Women on this island have to deal with sleazy remarks all the time. It’s outrageous.

Good for you, Marlene. I’m astounded that the Minister for Civil Liberties and Equality did not take a stand about Philip Rizzo’s sleazy behaviour (and his female subordinate’s equally sleazy response) herself.

What is this place? Women who grew up on this island – especially those of us who are Marlene Farrugia’s and my age – have had to contend with the sleaziness of Maltese men all our lives.

I don’t think women a generation younger are any luckier. They are probably still having to contend with the sleaziness of the very same men who we had to deal with.

Women in Malta are faced with a choice: they either go with the flow and flirt back and respond in kind to patronising and/or sleazy remarks, or they develop a super-tough personality that frightens men off.

There is no middle road, unless you look like an escapee from a Tal-Muzew cell, but those probably are not safe either.

Men say to women the sort of things they would never dream of saying to another man – and we’re obviously not talking supposedly sexy but actually creepy remarks about boobs here. The way some men speak to women, you almost expect them to follow up with the dog-order, “Sit!” if not actually “Fetch!”

Men a generation younger than us are nowhere near as awful, at least not those from the kind of background which allowed their parents to send them to independent co-ed schools. Maybe those from a different background, or the ones who went to all-boys schools, are still just as awful as their fathers.

Is Philip Rizzo’s behaviour exceptional? It is not. It is just that most men behave like that off Facebook and not on it. Rizzo clearly does both. The problem is not that he posted those remarks on Facebook, but that he thinks of and behaves towards his female subordinates in that way. Facebook was not the problem in itself, but exposed the problem.

Rizzo should be made an example of, pour encourager les autres. It would take a man – and Minister Evarist Bartolo is a man – to think these matters should be taken in the context of the mentality of somebody of Rizzo’s generation. That’s just the problem: the mentality of men of Rizzo’s generation.

I have lost count of the number of times I have struggled with the urge to empty a glass of red wine down the front of some jerk’s shirt at a work-related reception. And then their wives come smarming up possessively and all I can think is, “Leave him, you fool. He’s disgusting.”

Imagine working for somebody like that. Yes, not all women find it offensive. Some, like Olivia Farrugia of the Employment & Training Corporation, find it useful and lead the salivating boss on for the purpose of promotion to, say, head of division. But what kind of atmosphere does that create in the office?

As a woman who has had to deal with skin-crawling men like Philip Rizzo all my working life, I am outraged.

Thank God at least one woman MP has spoken out. You would have expected it to be Helena Dalli, with her banging on about equality, or one of the women in the Opposition.