That’s why I think there’s actually something wrong with him that’s staring at us in the face and not being registered.

I see something totally non PC every time his face appears.

I too find him repulsive because I immediately recognised the lying scamming trait in him that I found broadly developed in another person with whom the connection has since been established. It is this that is written all over his features.

These sort of narcissists are only interested in themselves.

That is why emotion is studied and reproduced but not felt.

A genuine laugh happens either when caught unawares or when the ego is being stroked and fawned on. When manipulation is underway.

Any threat to that imbalance is countered by the “under the belt where it hurts” type vindication.

Control and manipulation are the greatest turn ons.

I would say Muscat is self-sufficient in things sexual.

Those type of men go for devices that restrain blood flow.

When everything was explained to them, including that the sperm will be donated, the husband did not understand a thing. He asked me “But the baby will look like me?” and I started to cry.

I too used to work in such areas of health.

In his political life Muscat is the perfect example of the man who ‘juzak u jarmik’. Transfer that to family life and that is what scares women away.

He is the one who knows it all and will get his way with or without consent. In spite of all the hype, he doesn’t listen but forges ahead with his plans.

And this is not a financial consideration at all.

I think we actually agree. Let me explain.

Consider the bling. The man is wealthy – in PC-speak,”financially stable”.

I think he did use that to sell himself, i.e. “vote for me because I am rich and still in my thirties.” There’s a certain vulgar flaunting of money which runs through the entire marketing campaign of Joseph Muscat for the last six years.

He didn’t pitch himself as the blue collar worker, or the average income family man, but as the very comfortably well-off thirty-something.

[Daphne – Yes, but it is his parents’ money, and he doesn’t even work for the family business, but receives hand-outs. Coupled with the fact that he still lives in his parents’ pocket, literally, this makes for a most unattractive situation to all but women who are from desperate parts of the world (as with Manuel Mallia) or women who see the man as a means to improve their own station in life (Michelle Muscat). They are not, however, the kind of women men like Muscat actually want, if they want women at all. Men like Muscat want a woman who is also a status symbol, but women who are status symbols have more choices.]

Of course I never meant that this marketing tactic would work on you, or even me. You can see right through it, so you didn’t fall for it. I didn’t fall for it because it’s not the kind of thing I admire in a man.

But many of our fellow citizens lapped it up.

The reason I brought up the subject is that Muscat’s policy choices seem to be determined by this manufactured public persona. Vide the LSE speech. You won’t see Muscat playing bocci (Dominic Mintoff), or browsing through his vast collection of books (Alfred Sant), or handing out kiwi fruit (Lawrence Gonzi), but you’ll certainly see him at the breakfast table with the fruity Helle, or cutting million-dollar deals with Azerbaijani oligarchs, or speaking at the high-speed, low-drag LSE, or sharing a joke with Abercrombie-Winstanley.

Maybe also they are incompatible and the sperm dies in the genital canal on its way to meet the egg. When the sperm comes from a donor the father is not the biological father at all but only an adoptive father.

I would not like to be impregnated with a donor whom I do not know. You never know what the donor is except the colour of the eyes and skin.

[Daphne – I know exactly how the human reproduction system works, Persil. And other than that, I was the first person to write about how artificial insemination was taking place with donor sperm in a completely basic ‘turkey-baster’ environment in Malta in 1986.

One of the questions I remember asking my interviewee is whether the couple had it clearly explained to them, whether they truly understood, that donor sperm means the resulting baby is not the mother’s husband’s. There was such great ignorance in those days that people literally did not know that donor sperm is the entire genetic package of a total stranger and that the mother’s husband is written out of the equation completely.]

Who says that he looks attractive and sexually appealing to his wife?

She was seen with a copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” on a flight to Milan some time ago.

We should be bothered, but we certainly should bother. I always read labels at the supermarket.

And I always read the label, including the small print, of my prime minister. Joseph Muscat has sold himself through a very modern celeb pitch: love me because you’ll never be like me. In the vernacular, adurani ghax tghir ghalija.

It is a profoundly Maltese social climbing technique, and also our definition of “success” (with a dotted c), viz. “xi hadd li tghir ghalih”.

Hence my original question. If the definition of success in our highly sexualised society is “a man who is desired by all women”, then by what measure can Joseph Muscat define himself as a successful man?

[Daphne – I disagree with you here (unusually). The principle of ‘if people want to be you they will want what you have’ works like a dream in selling consumer products and ‘lifestyle accessories’. It was, in fact, the basis of a 2009 film starring Demi Moore and David Duchovny, The Joneses – but that is not what we are looking at here.

And women don’t want to be with him for many of those same reasons. The one thing women observe most closely, other than how a man is with women in general, is how he behaves towards his wife specifically. And that is precisely why men who are good to their wives and affectionate towards them represent a major attraction to other women – not just as a challenge but because that is exactly what women want. Inexperienced/very young women imagine that when a man is dismissive or thoughtless towards his wife, it is because of the way she is and not because of some inherent problem with him. They imagine that he will be different with them. Experienced/older women know a lot better than that.]

I was meaning to comment on this.

I don’t think straight men in general are attracted to anyone who sucks up to them. It is only the effete who are.

Malta has a lot of them, because of our ingrained culture of laghqizmu and mutual compliments, and also because most men haven’t measured themselves up against the real deal.

You only have to look at the list of Maltese Men of the Year. It’s a very “ragel ta’ success” thing, the male equivalent of a “nisa ta’ success”.

Kibritlu rasu.

Artificial insemination is used for many reasons.

[Daphne – Asexual means a total lack of interest in sex and the absence of sexual desire in whatever context, Persil. It does not mean a failure or inability to produce sperm. Also, much of IVF takes place using donor sperm and has done so from the beginning of its practice in Malta in the 1980s. People in Malta will not tell you whether they have used donor sperm or not, which is why people tend to think that it doesn’t happen. This is not a comment about the Muscat situation, but a clarification of a misunderstanding about IVF in general. Yes, IVF in Malta sometimes takes place with donor sperm.]