The non-consensual kiss of the resigned leader of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales to the soccer player Jennifer Hermoso has taken European flight. This Thursday, a majority of MEPs condemned the attack on the player as a “deplorable” gesture and an “abuse.” All in a debate in the plenary session in which they have demanded the improvement of the working conditions of athletes and more measures to achieve equality and that the ultra Vox party has taken advantage of to attack trans athletes. He Rubiales case It is already in the hands of justice, but the debate in the European Parliament and the support of European legislators for Hermoso since what happened was an attack fuels the issue again.
He Rubiales case, stressed ERC MEP (promoter of the debate through her group The Greens) Diana Riba, “demonstrates how difficult it is to break structural violence and impunity.” “A few weeks ago, on the occasion of the Spanish victory in the World Cup, we were able to see a deplorable, embarrassing and defiant attitude [de Rubiales] “which attacked the dignity of women’s rights,” said PP MEP Rosa. You will be in a debate in which the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms has demanded more equality in sport, but without mentioning the Rubiales case. The non-consensual kiss to the Spanish soccer player is “the tip of the iceberg of a discriminatory practice that has been reported for a long time,” Estarás added.
The criticism and support for Hermoso in the first debate at the European level on the case has come mostly from Spanish MEPs and center-left and left-wing parties, who have cried out against the “culture of impunity.” Some have avoided delving into the incident after the World Cup final in Australia and have spoken more generally about equality in sport.
“The kiss was not wanted, so it was an abuse of power through sexual assault,” said Evelyn Regner, a social democratic MEP, in the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where this Wednesday a blunt “ It’s over”, the motto with which the players of the Spanish soccer team and Hermoso herself have cried out against what happened. Rubiales has not resigned, the socialist Laura Ballarín has launched, “all the women have fired him.”
The non-consensual kiss, said Polish MEP and former footballer Tomasz Frankowski (European People’s Party), was a “crime against sport”. “The image of a sexual assault has been seen throughout Europe,” said Sira Rego (IU). “This, which for any person with common sense is an abuse of power, has been questioned, which shows that it is something normalized in all aspects of life,” added the Spanish MEP. “They want to convince us that it’s not a big deal if a guy touches your ass on the street, that your boyfriend rapes you or that your boss gives you a kiss. It is sexual violence, privileges of men that settle in our body,” she stressed.
“It is regrettable that Spanish players had to win a World Cup for the world to listen to them,” said Ciudadanos MEP Soraya Rodríguez, who waved a signed Spanish women’s soccer team shirt. Rodríguez recalled that the athletes had already raised their voices about humiliating situations. “The difference is that this time millions of viewers saw it,” she added.
Jorge Buxadé, from the far-right Vox party, known for its denialist positions on sexist violence, referred to Rubiales’ non-consensual kiss to Hermoso as a “rude gesture” and took advantage of the debate in the plenary session to charge against the Spanish trans law and the trans athletes. The “greatest violence” in sport “is that men who perceive themselves as women can take away their successes and medals,” he said in reference to the trans law.
Although the data shows that the majority of perpetrators of attacks are people known to the victims and there is no over-representation of foreigners, Buxadé has returned to the false rhetoric that sexual offenders in Spain are non-Western foreigners, that These cases are accepted and that there is a current that wants to destroy Western man. “When the authors are foreigners, you remain silent because it does not fit into your sick moral scheme that the subject to be destroyed is Western man,” she launched. “The left has always been a problem for women. Now we have the evidence,” she accused.
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