Comment of the Week
Posted on this site by Matthew S
I’m sick of this ‘Labour decriminalised homosexuality’ line.
Sodomy might be good fun between consenting adults but in a world where women were completely controlled by their husbands, sodomy should have never been decriminalised. It made wives even more helpless.
The sodomy law protected heterosexuals. Back then, it was the only law which protected wives from one form of rape.
Removing it ensured that husbands could rape their wives any way they want in the safe knowledge that it’s all legal.
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I find it necessary to add, for the benefit of gay men who imagine their tortures at the hands of 21st-century EU governments and society in general to be immense and extreme, that under Maltese law there was no such thing as rape in marriage.
Rape outside marriage was and still is a serious crime, but rape in marriage was ‘conjugal relations’.
The result of this was that Maltese women were raped on a regular basis in their own home with the full blessing of the law, at a time when ‘leaving’ and ‘separation’ were not options in 90% of society.
Though the legal situation has changed, the mentality is much slower to do so.
That’s why there are shelters for women in Malta, they are full to capacity, and one of them has a reinforced steel door like Fort Knox.
There are no shelters for gay men.
It’s not only women who are savagely beaten by their husbands or boyfriends who go there. There are girls routinely beaten by their father and brothers and even women beaten by their sons on the instruction of their father.
In some families it is normal for the woman of the house to be beaten routinely as a form of discipline or just as a punch-bag for the frustations of the day.
I once interviewed, in a shelter, a woman who was beaten by her husband, who raised their eight sons in turn to beat her like he did. She’d been churning out those sons since she was 16. She was in her 40s and looked like she was 80.
When I published the sorry tale, there were shocked reactions. But the unspoken undertone to those reactions was that it is normal for women to be beaten. These things happen all the time. That’s why there are shelters.
Had I published the personal experience of a gay man who was beaten and tortured every day by the nine other members of his family, in their home, I can’t help thinking there would have been a major gay rights outcry, with solemn protests, and politicians and elves vying for the title of Most Liberal.
But a gay man would never have been beaten in his own home for many years that way. If a gay man isn’t big enough to fight back, then he’s certainly free enough to walk out, get a flat with the money he earns, and pay a lawyer to get a restraining order on his father and brothers.
And that’s why gay men don’t end up in shelters while women who have no money, because they are the unpaid household servant, who don’t fight back because they have been cowed into submission through fear and violence, do.
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But it’s god’s word that if a woman does not obey the man she should be beaten.
Yes, because no atheist has ever hit his wife.
Can you quote chapter and verse from where you go this? I am really interested.
If I were you, I’d ask god for that one in writing.
Then I don’t know why you’re an athiest – if that was true, Christianity would by right up your alley, Mr. ‘tied down and spreadeagled’.
I’m very sorry to hear about the domestic abuse situation in Malta. In New York City an estimated 25% of all LGBT teenagers are homeless (You can find more information here at the Ali Forney Center, a shelter to which Paul and I give money: http://www.aliforneycenter.org/).
This is obviously a much higher percentage than their straight counterparts. I’m sure those numbers are much lower in Malta, socialist wonderland that it is, but I wonder if gay minors in Malta would face similar hardships in the absence of state support.
very true… however i’ve never heard of a woman killing herself because she was beaten up (probably because she feels she can’t leave her children behind) but quite a few stories of gay men who committed suicide.
[Daphne – If you don’t know that women in Malta commit suicide because of depression engendered by chronic abuse, and it usually isn’t violence either but the drip-drip of corrosive ill-treatment over many years, then you must be the typically oblivious Maltese man. Gay teenagers who kill themselves because of self-hatred and fear and bullying bring us up short because they are teenagers and the death of young people is upsetting. BUt if a woman swallows a tub of pills or slits her wrists, we register it for a minute and then move on because women are hysterical and neurotic and kill themselves all the time. But you’re right – for a woman to kill herself, things have to be serioiusly, seriously bad, because women are programmed biologically and socially to stay alive and put up with everything while ensuring the survival of the next generation. So when a woman kills herself, tell yourself it must have been awful.]
no no! you got me wrong. i am not the oblivious Maltese man you’re “accusing” me of. i am just saying that i’ve never heard of a woman (gossip, people i may know by sight, friends or friends of friends, etc) that committed suicide because she was being abused by her husband/bf. it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.
you’re right re gay men committing suicide… the stories i know were of teenagers/early 20s
That’s some really frightening stuff. I’ve been living here for eight years and never realised that was going on. Is there no real legal protection for the women, or are they simply too afraid?
[Daphne – The law is ultimately irrelevant when you’re terrorised and have no money and nowhere to go. This level of abuse is generally associated with little or no education, whatever you might be told to the contrary. Educated women know their rights, have access to legal counsel and the capacity to earn money, and they’re unlikely to be beaten and violated. This is the typical situation: a woman with little education is systematically and progressively controlled by her boyfriend, who she then marries. He proceeds to cut her off from her family and friends until she is completely isolated and fully dependent on him. He does not allow her to have a social life or to work. He keeps her very short of money. He monitors her every move. He punishes her for doing ‘wrong’. A master-slave relationship develops. If there is no beating, or it isn’t too bad, the woman stays and lives with it. The situation becomes normalised. Sometimes women who are really badly beaten don’t leave either. When they do, it’s because something happens to force them into a crisis and they ‘wake up’ and snap.]
There is a lot of (highly justified) fuss over the same thing happening to Muslim women, with clerics proclaiming the same thing – there can be no rape within the marriage, as sex is simply part of the duty towards the husband. Didn’t expect the same thing to be an issue in Malta.
Out of curiosity, have anyone ever gone to court over rape by a husband and, if so, what has the outcome been?
