Points to ponder (on gender, race and nation)

I am a big supporter of the blog, a new medium which gives many people the opportunity to experiment with writing and give vent to their undoctored, uncensored opinions, whether good, bad or downright ugly. On Friday last week, I was trying to catch up with some reading when I came across the following gem. The writer was rather worked up about the latest bus strike:

"Bus drivers in Malta don't realise how lucky they are. In the UK if you pass a racist comment, or pass a comment to any hot girl who walks on the bus you'd get done for discrimination/sexual harassment (having said that most bus users tend to be women with their bus pass, so probably the hot girl comment does not apply)."

I was particularly struck by the implication that it was only young, pretty girls who could be subjected to sexual harassment. The other implicit statement was that racism and sexual harassment in Malta go unpunished. Sweet.

This episode reminded me of an e-mail I received earlier in the week inviting me to discuss the claim that some men still think that ill-treatment of women is usually the fault of the woman. By ill-treatment, my correspondent meant anything from sexual to mental to physical abuse.

This is an old argument, redolent of sexism. To start with, it is an argument which both men and women subscribe to. Women can be sexist in relation to both men and women. And some women do think that victims of abuse "ask for it".

Second, it should be by now well-established that no aggressor can plead provocation as justification.

Thirdly, in this age of reason, we believe in human agency. Thus, people make choices to behave in a certain way and should be held responsible for these choices.

So, if a man rapes a woman, the man should be held responsible. And if a woman leads a man on, and the man rapes her because she backs off at the last minute and he cannot stop himself, he should be held accountable. There is nothing equivocal about that, no. I cannot put it plainer than that.

As it is, it being Woman's Day this week (Wednesday), there have been clear signs that this topic will get a good work-out in the media by people more expert on this subject than I am. Enough said.

On Tuesday, columnist Kenneth Zammit Tabona cited the English author Enid Blyton as a childhood literary influence and then proceeded to illustrate exactly what he meant by using the colloquial phrase "the nigger in the woodpile" to make a point about the struggle for ascendancy between the English and Maltese languages. His mastery of point and example is a hard act to follow.

Enid Blyton was childhood fodder for many during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. She was undoubtedly a product of her time and I am loathe to judge her too harshly for her unsophisticated class distinctions and racist overtones.

But try as hard as I might, I can find no excuse for Kenneth Zammit Tabona's use of a racial epithet in his column. What was he thinking of?

There has been a lot of talk about the nation recently. The nation tends to rear its ugly head in debates over language, culture, religion, location and similar topics identified as the "markers" of identity. Thus, Kenneth Zammit Tabona (again!) claimed Malta has two national languages, which it does not, and that perfect Maltese was required "to preserve our national identity".

I wonder whether he (or anyone else for that matter) would care to explain what he thinks it means to be Maltese and how he defines this elusive national identity. In any case, I have had occasion to declaim before now that I believe national identity to be a myth and that it is a self-serving construction by the nation (itself, an empty signifier, an "imagined community") to ensure its ability to exercise hegemonic power.

Since this is the topic of my research, I tend to be a bit of a bore about it, so I have been trying hard to restrain myself. But really! Preserving our national identity? What, in a jar?

I cannot help wondering whether the recent Oscar upset, in which Crash was awarded the Best Film gong over the bookies' favourite Brokeback Mountain is a nod towards films tackling issues of discrimination or a betrayal by a not-so-free-thinking Hollywood.

Crash is a racial drama that tells the intertwining stories of an array of characters over 36 hours in Los Angeles while Brokeback Mountain is the story of a Wyoming ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy who meet in the summer of 1963 and form an unorthodox yet life-long connection.

Was it the themes of race and isolation in Crash which tempted voters? Or is Hollywood not as liberal as we like to think it is and not yet prepared to give the thumbs up to a gay romance?

Ms Spiteri is a journalist and a researcher in media and identity based at the University of Sussex.

S.Spiteri@sussex.ac.uk