After Luis Rubiales, the president of the Spanish Football Federation, violently kissed Jennifer Hermoso, a player of the women’s national team, in the aftermath of their World Cup victory, many wondered if it would be a #MeToo moment for Spain.
Whether the televised kiss sparks a lasting movement against harassment and discrimination remains to be seen. But the growing backlash against Rubiales highlights an often crucial element of such public reckonings: scandal.
During periods of social change, there is often a phase of broad support for a revision in principle, but a reluctance among the population to make those ideals a reality. Changing a system means tackling the powerful insiders who take advantage of it and bear the brunt of their retaliation – a hard sell, especially for those who don’t expect the change to help them personally.
A scandal can profoundly change that calculus, as exemplified by the fury surrounding the kiss. Hermoso described it as “an impulse-driven, sexist, misguided act without any consent on my part.” (Rubiales, who has refused to step down, has vigorously defended his behavior, insisting that the kiss was consensual.)
Generating public outcry creates scandals passivity expensive: if you do nothing, you suddenly risk an even greater backlash. And scandals can also change the other side of the equation: the powerful have fewer options for revenge when their former allies abandon them to avoid being tainted by the scandal themselves. Action becomes less costly, while inactivity becomes more expensive.
But while scandals can be a powerful tool, they are not available to everyone. Just as the growing backlash against Rubiales has demonstrated the power of the scandal, the events of the preceding months, in which many members of Spain’s women’s team tried unsuccessfully to change a system they described as controlling and outdated, underline how difficult it is is to change this system. it can lead to scandal — and how that can lead to ordinary people being excluded from public sympathy or the ability to make changes.
The unifying power of scandal
To see how this pattern plays out, it’s helpful to look at the impact of scandals in a very different context. Yanilda González, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, studies police reform in America. In the 2010s, she tried to pinpoint why, after Latin American dictatorships ended, democratic reforms often exempted police forces, leaving them as islands of authoritarianism.
In her resulting 2020 book, “Authoritarian Police in Democracy,” she describes how police forces can be extremely powerful in political terms, sometimes using the threat of public disorder as leverage for policymakers who might try to limit their power or extend their privileges. to threaten.
Politicians were reluctant to shoulder the cost of implementing reforms that might provoke a police response. And public opinion was often divided: while some demanded more protection against state violence, others feared that police reforms would give criminals more power.
But, González discovered, scandals could change that. Episodes of particularly egregious police misconduct could unite public opinion in demanding reform. Opposition politicians, seeing an opportunity to win votes from an angry public, would amplify the chorus, and eventually the government would decide that change was the least costly option.
The Harvey Weinstein scandal followed a similar pattern. For years, Weinstein’s predatory behavior was an open secret in Hollywood. But then a Times article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, in which several women described the beatings they suffered at his hands, caused a huge scandal. The public outcry over Weinstein’s behavior caused the old Hollywood calculus, in which it was safer to remain silent about the mighty producer’s wrongdoings than to try to stop them, no longer applicable. Weinstein’s former allies abandoned him.
That created a push for change that reached far beyond Weinstein. A slew of other #MeToo scandals exposed powerful men as abusers, intimidators and general sex teasers. A national reckoning followed.
‘The Kiss’ shows the power of the scandal, but also its limitations
Long before the televised kiss, many members of Spain’s women’s team had protested against Rubiales and the leadership of the Spanish Football Federation. Last year, fifteen members of the team, frustrated by unequal pay and widespread sexism, sent identical letters accusing the team’s coach, Jorge Vilda, of using methods that were harmful to “their emotional state and their health”, and in which they said they would not play for the club. national team unless he was fired.
Those 15 women were among the best players on the team. They were organized. And they were willing to sacrifice a World Cup appearance to bring about change.
But they weren’t yet “queens of the world,” as a magazine cover proclaimed them last week, with a World Cup victory putting them on the front page of every newspaper in the country.
And they had no scandal yet. No event had sparked enough public outcry to shift power from the Football Association to the players. The Spanish Football Federation, including Rubiales, reacted with outrage to the letters, vowing not only to protect Vilda’s job, but also to ban the writers from the national team unless they “accept their mistake and apologise.”
While there is no precise formula, in order to capture public attention, a scandal often needs to involve an exceptionally sympathetic victim in addition to shocking allegations of wrongdoing. Kate Manne, a Cornell philosophy professor and author of two books on structural misogyny, has written about how some people will instinctively conform to the status quo, sympathizing with powerful men accused of sexual assault or other misconduct rather than their victims—a tendency she calls “himpathy.” To overcome that instinct, she said, victims often have to be particularly persuasive, like the famous actresses who came forward about Weinstein’s abuses.
Of course, most victims of harassment and assault are not famous actresses or queens of the world. Manne noted that Tarana Burke, the activist who founded the #MeToo movement, spent years trying to draw attention to the abuse of disadvantaged women before high-profile scandals sparked global attention. “She was trying to draw attention to the plight of the black and brown girls who can be victimized in ways that never offend anyone,” Manne said.
The public outcry was usually reserved for high-profile victims. But if norms shift more broadly against abuse and impunity, positive change can happen for ordinary people, too. Famous actresses may have directed public anger at Weinstein, but the #MeToo movement has also drawn attention to abuses of some lesser-known employees, such as restaurant workers.
Once the scandal machine kicks in, the consequences could be significant. As my Times colleagues Jason Horowitz and Rachel Chaundler report, many Hispanic women saw Rubiales’ move as an example of a macho sexist culture that allows men to subject them to aggression and violence without consequence.
As public anger grew, politicians intervened on behalf of the players. Late Friday night, the entire team and dozens of other players issued a joint statement saying they would not play for Spain “if the current managers continue.” The following day, members of Vilda’s coaching staff resigned en masse.
On Monday, Spanish prosecutors announced an investigation into whether Rubiales may have committed criminal sexual assault. The same day, the Royal Spanish Football Federation, which Rubiales currently heads, called on him to resign.
The question now is not just whether he will be sacked or resigned, but whether the wider outcry will lead to real change in Spain. “When we have these women who are figuratively and literally on top of the world in professional sports – and that is captured live on video – we have the makings of a scandal,” said Manne. It’s too early to say where that could lead.
