When a few years ago, during Parliament question time, Prime Minister David Cameron shouted at the Labour frontbencher Angela Eagle to “calm down, dear”, all hell broke loose in the British media. Cameron was accused of being sexist, patronising and insulting.
Labour’s deputy leader and former equality minister Harriet Harman said Mr Cameron’s “contemptuous response” to Shadow Minister Eagle showed “his patronising and outdated attitude to women”.
Ms Eagle told the BBC: “I don’t think a modern man would have expressed himself that way. What I was trying to do was point out that he had got some facts wrong.”
In the press, the general consensus was that women in Britain in the 21st century do not expect to be told to “calm down dear” by their peers, let alone by their prime minister; and that years of careful modernising of the Tory image was undone with a single remark that instantly conjured up the age-old idea that women were hysterical creatures incapable of rational thought. Cameron was, in fact, still apologising for it months later.
This incident came to mind this week. But of course, “Calm down dear” pales and fades next to “Niġi għalik u nifqgħek” (I’ll come for you and beat you up) as Labour MP Joe Debono Grech admitted he shouted at Independent MP Marlene Farrugia during a parliamentary session.
Can you imagine what would have happened in the British House of Commons if a Member of Parliament stood up and said that?
Not here, though. Instead, here, people reacted with: “Uhh, but what do you expect of Joe Debono Grech, he was always like that” or “He doesn’t know how to express himself in any other way” or “He’s 80 now, he’s not going to change his ways” or “He didn’t really mean it, ta – he’s just impulsive”, or “Ħeqq, she was inviting it, she insulted him”.
It makes me so weary. Threatening with violence – even if the Pope himself had to do that – is wrong, full stop. Nothing can ever justify it. I don’t understand why things that in other countries would cause an uproar, here we seem to delight in justifying the unjustifiable. Unacceptable behaviour is bizarrely defined as okayish.
For any woman out there who is a victim of violence, I want to say this: no you are not playing victim, you deserve better, please reach out for help
Well perhaps, I said to a friend the other day, that’s because we are fundamentally an angry set of people. When I used to teach English as a foreign language, students always had a recurring question: “Why are Maltese people fighting all the time?”
They used to imitate the scowling, the waving of the hands, the open mouths, the loud and dramatic inflections in our tonalities.
“Oh, that’s because we are Mediterranean,” used to be my standard answer. “Ah no,” they would reply, “but in Spain/Italy/anywhere else in the Mediterranean, people speak loudly but they laugh a lot, or smile big smiles. Here, you don’t – you always have worried or angry faces.”
Over time, as I’d be walking in streets or waiting in shops, I started realising that their observations were rather astute. We are rather angry. Perhaps it’s because there’s too many of us in a tiny space? “Or maybe because we do not know how to deal with criticism,” said the friend.
Which, as always, boils down to culture: because from a young age we lack exposure to varied forms of art; we are not taught to compare and contrast things. Which means that we do understand the concept of always trying to make things better and when someone expresses some form of criticism, we take it personally and we flip.
However, back to this week. Somewhat linked to Debono Grech’s threat of violence, the Minister of Civil Liberties gave a speech in which she “warned” women “not to play victim”. She insisted that women who suffered abuse should not play the victim if they were guilty of emotional abuse. It was unfortunate that this was uttered on the very day the world focused on the elimination of violence against women.
Seven women every day in the European Union die as a result of male domestic violence. Male aggressors usually bark at the women “to stop playing victim”.
This is a typical script: any woman who has been subject to abuse, physical or psychological, will attest to this. It is also the phrase which stops abused women from seeking help – the fear and the belief that it is their fault.
‘Playing victim’ is the phrase which abused women have to battle with all the time, and that is what makes the minister’s choice of words very worrying for all those of us who know what is happening on the ground of domestic violence. We cannot turn the clock back on this awful week, but for any woman out there who is a victim of violence, in whatever form, I want to say this: no you are not playing victim, you deserve better, please reach out for help.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti