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I'd like to post about the Spanish soccer kiss and some developments. Another commenter below posted a take decrying it as a case of classic excessive modern SJW-type media cancel culture crusades gone too far. This is not just a wrong take, it's a flagrantly wrong take and a significant misunderstanding of the "read between the lines" of everyone's statements. Also, the TIMELINE is very crucial to understanding this whole thing. In fact, the opposite is true, this is almost a perfect example of how people in power can't help themselves but to manipulate everyone around them. Below I will explain the exact timeline. (For length I'm making it its own comment, hope that's OK).
Interestingly, our understanding of the facts is very similar. As a background, it's worth noting that Rubiales has VERY extensive list of baggage and accusations from the last five years, including clashes with other officials and organizations, firings, lawsuits, leaked recordings, allegations of everything from sex parties to fraud to assault, and conflict with and within the women's team and their coach too. Regarding the kiss, the Spanish are very physically prone to displays of at times excessive physical affection. This is mostly just cultural, but it's important to note that there IS at least some smaller element of sexism that is baked in. The kiss appears to be one of joy during a massive medal celebration, but of course he's grabbing her whole head and planting it right on the lips, a bit too far. That same night, Hermoso laughs it off but also, critically, says she didn't really like it, "but what can I do?".
People online start to go to war about it, and people within the Spanish soccer community too don't really like the look or the attention. The very next day, which is Monday, a few things happen. According to this article, virtually all 300 people are on the same flight home to Spain, including the team, the coaches, federation people, family, etc. On said flight people obviously notice the growing online criticism. They left that morning, had a two hour layover in Doha, Qatar, and arrived that night in Spain (it's like 22 hours of flight time but going backwards so same calendar day). What happened on that flight?
So they pressure her to defend him but she basically says no. They record a video with Rubiales ONLY in their Doha layover, which goes out later that night, but only after a statement goes out to a news agency (EFE) seemingly quoting her that basically goes "we were all just really happy and it was natural and no hard feelings". This comes out first and the video after (a bit of difficulty pinning down exact timeline but definitely in this order). Of note is that some media outlets are now alleging that the statement may have NOT in fact been a direct quote from her and the federation made it up (this is not certain however).
What's in the video? I speak Spanish pretty decently, thanks to living in Miami a while, so listening and watching it directly is pretty interesting. This is a horrible apology. I'm going to roughly thought for thought translate the whole video because it's worth noting the tone and words used:
Commentary: Note how he focuses on how he's almost forced to apologize, how he created a distraction, and how he minimizes everything that happened. He doesn't even say what he did, he just says "what happened, happened". No big deal, no big deal. It's all about the consequences of his actions and nothing about how it could have made her feel or if he truly made a mistake. No, it's an apology that he "has to" make. This is, IMO, extra clear in the original Spanish and with intact voice inflections, etc. and I've tried to render the overall "vibe" of his comments accurately, though Spain-Spanish isn't my forte.
Tuesday rolls around, it's a big story still, and many people including the prime minister feel that the apology was inadequate.
Wednesday Hermoso releases a statement with her player's union and agency here which basically (and vaguely) says that the federation should take action to prevent bad things and make sure bad things aren't unpunished. It's not very specific but clearly is referring to the kiss, though the whole content is basically just urging better player rights.
Thursday FIFA begins to investigate and step in. Clearly pressure is building to fire him, suspend him, or have him resign.
Earlyish on Friday is a big federation meeting, where Rubiales makes a speech. I haven't been able to iron out exactly who called the meeting and for what exact purpose.
Notable is that a very big portion of the audience is clapping loudly throughout. He the goes on to say that though he can't remember clearly it was Hermoso who lifted him up, they almost fell down and then they hugged. He emphasized it was her that picked him up so close, he told her not to worry about a missed penalty, told him he's great, then he asked "A kiss"? and she said OK. He says it wasn't something of desire nor forced and just like kissing his daughters and everyone gets that, even though they are saying the opposite when talking to the media. He says it's fake feminism and people who are all for his rivals. He calls it character assassination. He says that it suddenly ballooned from "no big deal" and then Hermoso didn't defend him and "a statement that I don't understand". He says that people making a big deal about it are hurting victims of real assault.
This ignites quite the firestorm that same day. (The next day, Satudary, FIFA suspended him. Since then, he's been pulled into at least one other avenue of potential firing/suspension as well). Note that Rubiales is not just adding detail but arguably changing the story. The importance of this is made clear when Hermoso finally and directly breaks her own silence, later on Friday FOLLOWING the speech, which in my opinion adds a TON of context to everything. Much as I want to summarize, this would take out the read-between-the-lines as well.
