One of the reasons why I try my best to avoid writing and discussing about sexuality, sex, birth-rates and related issues is that everyone has something to be offended with discussions about these issues and you can never get it right. There will always be someone who will be offended, both men and women. It’s also difficult to navigate this subject when people attribute words and beliefs to you that you never said or held in order to justify their conflated theories about social justice and whatnot.
The issue of the Maltese birth-rate is a fundamental and existential problem relating to our language, one that any rational Maltese national who loves and believes in their country would want to preserve and strengthen. This is not racist. It is also not mysogonistic or anti-feminist to want your ethnic group to survive, thrive and grow.
No one has ever said or even implied that this is an issue specifically about women, and only radical and Marxist feminists are turning into one. The birth-rate is the collective responsibility of the nation with the government being responsible to create the necessary economic, social and cultural conditions for the birth-rate to increase. No one has ever said that women should sacrifice their freedoms to save the Maltese nation except for the radical feminists themselves. Maltese men also have the option to marry and have children with foreign women, and this is not an exclusive and binary issue over women’s freedoms.
The birth-rate has also got nothing to do with abortion and reproductive rights. You can be in favour of women having the right to abortion whilst being in favour of a growing and thriving nation with a growing birth-rate. These issues are not related at all. Abortions don’t prevent the growth of a population. This is in fact a very simplistic and uncritical way to view social phenomena.
I’m not a relationships expert, but only a historian, so I’ll stick to facts. However, and clearly, this subject has become a massive taboo in Malta and everyone seems to have a reason to be offended simply by having a discussion about this very fundamental and existential issue.
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Historian and Publisher
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