These men haven’t evolved beyond the 17th century – they’re so scared of a woman

Every day I thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t born three or four hundred years ago. But now when I read my history books I no longer seek an explanation for the fear engendered among men those days when a woman appeared on the scene who foxed them, and she wound up dragged before the Inquisition tribunal and tortured and murdered as a sorceress.

There remains something very, very primitive in Maltese men who did not have the privilege of a civilised and modern upbringing, and who have remained locked in the medieval village of their mind. This man is an architect, for heaven’s sake. He was a cabinet minister, a member of parliament, an individual elected to represent his constituents. He earns money, is married, has children and is raising them – hopefully in a more enlightened manner than his parents raised him – and maintains a public image of normality.

Count them. Go ahead – count all the men who are or have been foaming at the mouth because of me. Their obsession, their fixation, their inability to think about anything else and the zeal and pathology with which they pursue me to what they hope will be the stake: it isn’t normal. You need to recognise it for what it is.

Stand back: look at it with the eyes of an outsider. What does it look like? Well, exactly. This is no safe place for women. And then they wonder why women don’t enter public life. Maybe it’s because they see what the men in public life already do to me?