What is this – the Let’s Insult Women government or what?
Published:
December 3, 2014 at 12:08am
“HIV from mummy”.
As Philip Carabot, recently resigned head of the STD clinic, will tell them, they are far more likely to get it from daddy in Malta.
Maltese men are running around dipping their wicks everywhere, then taking the diseases they pick up home to their wives, who are not doing the same thing.
This is not just an insulting poster, but in the Maltese context, it is untrue. Daddy doesn’t bring home the bacon here. He brings home chlamydia and gonorrhea.
This poster is up on the wall at Boffa Hospital.
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What an Aryan-looking Maltese child. My word.
These are photos they would have purchased off the internet.
That’s my point. They should have found something closer to the typical Maltese baby. It’s called connecting with your audience.
There would probably have been more had we been on the losing end of WWII and perhaps a it would not have been such a bad thing after all.
Hi Baxxter it seems that you had never looked up the Maltese surnames. According to records which I do possess and although I am Borg my family origin comes from Bavaria.
Let me put it this way: would you use an Asian child if you were running the ad in Sweden?
I find the use of the emotionally-charged word “Aryan” offensive. It belongs to the dustbin of history, outdated racial classification rooted in the middle ages and pseudo-science. What does a “typical Maltese baby” look like, anyway? To me, this smacks of an undercurrent of racism.
Of course it does, if you think Bambini with golden curls, blonde V18 cover girls and red-headed puttini are racist.
HPB
There are two parts to the problem:
#1: The Maltese are reductionists. For them a baby is a baby as ghagin is ghagin (let alone the variety, the sauce and the cooking method).
#2: The Maltese are complexed by any association with Africa, hence their efforts to dismiss anything ‘dark’.
These posters have been in the PV bars for the past 4 or 5 years.
Not that it makes a difference to your argument, just wanted to put it into context.
They could have changed those posters by now.
Oh, and I spot the HIV cliché, as if nothing else exists.
“And HIV from mommy”. Is this for real?
Those filthy women – no wonder they called STDs mard tan-nisa in years gone by.
Na, just kidding.
As a matter of interest, what solution is being offered to those pregnant women who test positive for Aids?
According to WHO, without using any preventive measures, mother-to-child transmission rates range from 15-45%. With proper measures, this is reduced to 5%.
This is normally done through the use of medicine and other preventive measures such as having a C-section.
Yes – and thank goodness for that. Some very dedicated Doctors at the Infectious Control Unit do an excellent job in this manner.
This appears to be a John Dalli poster when he was Minister for Social Policy including health falling under his responsibilities
Michael Stich was a former tennis star. It’s his Foundation that is being quoted.
What’s with the German bolstering for John Dalli?
Why this constant reference to Foundations that keeps surfacing?
Pregnant women with Aids are referred to the infectious diseases department and given treatment.To prevent the baby from contracting the disease they are delivered by Caesarian section.
I also have this feeling that there is a problem with this government in its attitude to women. My posts regarding the Evarist Bartolo insult and the non-response by women organizations were meant to point this out.
I do not speak German so had to use Google translate but one can still get the gist of what happened in Germany in the face of insulting campaigns. Here is a statement regarding the campaigns of Michael Stitch Stiftung:
”Successful Protest
Campaign of Michael Stich Foundation is mitigated partially
by Ulrike Sonnenberg-swan
In the last two years, many of the motives of the poster and advertising campaigns of the Michael Stich Foundation have met with outrage and rejection. Nationwide, AIDS service organizations and AIDS counseling centers, individuals, networks and Equal Opportunity Commissioner have protested many cities against the sometimes discriminatory and misogynistic motives, and for a long time it looked as if the resistance do nothing. Now some motifs in the public should not be shown.
Also, the nationwide network Women and AIDS and the network of relatives had turned with a letter of protest to the Foundation. January 23 seven representatives of the two networks were invited to an interview with Michael Stich in Hamburg. In the discussion that was very open and constructive criticism of some subjects of the campaign was again clearly stated and detailed and justified the requirement to renounce in poster and advertising campaigns discriminatory, sexist and degrading representations.
