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In recent weeks, the news of the attack suffered by the Spanish soccer player Jenni Hermoso, who was kissed without her consent by the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, has gone around the world and the topic still has time.
In these days, Rubiales went from an initial arrogant response, which downplayed his action, to creating a poorly put together novel in his speech before the Extraordinary General Assembly of the RFEF, affirming that Jenni Hermoso had lifted him up in her arms, had given him called “crack” and had accepted the kiss. And, of course, in addition to blaming the victim, he blamed a “false feminism” for what he calls “a persecution against him.” Common sense can’t stand a story like that. But it seems that it was enough for the large group of leaders who listened to him, who applauded and supported him, naively believing that the matter ended there.
But they were wrong. And before the resignation of the members of the Spanish team in support of Jenni Hermoso and the numerous expressions of support from other athletes in the world, as well as from different authorities and personalities, they backed down and began to condemn the aggressor, to try to to distance themselves so that the mud of the “fallen soldier” does not splash on them, which no longer seems so funny. However, until the moment of writing this article, Rubiales remained firm in his decision not to resign and insists on his crude theory about the consent of Jenni Hermoso.
In parallel, more cases of women athletes from all over the world have reported having suffered assaults, discrimination and gender violence in their professional performance, which speaks to us of a constant, evident reality and one that is no longer You can keep looking to the side. In Latin America, for example, in 2019 a soccer player and the physiotherapist of the Colombia under 17 team filed complaints with the Attorney General’s Office for sexual and labor harassment suffered by the coach and the physical trainer in the concentrations prior to the 2018 World Cup in Uruguay Last year, the Argentine club Quilmes fired two youth women’s soccer coaches for harassing the players, all minors.
In this regard, there is abundant inter-American jurisprudence that defines sexual violence as any action of a sexual nature that is committed against a person without their consent, “which, in addition to understanding the physical invasion of the human body, may include acts that do not involve penetration or even contact any physical.” Consent is not presumed or analyzed from the point of view of the aggressor, that is, his intention, motivation or perspective are absolutely irrelevant.
For this reason, one of the main contributions of the Belém do Pará Convention in the inter-American sphere was to recognize that violence against women is a violation of human rights, which includes physical, sexual and psychological violence and that it can be perpetrated by the State or by individuals.
However, this violence is part of a broad and continuous context of gender discrimination, which facilitates what I call “the perverse sequence of stereotypes.” That is, in the face of an attack, the victim is disqualified and blamed (“she brought me close to her body”), the aggressor is less responsible (“this was a kiss between friends”), the investigation is set aside and the sanction and, finally, impunity is enshrined. As is well known, impunity sends a perverse and two-way message: it tells the victims that there is no point in reporting the facts, and it validates their actions to the aggressors and makes it easier for them to repeat themselves.
The problem, therefore, is to ignore the continuity of violence against women and the particularities that occur in the sports field, especially in those spaces that have been considered exclusively masculine. A woman breaks a gender mandate by deciding to play soccer, but her kiss without her consent from a sports authority reminds her that this mandate of subordination and obedience still exists and that she must accept it. On this point, the Belém do Pará Convention urges States to modify the sociocultural behavior patterns of men and women, to counteract prejudices and customs based on stereotyped roles for men and women, which legitimize or exacerbate violence against women (Article 8).
For all of the above, the voice of Spanish soccer players is so important, but also of those men who have joined the protest. It is not enough to have women in all spaces, but it is necessary to change those spaces and free them from a harmful masculinity. It happens in football, it happens in everyday life and it will continue to happen as long as we do not understand that the laws are not enough to put an end to gender violence and that the real challenge is to dare to look around, abandon the silence that is synonymous with complicity and accept that women’s consent can never be taken for granted. Because Rubiales are everywhere. What is yours called?
#Rubiales