The Third World War

During protests in Turin last November against a high-speed rail project, a woman kissed a cop’s helmet. Franco Maccari, head of Italy’s police union, filed a sexual harassment complaint. His defense was elegant in its absurdity: if a cop had kissed a female protester, the world would end. But a woman kissing a helmet? That required legal intervention.

I’ve thought about this incident more than I care to admit. Not because it’s shocking—it’s too stupid to be shocking—but because of what it exposes about who gets to claim victimhood, and what we’ll criminalize when it comes from women. A kiss on riot gear is affection or protest or both. Touch the uniform and it becomes assault. Maccari invoked the specter of international conflict over a hypothetical, then filed charges over a woman’s lips on plastic.

The double standard isn’t hidden. It’s his whole argument.

What lingers is the impulse underneath—not just policing the protest, but policing bodies, touch, the crossing of that line between citizen and authority. A cop in riot gear isn’t remotely vulnerable to a kiss. But the fact that someone would kiss him? That seems to have threatened something. Not his safety. His position. His distance.

She knew what she was doing. He probably did too.