translated from Spanish: Chilean women raise possibility of ending the greeting Kiss

the singer Camila Gallardo suffered a complex episode of harassment that generated a stir nationally, when during a presentation in Puerto Varas, the Mayor City, Ramón Bahamonde (IND), climbed onto the stage and tried to kiss her on the mouth. The excuses of the Mayor and the evolution of the debate led to a questioning, which has gained strength, the very fact of the greeting of a kiss. Wonder why the men Kiss greet women, although they do not know them, open one of those cultural debates that definitely have more depth and recesses of the apparent. For many, something harmless, the greeting of Kiss typical in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, has shown presenting situations uncomfortable to different women, who on several occasions and for a long time have reported how some people use it for overzealous with them. Concerning the sociologist and President of the Observatory against Chile harassment (OCAC), María José Guerrero, said that actually the Chileans “not us salute really kiss. What we do is something more absurd yet, we put together the cheeks and we make the sound of a kiss.” Another peculiarity is that women kissing men and peers alike, while men do not kiss each other. A fact that makes that this conduct will come in the rating of micromachismo, i.e., a sample of subtle violence in everyday life that often go unnoticed. In this regard Svenka Arensburg, psychologist and Professor at the Faculty of social sciences of the University of Chile, told CNN that the gender differences that we do to greet us are “a very idiosyncratic Chilean thing”, in contrast with other countries like Argentina, France or Russia, the kiss between men is a common practice. According to the academic in our country “the kiss of greeting is a very heterosexual thing”, and ultimately “so that it is sexualice, because or but would be crossed rather by emotional expressions”. As anthropologist and national prize for Humanities Sonia Montecino indicated that younger men are changing the form of greeting, and said that “among young people if they kiss each other, so I have seen on brothers or parents with children. It is not fully extended, because in the past it was not part of the male manners and that stigma still weighs, but I think that it is changing”. Now, all the experts agree that, the kiss is not harassment, but under certain contexts and intentions, can become one. In that lina, when asked if it would be a good idea to end greeting kiss and spend, for example, to the classic handshake, there are different perspectives. For Montecinos “greet with a kiss on the face gives an account of an affective sociability and denotes a link with others involved in proximity, the gesture somehow symbolizes that we are all part of a community of affections”. There are now, for María José Guerrero, nuances, and hopes that “rather than be removed, to accept people who don’t want to do it, because it is a very important issue”. Meanwhile Svenka Arensburg is not agree with delete this greeting, that said that “is very important that compared a way have had live, which has generated gender violence and abusive forms, we may not impose that anti-competitive rules and us” “we make a kind of being moralistic that all want you to ban”

Original source in Spanish