While we in Malta waste hundreds of hours of police time, and thousands of liri – soon to be euros – raiding bars cum pole-dancing venues for titillating sex to finally accuse girls of wearing a thong, no less and no more, the English have got a horrible, not interested in sex but even nastier for it, serial killer on their hands.
This man just wants to kill prostitutes who, it turns out, were all drug users. It’s not a tale that has excited much sympathy here. After all, these are ladies of the night, but it would be very different if the prey were to be, say, blow-dried, Bulgari-bejewelled blonde/brunettes, or children, God forbid.
Seriously, there is a big problem in Malta, as there is all over Europe, with two kinds of East European women. The first are those who, generally because they are economically desperate, leave their country and their vodka-dead men to find some sort of income in the sex cum dance or massage trade. The second are the thousands who are really caught in sexual slavery, who are brought into a country to dance, but who have no choice but to prostitute themselves.
Some of the luckier and more beautiful ones – because, let’s face it, they are stunningly beautiful – find some doe-eyed sod who marries them and gives them some security. I’ve lost count of the visually challenging Maltese men I have seen with a beautiful Russian or Russian look-alike babe on their arms.
Some, and many more than we realise, simply have a Russian on the side, but there is no doubt that these girls have arrived, are part of our changing social fabric, and also that they are filling the void where in many cases Maltese men, husbands, are not having sex with their wives and feel the need to be rejuvenated again. It is a tragedy for many Maltese families, and there is justified resentment on the part of many married Maltese women who cannot compete with someone 20 years younger who is willing to be an uncomplaining, undemanding sex slave, and more, of their husbands. Some sit it out and manage to weather the storm. Countless others have lost out to the devastation that an East European bombshell can cause.
But for the most part, East European girls in Malta are either working in our many catering establishments or bars that have some form of entertainment. These were the target of a massive police raid lately but I was a bit bemused to realise that the girls, who looked like children in some cases, were actually also being charged with managing a brothel. Come on! It is obvious that in most cases in Malta, it is the men who are doing this, and not the dancers in a bar. It is also unbelievable that they were arrested because they were dressed identically to the way in which those who still can, dress for the beach? Midriff-baring tops, shorts, thongs? How on earth was any of this evidence of prostitution? Is this Malta or Saudi, for crying out loud?
If we want to be serious about the sex trade, stop letting people from East European non-EU countries into Malta. Of course that will not happen. We incarcerate the ones who are not blonde but also arrive illegally. From a boat to a camp. And the East Europeans are brought in without a problem. Like the Arabs before them, who often married Maltese women for the passport, the same will soon happen – and has started already – with these Russian girls. Or for once let’s get serious, and regularise the sex trade.
Isn’t our prudery going too far? Wouldn’t it be better to have licensed brothels, where girls and punters can be tested for Aids and are encouraged to use condoms, rather than this free-for-all we have now? These girls are not sub human, although that is what the Suffolk serial killer on the loose seems to believe. In many ways, thank God for them.
The many women who do not really want to have sex with their husbands anymore, post kids and all, shouldn’t perhaps be too surprised if hubby has a regular woman on the side. Because, funnily enough, men who use a prostitute – or so UK research showed – are usually constant with the same one, who serves the same purpose as the rich man’s mistress ( just without the Fendi and furs).
Of course it is devastating and hurtful, but sex is a very important part of men’s, and some women’s, lives and no amount of police raids will stop people getting sex or titillation in one form or another. What government should be doing is ensuring that the women are not slaves, are not being exploited, with all the income going to their male pimp, and that children are not involved. But otherwise, sex between two adults is an entirely private affair, as is watching exotic or pole or lap dancers. I mean, so many women find a man much more attractive if he is loaded. Is that so very different to prostitution? Isn’t it another form of prostitution, cultivating a man’s affections because you want his or his family’s money?
With Christmas on our doorstep, rather than worrying about our dual standards and puerile attitude to sex, it is far better to enjoy Vanni Bonnello’s contribution on women Knights. Closures and Disclosures was launched on Thursday and there is a fascinating bit of research (among many others) about how some women actually made it to be Knights, rather than ladies of the night.
Guess how? Usually because of money. One prominent nobleman from Messina spared the Knights of Malta having to pay taxes, but had no sons. So the Knights were forced to accept his daughter into the fold, and Marchesa Spatora received a Knighthood of Devotion.
The Germans apparently were the only ones who were quite generous in the women Knights league, but then women down South have always had to play the tightrope between the unrealistic, but culturally fanned expectation of Southern men that women are either Mother Teresas or whores, when the vast majority of us are not remotely either!
Another lady Knight, was one with the brilliant name of the Duchess of Sambuca (good name for a pole dancing club!), whose fame and brilliance was recorded in a novel by Dacia Maraini. The book cover shows a very good-looking woman with the eight pointed cross of the Knights on her dress, a totally different image to the usual ones we have of the Knights of Malta.
Vanni’s research in this as in other essays is really enlightening and a great antidote to any blues, perhaps telling us how little has changed in human behaviour, how women still have echelons to go, and how a good book of interesting essays like Closures and Disclosures beats so much of the daily drivel that is turning so many off the news, both here and abroad.
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