This statement almost perfectly describes how a normal person would react to the situation. Personally, although it sort of has devolved into in some ways a he said/she said, I find her account by far the most credible. The things that stand out, to me:
Rubiales outright is lying when he's adding the detail about how it was literally consensual because she said yes to a kiss, that he's making the whole exchange up. She basically says this is why she's speaking now because of him doubling down and indeed adding falsehoods.
She was silent because she was genuinely celebrating, didn't want to hurt the celebration, and also needed to process things. Personally, I think we can all relate to this, often our behavior psychologically right after something big doesn't always line up with our true feelings. Fun fact: Once someone threatened to kill me! It wasn't until later that my heartbeat could slow a bit down and despite sort of laughing it off at the time I realized it was actually a bit more serious. This jives with psychological research about how we react to unexpected and even unwanted events, including genuine sexual assault of various kinds. I might add that she might still feel that this isn't a big deal but was more offended by Rubiales' lies and/or general attitude than the actual event.
This kind of bad behavior, rather than being a one-off kind of thing, is actually endemic to how the women's team and players are treated.
She's been subject to a very significant pressure campaign to generate good PR even if it means lying. This pressure campaign has targeted a lot of people around her, too, which also seems to cross a line.
Ladies and gentlemen, this statement demonstrates almost exactly what feminists have been saying for years.
My take is that the kiss itself, not really that bad, but also something that does reflect on power dynamics, both men/women but also boss/employee. It deserved a real apology which was not given, instead the apology was not only extremely insincere, but also a result of behind the scenes pressure to sweep it under the rug and downplay. Rubiales doubling down was awful and it is kind of dystopian to see so much applause. He's the one playing a victimhood narrative, not Hermoso. Which is crazy! She didn't even talk about victimhood AT ALL until AFTER Rubiales basically lied about the kiss. I might add that Rubiales' version of events is in my opinion not supported by the video of the kiss, where they don't seem to have much of a conversation at all.
This is the key point behind why I bothered digging in to the whole timeline of things and making a whole effortpost. If you look at it all as the same big story, sure you might be inclined to say, yes this is just the media deciding to pillory someone with no due process and demanding blood for a minor infraction. But no, looking at her statement and the timeline, with the background of things not being very sunny within the Spanish federation and the players, it actually and fairly becomes a case of people in power trying to remain in power, especially in the world of soccer, which is well known to be an old boys club as well as infested with corruption on many levels, including FIFA. Far from victimhood being asserted by Hermoso, disproportionate to the actual harm or intent, it's Rubiales first trying to be a victim of persecution, as well as self-aggrandizing (note how many times he gives credit and glory to the federation and organization, rather than the players). Instead, Hermoso is only a reluctant participant in the whole debate who might have though it also wasn't a big deal and wanted to move on herself, until pressure and slander essentially forced her hand.
Yeah, sorry chum but I don't see anything in your post that changes this from the he said she said nonsense I thought it was in the first place. She says he lied about asking for a kiss. Why is she more credible than him? Because you empathise with her more. Anyone who feels the opposite will find Rubiales more credible. But we didn't record that exchange so we'll never know. What we did record has Rubiales mouth blocked by Hermoso's head while they hugged, which would also be a good way to say a few things in a roaring stadium.
Also
This is how every public facing representative apologises. Minimise everything that happened. Nobody was hurt by it, it was just a mistake. And yet, he does own up to his mistakes. He calls them his mistakes, he says he is embarrassed for distracting from the team's victory. Should he have busted out a whip and struck his sin away? Obviously Rubiales desperately needs some pr person by his side to slap the side of his head every time he opens his mouth, but once again it feels like we are razing the countryside over a minor interpersonal conflict, which is what nearly every msm cancel culture crusade turns out to be.
Say what. So you think she didn't think it was a big deal except he said she said yes and that made it a big deal, because she was ok with the non consensual kiss but not ok with him claiming it was consensual, so after days of silence she released a statement denouncing the nonconsensual kiss?
Also why did this need a new thread?
Who politely asks for a kiss as a celebration?
Far more likely that he made a snap judgment that she wouldn’t mind and went for it. Which is the story she’s telling.
I’d find her less credible if she’d been righteously wading into the culture war side, but she’s been pretty reluctant.
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have you ever won anything and celebrated ? You can barely hear you own voice. Now imagine that at WC scale in the greatest moment of your life.
You think in that moment, he went : "May I kiss you on the lips, deeply while shoving your face into mine mademoiselle ?" Ofc not. I would doubt his statement even if she corroborated it.
