This reminds me of a couple of things. The first is the iconic Life magazine kiss of a nurse by a sailor at the end of WWII, a spontaneous act of jubilance that the war was over. It was a photo that became famous in a good way, until in the 2020s when it was re-interpreted by radical feminists in the midst of the MeToo madness. They saw it as an act of sexual assault. They even spray-painted #MeToo on a statue commemorating the famous kiss.

The woman in the photo, being kissed in 1946, did not see it that way: "In 2016, after her death at 92, her son told The New York Times that in her view "It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn't a romantic event. It was just an event of 'thank God the war is over' kind of thing. And the reason the sailor grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded." Three months earlier, [the sailor, then 21 had been at the Battle of Okinawa and dragged survivors and the dead from the water. Nurses helped save many lives. In an interview for the same project, he said he’d grabbed her because he thought she was a war nurse. “It was all done in good clean honest fun,” he said. She remembered that day as happy, the kiss only a part of it. "It was a day that everyone celebrated because everyone had somebody in the war, and they were coming home," she said in an 2005 interview. "So it was a wonderful gift finally to end this war. It was a long war, and it cost a lot." Source: azcentral.com/story/new…

That is the healthy, sane way to interpret such a kiss. After all, kissing each other in greeting has been a part of Mediterranean culture for ages. Alcohol and exuberance have at times taken it a bit further than a peck on the cheek as in the 1946 photo. But it was not romantic; it was just a celebratory kiss. The feminists made it into something ugly.

Hermosa, as your article implies, is doing this for publicity, to virtue-signal. She is scapegoating an innocent man for attention and the mob is going along with it. I have seen this before, in social justice movements I was part of. That brings me to the second thing this story reminds me of.

An animal rights activist of Portuguese origin always kissed and hugged everyone he met, purely out of affection and friendship, not in any sexual way. He hugged men too in this way, as is part of his cultural heritage. It was also just his personality, to be demonstrative. He was an extreme extrovert. And he had made the mistake of sleeping with some women in this activist movement, then moving on. Women talk and he got a reputation as a womanizer. This is itself is not a crime, so the feminists in the group decided to accuse him of a real crime, to get rid of him. To do this, one of them posted a false and anonymous allegation of rape against him online. The allegation was not only never proven; there wasn't even an accuser -- but as a result, he was shunned and reviled and left the movement he'd given much of his life to -- even though he denied the allegation strongly. He was advised to charge those responsible with defamation -- a case he would have won -- but he decided to just leave the movement instead. The result was a divided movement, hurt feelings, and a feeling of triumph among the feminists. They succeeded in flexing their muscles and asserting their power. That cause was now a "safe space" for women, or so they alleged. The biggest losers in this whole thing were the animals, who lost a good advocate for their rights and welfare because of human power struggles.

Perhaps little known among conservatives is that for decades men in Left-leaning social justice and environmental and animal rights movements were routinely subjected to abuse. It's a form of control, an exercise in power for its own sake. It has nothing to do with justice. The same thing also happened viz. race in these movements: white people were routinely called racist and made to confess their "white privilege." Then as the people who were in these social justice movements in college joined the workforce and gained institutional power they transformed all Western institutions into Marxist struggle sessions: education, business, the church, the courts, the media, sports and entertainment, government -- all were transformed in this way. This is how the West was weakened from within and by cultural Marxism.

Young women in the West are taught to be "heroes" by publicly shaming men in this way. The ethos of "girl power" and the "girl boss" promoted by Disney is a cultural Marxist expression of this. As a result, there were a lot of false allegations of wronging during the height of MeToo. And even in the case where men went too far (which of course does happen sometimes), the punishment -- public shaming and loss of one's career -- was not proportionate to the "crime." For example, Garrison Keillor the radio storyteller put his hand on a woman's shoulder in an elevator -- in his account, innocently -- and as a result of being "called out" syndication of his radio show was cancelled.

Now men in the West are afraid of the slightest misstep. They are avoiding women, out of fear for their lives and careers. The MGTOW and Passport Bros movements are a result. Many women are deeply unhappy about this but it's the fault of a culture of misandry. It almost makes me think the Muslims and Orthodox Jews are right to keep men and women separate most of the time -- not only for the protection of women but also for the protection of men.