[Daphne – Rape in marriage is part of a much wider scenario of serious abuse. It is not a ‘one off’ incident and it does not occur in isolation. These cases end up in the Family Court and are not publicised.]
Thank you for pressing this point. Let’s hope someone in government is listening.
“I find it necessary to add, for the benefit of gay men who imagine their tortures at the hands of 21st-century EU governments and society in general to be immense and extreme, that under Maltese law there was no such thing as rape in marriage.”
Not that it justifies it in any way, but it was the same in the UK until relatively recently.
I came upon this just a few days ago.
“Messagg iehor interessanti kien dwar il-Perit Mintoff u d-drittijiet civili: “Kuragg lill-ggant politiku li fost hafna affarijiet li wettaq ggieled kontra l-mewg Konservattiv u ta l-libertà lin-nies omosesswali fl-1973. Grazzi u zomm sod Perit!!” miktub minn Albert Gauci Cunningham, Joseph Bruno Vella, Barry Portelli, Gino Tanti, Charlot Grima u Charles Philip Zammit”
(http://www.kullhadd.com/201009182121/Ahbarijiet/gratitudni-u-stima-kbira-lejn-il-perit-mintoff.html)
For what it’s worth, Joseph Bruno Vella and Cyrus Engerer both use (nearly) the same photo for their Facebook profiles. Anyone who visited maltatoday.com last Monday would have noticed.
And they look so sweet together!
‘But a gay man would never have been beaten in his own home for many years that way. If a gay man isn’t big enough to fight back, then he’s certainly free enough to walk out, get a flat with the money he earns, and pay a lawyer to get a restraining order on his father and brothers.
And that’s why gay men don’t end up in shelters while women who have no money, because they are the unpaid household servant, who don’t fight back because they have been cowed into submission through fear and violence, do.’
Daphne, you’re right about many things in this post, but these last two paragraphs are not accurate. Domestic violence in same-sex relationships is not unheard of. Nor is the psychological control which forces men to stay with their abusive same-sex partner. The reason why gay men do not end up in shelters is that there are none for gay men.
In my view, and that of most eminent feminists, feminism and LGBT advocacy should not be competitors. They should be seen as part of one movement which opposes male heteronormativity. It is a disservice to both to pit them against one another.
[Daphne – Justin, I am not trying to do anything to pit them against each other. Both are of interest to me. I am seeking to introduce a sense of perspective and proportion into a debate that has neither of those things, and to remind people that the problems for women are STILL extremely serious despite changes to the law. Laws change but the socio-cultural attitudes of hundreds of years do not. Only those who gain the confidence of women from different social backgrounds and get them to open up really know what is going on. Three personal narratives I was told last week: 1. a man who goes home after work every day to beat his wife and 14-year-old daughter. The daughter is too young to leave home alone. She begs her mother to leave him because she can’t stand it anymore. The mother says: “But where would I go?” 2. A woman whose husband threw her down the stairs when she was pregnant. She eventually left him with their two children and now lives with somebody else. 3. A woman whose several children haven’t eaten fresh fruit in months, among other difficulties, and who works all the hours God sends to make ends meet while her husband gambles away his earnings, borrows thousands more and loses that too, then smashes up the house and pulls his adult daughter around by the hair when she tries to explain to her mother that this is not a normal situation. Now read the newspapers carefully and start taking note of the number of cases of serious violence against women. A common threat used by Maltese men of a certain background against their wives appears to be ‘I’ll put you in a coffin’. So many women have reported this that it can’t just be a coincidence. Their husbands must have heard it used by their own fathers against their mothers.]
It still is extremely difficult to prove rape in marriage. Still, it is possible for a man to be convicted of raping his wife in the privacy of his own home. It is, however, extremely difficult to prove.
I believe that even beaten women can – if they want to – find a job, leave thier spouses, rent a flat which they pay with the money they earn and pay a lawyer to get a restraining order, or are we living in libya all of a sudden?
This said I do acknowledge that for women it may be harder to leave the household due to children and such matters but I believe that they can still work up the courage to seek help if they want to.
Now when it comes to gay men, speaking from experience, the violence is there in a much more subtle manner, and less so at times. On a psychological level, homophobic violence occurs through jokes and comments – and women are no less subject to such jokes as gey men are. In terms of family relations,
Being a gay man myself, I can understand why some would prefer to hide and remain a closet case. If being cast off by your family isn’t bad enough, situations do occur when gay men, are beaten by thier peers “to turn them straight”, at times also by thier fathers “to toughen up the sissy queen and make him a man”. This in turn may create a fear to fight back when one is an adolescent a fear that grows up with you.
Now on the point of fighting back what is the point of reporting gay bashing and people attacking you when the authorities don’t take you seriously – if not deride you?
However by this point I by no means wish to undermine the reality that women are beaten and raped by thier men, they have been for centuries and yes that is very wrong and legal action should be taken to help these women, however this does not imply that gay men do not undergo similar traumas in thier lives as do straight men that are beaten by thier wives – another reality that is not that well known by the public and definately not taken seriously by those who should!
I definitely understand the point you’re making, I just hope you understand that many gay people have gone to hell and back because of the way society and/or their families treat them. Suicide, intense psychological abuse….
The whole “gay men who imagine their tortures at the hands of 21st-century EU governments and society in general to be immense and extreme” comment was a bit much. There are so many suicides (Gay teenage suicide is 4 times higher than average teenage suicide). Or teenagers literally thrown on the street. Or taken to horribly damaging reparative therapy. Or beaten to an inch of their lives by their fathers.
I mean nowadays there are loads and loads of accepting families, where its a non-issue (like mine thankfully). And other families in which its something they have to deal with for a while but eventually get over, but there are also situations which are beyond terrible and affect gay people in an “immense and extreme way”.