Jennifer Hermoso has said the kiss from Luis Rubiales, head of the Spanish soccer federation, at the women’s World Cup was not consensual. The scandal has grown into a reckoning over sexism.
Players had accused the coach, Jorge Vilda, of outdated methods and controlling behavior. His boss, Luis Rubiales, is still embroiled in scandal over a nonconsensual kiss.
Luis Rubiales has defied calls to resign, now echoed by his own federation. Soccer’s world governing body has suspended him, and prosecutors have opened an initial investigation.
The nonconsensual kiss that Luis Rubiales, the president of Spain’s soccer federation, pressed on Jennifer Hermoso has come to embody the generational fault line between a culture of machismo and more recent progressivism.