I haven't won a world cup, but I have been in roaring stadiums and arenas before. It reminds me of a Slayer concert I went to when I was young, because it was packed full of giant hairy angry dudes. But because nobody could hear anything over the music, people were having to talk right in each other's ears. And the way it evolved was incredible. At the start of the night it was awkward, and you'd watch the angry giants flinch constantly whenever they came close to contact with another angry giant. But as the alcohol flowed and the haze bloomed people got more comfortable, and by the end of the night everyone was hugging everyone. Sometimes to speak about something, but sometimes they just felt like a hug. It was beautiful. I hate the idea of throwing that away.
But back to this shit, if you watch the video there is a beat between the hug and the kiss where he appears to say two or three syllables. From what I'd heard he wasn't alleged to have said "May I kiss you on the lips, deeply while shoving your face into mine mademoiselle ?", he said "un beso?" and she smiled and nodded assent. I assumed this was going to come down to "he was holding her head and the movement of his hands made it look like she was nodding but she wasn't", but either way we will never know what exactly went down, and in situations like that I default to 'then it's none of my business'.
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Well, if I'm honest part of my judgement is based on simply my experience of watching firsthand the Spanish-language videos, and my personal judgement of who to believe, but also there are two videos of different angles (which I saw but now can't find clean zoomed out links of because googling for original videos is a fucking horrible experience) that don't seem to support any real conversation between them. But it's also possible they had the conversation he claimed but she thought it would be a cheek kiss or a head kiss or something so it's not like any reasonable person is going to expect grabbing your whole head and planting a full on kiss on the lips in that situation?
I don't know how it comes across in my clumsy translation but all of his apologies were basically linked grammatically with some other excuse or with a connotation of "I have to" rather than "I want to". It's kind of the apology equivalent of being passive-aggressive.
That's pretty much right. She was fine being like, a little mistreated for the sake of not distracting from an awesome victory and celebrations. But when it morphed into a huge and deliberate misrepresentation, and him being so belligerent about it all, she felt she had to say something. My reading of her comments focuses on how she thinks it's more about him lacking respect for others than the actual vulnerability or any harm from the act itself. That Rubiales has created a "manipulative culture". And she realized that staying silent, rather than being a noble act, is in fact sending a message of impunity for bad actors to other women who might find themselves in similar situations. That's perfectly in keeping with for example the Wednesday release with the union, where she seems more interested in improving overall player conditions and a general sense of justice and being respected than an extraction of a specific punishment.
Because if there were true respect between the players and Rubiales, a kiss like that would be unthinkable.
I know next to nothing about the situation or the people involved. For all I know you're absolutely right about Rubiales, and he's an absolute creep. I'm actually quite inclined to believe that, as my opinion on people in elite positions tends to be rather low, but this single sentence made me do a hard-format and wipe everything you said prior to it from my mind.
To say that I disagree would be the understatement of the year, it's stuff like this that makes me believe progressivism is downright inhumane, and it's goal is to maximize human misery. Even granting you every other premise, and accepting your version of the events, this sentence is completely wrong. There's nothing unthinkable about a kiss like that, and there's no way it contradicts respect, even if it was unwanted and was the wrong thing to do. If there's warm blood running through your veins, you should at least be able to see a possible non-disrespectful reason for his actions.
There is an axiom in certain strains of Western feminism that male lust is inherently dehumanizing. That the male (lustful) gaze objectifies any and all women towards whom it is directed.
This academic paradigm has filtered out to the masses in various forms. Young men have all been exposed to the message that their sexual desires are in some way problematic and expressing them to women is in some way harmful to those women. "It is disrespectful to have any sexual desire for your female colleagues." is an unsurprising belief to come out of that environment. It obviously isn't a true belief, sexual desire and respect aren't actually linked in our psyche that way, but it's probably a useful belief in the post metoo era.
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I like the new thread, he collected a lot more relevant information into one place where more people will see it.
Yeah but aside from this being a he said she said situation that can only end with everyone disappointed in everyone else (so I think we should talk about it less), any time we get multiple threads on a current hot topic I can't help but wonder what we might have talked about if everything had remained in one thread.
That said, I was pretty keen to read the new posts in that thread this morning myself, I understand the allure and the desire to get engagement you are unlikely to get in an older thread. And I agree this was a good op, whatever I think of the conclusions.
It could have been an error on my part. I just reached like 14k characters and was like, is this big enough to be its own thing? Certainly I put the effort in (translating sucks). I'm not sure that pure length + effort is a great heuristic for a top level comment but it seemed acceptable at the time to me, especially considering my point is more about the reaction to the kiss, rather than the dynamics of the kiss itself, though that might get lost in discussion.
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