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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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As I said in my original comment I do not think "commonality of 'doing crazy things right after you win a big event in sports'" provides any justification or defense. Either as a general principle or here specifically. Probably it has some explanatory power for why he did it, but I don't think it goes at all to justification or mitigation.

Right. What's at issue isn't "is nonconsensual random kissing bad" - most here would agree that him grabbing random players during practice and kissing them is bad, for various reasons. What's at issue here is precisely how bad it is, and how that trades off against other benefits. I mentioned the workplace because this moral sense that such kissing is very bad as opposed to somewhat bad - that little is a 'justification or defense' for it - comes from feminism broadly and #MeToo. Like, when such a nonconsensual kiss happens, it's the man forcing himself on the woman, it's absolutely terrible and sexist, etc. People who are defending this see it as 'she wasn't comfortable so he shouldn't do it next time', but not something truly terrible. In a triumphant moment where people do all sorts of crazy things, the kiss a minor issue - he made someone a bit uncomfortable, whatever - rather than something awful he should be blacklisted for. What's more common when you win a big sporting event are unprompted (and 'nonconsensual' as a result) hugs - randomly hugging a coworker for no reason is 'not okay', but hugging a fellow team member or coach right after you win the big game? That's normal and great, imo.

So when I discuss social norms changing, it's not about

How recently did social norms change such that forcibly kissing a woman is taboo

but about norms changing enough for that to move from 'exuberance gone too far' to 'disgusting sexism and assault, not okay under any circumstances'.

I guess my evaluation of the degree of harm it does isn't dependent on the degree of social acceptance of the behavior. I appreciate that other people's evaluation is different but I don't understand why that should change my evaluation. Granted that Luis was raised in a time and place where it was more acceptable. His subjective feelings of its permissibility seem to go to explanation, but still not justification.

I guess my evaluation of the degree of harm it does isn't dependent on the degree of social acceptance of the behavior

My argument is that culture is what makes that kiss so unacceptable in the first place! There are other possible cultures where such a kiss is not one of the main romantic gestures, and as such unprompted kisses are simply less 'bad' because they're not signs of unwanted romantic interest. The 'harm' people object to here comes from a ... haze of perceptions surrounding said unwanted romantic interest, as opposed to a generic unwanted touch (if he had merely hugged her, all the backlash wouldn't have happened).

According to wikipedia, in many places kisses on the cheek are greetings, and ... apparently in part of South Africa quick closed-mouth lip kisses are a 'common greeting' (although that has a citation needed, so idk about that). The harm is, necessarily, dependent on the society's ideas of what kissing is.

I'm not sure if your objection is an entirely principled 'no touch without consent', or mostly comes from the specifically sexual/romantic nature of mouth-to-mouth kisses? My guess is it's some sort of mix of the two? The current backlash is entirely to the latter.

A little bit of both I think. I generally think touching without consent is bad but the sexual or romantic nature of mouth-to-mouth kisses makes it worse. I agree that social facts about what kisses convey are relevant. I deny that social facts about the propriety of kisses are determinative of whether there has been harm.