Events | 2010.04.19
When men's lips meet | Paul MacInnes
By kissing Paul Scholes, Gary Neville declared war on homophobia. And Francophobia, too
Of the gestures exchanged between males, there are two common types. First, the handshake, which has over recent years exploded into a veritable rainbow of variations, from the traditional polite handshake through to the terrorist fist bump, taking in all manner of slaps and tickles along the way. The other is the hug, which has gone in the opposite direction, distilling itself into one uniform act; a brief squeeze, followed by two strong slaps across the shoulders.
In terms of actual physical contact, that\'s about it. A rogue uncle might rub his knuckles up and down your scalp, but that\'s a rarity. Kissing, meanwhile, just doesn\'t happen. Keep that in mind when you consider the reaction to an already famous meeting of lips yesterday afternoon.
As if losing the derby to a last-minute headed goal from a 35-year-old wasn\'t bad enough, what followed next must have proved mortifying for Manchester City fans. As they sat in the stands contemplating yet another year in the shadows of their illustrious rivals, there on the pitch was Gary Neville , club captain and Manchester United archetype, planting a full, passionate kiss on the lips of his teammate and goalscorer Paul Scholes. As the self-parodying pundit Alan Hansen might put it, talk about passion and commitment.
The kiss exchanged by Neville and Scholes, or rather the one foisted upon Scholes by Neville, was broadcast around the world. It said a lot about what victory, the crucial three points as they say, meant to Manchester United. It also said a lot about Gary Neville. He is, after all, more commonly associated with the passionate expression of emotions other than love; as exemplified by his apparently unassuaged loathing of scousers and a general antipathy towards footballing officialdom.
Such a gesture – normally expected of the male lead in a Jennifer Aniston movie – showed Neville in a whole new light. And it could yet prove to be totemic. Professional football, a sport constantly expected to provide role models for the nation\'s children, remains quite remarkable for the fact that throughout its upper echelons there is not one player, not a single one, who says he is homosexual. While the law of averages would suggest there ought to be at least one XI of gay players in the Premier League, none has come out. Even when the Welsh rugby international Gareth Thomas came out late last year, no footballer followed his lead. They\'re all straight, you see, every single one of them.
Perhaps Neville can change all that. He may be married with two kids, but if this crazy, untamed, obsessional partisan feels that the only way of truly conveying his feelings is to lock lips with a bemused redhead then surely there\'s a broader message that could be made from it? The Manchester Pride event runs through the last 10 days of August this year. Neville should be invited as a guest of honour.
That Neville\'s big snog has made such a splash might say something about the continued existence of a homophobic undercurrent in the UK beyond the football fields. (It might also suggest there\'s a market for seeing a weasel-faced man get it on with his pals, I don\'t know.) But I think there\'s at last one other factor that fuels the prohibition of public kissing among British males. As much an irrational fear of homosexuals, I detect an irrational fear of the French.
I saw two men greet each other with kisses in a restaurant recently and I blushed. I knew there and then they were French. To kiss another man is, for the Briton, so closely associated with the idea of the effete values of the continent, those that put sophistication above strength and culture before valour (I\'m making these up as I go along, but this is how prejudice works), that there is no way we could countenance the practice.
That is, until Gary Neville tried it. This was no peck on the cheek, this was a full-blown face-sucking. It was a greeting both intimate and red-blooded. It was the snog of a True Brit and I\'m going to try it on my friends.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]kiss-scholes-neville-homphobia
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