Less than a week later, the Michael Stich Foundation assured in a letter to the network no longer publicly unmount the motives of “execution” and “coffin” or reprint as a display. About an amendment of the subject “baby” will thinking. The Foundation also emphasizes that it was never their intention to hurt the feelings of people with HIV. Even talking Michael Stich had expressed great interest in future cooperation and exchange in developing new campaigns.
The network representatives are very happy about this first success to the many people who contributed with their protests. The woman Speaker of the German Aids, Marianne Rademacher, and Board Sylvia Urban had clarified in December in a conversation with Michael Stich, the position of DAH.
The network will be on the ball, of course, there will continue to be done. There are still motives which no one should be confronted, such as the “vultures” and “feet”. ”
Translation
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.daignet.de/site-content/die-daig/aawsall-around-women-special/news/kampagne-der-michael-stich-stiftung-wird-teilweise-entscharft&prev=search
Original
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daignet.de%2Fsite-content%2Fdie-daig%2Faawsall-around-women-special%2Fnews%2Fkampagne-der-michael-stich-stiftung-wird-teilweise-entscharft&anno=2&sandbox=1
x’injoranza hanzira
Hang on -Mum may very well have caught HIV from Dad.
But unless you are suggesting that Maltese men have sexual intercourse with their infant children, or engage in weird blood rituals with them, then a child of that age is much more likely to have caught HIV from its mother – probably during birth.
The chances of the kid contracting HIV at birth can be reduced to a very low level – by Mum having a caesarean and taking other precautions. So – regardless of who gave Mum HIV in the first place, the public health information needs to be targeted at Mum, so she doesn’t pass it on to the kids.
[Daphne – That’s hardly the point, is it.]
We can perhaps see the statistics of how many babies in Malta have contracted HIV then. The fact that something is possible does not make it ideal to plaster on the wall.
Anyone in health education can tell you that campaigns cannot just be transfered from one culture to another.
Are we still insisting on anonymous HIV testing in Malta, making us unable to know what the real picture is and therefore unable to organize a bespoke campaign?
Are there statistics by age group, gender and risk? Do we still have the problem of repeat testing confounding the numbers?
The infected mother would have got HIV from an infected person (who can be the child’s father).
She is more likely to transmit the disease to the child during pregnancy through the placenta rather than during birth.
However the point here is that this poster is insulting to women because of the way it is presented.
It think it wants to make the infected women feel guilty for frequenting the wrong men without protection.
There goes the most feminist government in history again.
Injoranza Fenomenali.
I don’t Chris Fearne is aware of the AIDS epidemic… He completely overlooked World HIV Day last 1st December.
That poster is completely inline with the Maltese mentality when it comes to women aka Eve, the weaker sex, the ones that need to be taught and the carriers of all things bad (disease, malnutrition, sponging off the benefits system).
Men, on the other hand, are above it all.
On a petty note, why is ‘mommy’ spelled the American way?
Since these have been around (as has already been mentioned in somebody’s previous comment) for a number of years, they do not appear to have any connection to the present government.
It’s funny how they spelt “mummy” in the American way – I thought British English was supposed to be used in Malta.
Will the person who conceived such a poster, and the one who approved it, please identify themselves? Will the minister responsible for this health publicity campaign express his views on the message?
To be fair the posters are of the previous administration.
I received an advert from an insurance agency yesterday. It read “Wives never believe in life insurance. Widows always do” Poor woman whose husband dies. How will she go on living?
Shame on this misogynistic administration for not enforcing the right of a human couple to decide who bears the embryo and gives birth to it. Until that legislation comes into force we’ll have to make do with mandatory female pregnancies and the attendant issues such as perinatal HIV infection.
A woman who hasn’t been anywhere and is effected by an STD, is obviously her husband/companion the cause. In that case would she continue with the relationship?
And if a woman doesn’t know that her husband frequents rubbish and falls pregnant? A future mum could be affected by HIV and couldn’t be aware as, as far knows she is married to a “family man”.