The Kiss Felt Around the World. Luis Rubiales and the kiss of the Spanish female soccer star

I had intended to write a blog on this when the event occurred. I think primarily because I like the title I came up with: the Kiss felt around the world. This ofcourse to history buffs is a reference to the shooting death of Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo 28/ June 1914, with a few twists and turns was the igniting point for WW I. This was called the shot heard across the world.

Also for Nursery Rhyme buffs this story reminds me of Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. One final point on this is that North Americans generally perceive that Mediterranean European countries are much more kissie cultures than us North Americans are comfortable with. So a European male coach kissing on the lips a female soccer player in the moment of excitement following a victory, basically comes with no surprise or no shock. Sure, we may not do it, but don't Europeans kiss women all the time as a form of greeting?

This Georgie Porgie kiss occurred some months after it came to light that in the US atleast one male soccer coach of adult female soccer players was actually raping them. I wrote a blog on that. I am sure all of the US female soccer players who underwent various forms of harassment or molestation would have gladly traded getting a kiss on the lips rather than being raped.

At this juncture I want to emphasize I am a great proponent of aggressive penalties against males harassing and sexually molesting females. In fact I would not consider it too extreme to execute serial rapists. Infact the Idaho killer and the Long Beach killer not only am I supportive of the death penalty, but I also think at some point we need to enact Elizabethan I justice upon perpetrators of murders and school murder: video-ed and shown on social media and tv. I cannot think of any other deterrent to stem the epidemic of school shootings. So I could not possibly be more all-in on justice for female victims.

There are a few additional points, sometimes even trivial acts serve as the straw that breaks the camel's back, so this may be just such a straw, and ofcourse if he has done worse in the past, along the lines of the American soccer coach, then yes he should go to prison for those acts.

It is just the danger that excess punishment for a minimal transgression serves to ridiculize the concept of harassment and molestation. The concept that an innocent man kissing a woman could go to jail, may support the vision of right wing extremists that the liberal left in power are out of control and out of their minds, and return to rationality will require right wing governments to take charge. This push-back against wokeness is a cultural lightening rod not only in the US, but throughout Europe as well.. In fact as perturbed as the victim presently is, the perturbation may well be largely a result of the international outcry and not the act itself., I am sure she probably had thought nothing of it at the time, and if left alone, not anything of it afterwards. Probably the whole explosive event was created by attention paid to it by US news. I am sure the Spaniards at the time would have thought nothing of it, they are kissing everyone all the time anyways.

So one kiss in isolation like this a huge problem.... really? There are much much worse things happening just a few countries further east to women. I worry about this having the effect of trivialising in the eyes of men the real cases of molestation,, and the impression that the uproar is a creation of woke liberal nuts. So what is needed is a right wing strong man/woman to rid everyone of the cultural yoke of the woke culture: we can't do anything or say anything that may offend sensitive woke-religion police. This is the danger. But also I do not know if Rubiales has done much worse in the past and this reaction is the final ground instability that set off of the lava explosion of Mount Vesuvius.

Richard Semelka, MD