behavior, and physicality obviously goes hand in hand with sports. For a coach to kiss a player, in the throes of exuberance over an especially gratifying athletic triumph, seems merely, well, human. To cast it as some kind of apocalyptic transgression seems deranged.
But in so many ways current times highlight another human proclivity: to go to extremes. Like the French Revolution, with its guillotines; and the Republican party. The syndrome of more is better.
Thus we’ve put quite a damper on expressive interactions between people in all sorts of settings, social, professional, sports, etc. With everyone now walking on eggshells lest any interpersonal behavior be misinterpreted as an offense calling in the “me too” police. Or other branches of the thought police. It’s very sad, and makes human relations all the more fraught. Can’t we just learn to be reasonable?
Of course it does go way beyond me-too. The NY Times recently reported the case of Mimi Groves who, as a high school freshman, posted a video shouting the n-word to exult in getting a driving permit. Years later, she was posting in fulsome support of the BLM movement. No matter; when the old video snippet eventually surfaced, she was forced out of college.
Campus authorities presumably knew how wrong this was. But none, apparently, would stick their necks out to oppose it, lest they too get targeted. This indeed is how things go to extremes, with a minority of zealots intimidating everybody else.
