The Maltese Body: Gender, Sex and catholicism, Pt2
- Episode 21- Transcript
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Trigger warnings for this episode include the discussion of non-consensual medical interventions, transphobia, abortion and religious persecution. Please proceed with caution.
What do we know now about gender and sexuality in Malta? In Episode 20 we arrived in this unique and complex country with the intention of understanding, initially, why intersex rights in particular were so advanced here- at least, in comparison with most of Europe. Instead, what we have only begun to explore is the intricate tapestry of factors which create the gendered and sexual cultures of Malta- religion, politics and globalisation to name just a few. As we approach this journey inductively, following the voices that these issues belong to, our question remains- who defines and who controls the Maltese body? Welcome to the second half of our two-parter, and to Episode 21 of /Queer. You’re here with me, your host, Georgie Williams.
In our last episode, our interview with Dr Chiara Frendo-Balzan shed light on the influence of Catholicism on bodily autonomy in Malta. As one of only 27 EU countries which prohibits abortion on any grounds, our conversation about the experiences of transgender and intersex individuals in Malta expanded to also consider the status of women and individuals who can give birth. In this discussion, themes emerged that tied the experiences of transgender individuals, intersex individuals and pregnant people together- themes such as agency, the value of the human body and sociopolitical oppression under religious powers. To understand these themes, how they present themselves in Maltese culture and how they are linked, more Maltese voices must be brought into the arena- and with the materials available, we must unpick these concepts on a more academic level.
It is important to note at this stage that ‘the body’ is a means through which, quite literally, the values of nations and religious organisations are often reproduced. Birth giving is one of the primary means for creating what we describe as ‘family’- a group of individuals, often related to each-other through biological ties. However, the concept of a family is an inherently political one; many of us, when thinking of families, will think of the model of the ‘nuclear family’- consisting of a heterosexual couple and one or two of their own biological offspring. This is, of course, an inherently heteronormative and cisnormative concept- it expects the parents to be two straight people and it expects one to be a cisgender male and one to be a cisgender female.
Their ability to produce children is, especially in the eyes of many organised religions, one of the most important facets of this design- and where religion and politics intersect is where we see this pressure to procreate being placed upon individuals in the name of creating ‘families’. Sociologist Haley McEwen explored this phenomena in her publication, Nuclear power: The family in decolonial perspective and ‘pro-family’ politics in Africa. McEwen describes this ‘pro-family’ movement as theo-political in nature- finding its roots in both theology (or, religion) and politics. On the impact of this movement, McEwen wrote the following:
“Pro-family foreign policy involves measures to ‘strengthen the family’ through opposition to birth control, the use of condoms (even in the fight against HIV [and] AIDS) and denial of the rights and dignity of sexual minorities. Furthermore, Religious activists have consistently opposed any foreign-policy initiative that might weaken parental control over children, facilitate abortion, expand the rights of homosexuals, or devalue the role of the conventional home-maker and mother... The growing influence of an international pro-family movement has been noted by scholars who have studied the rise of discourses of the natural or traditional family.”
What feels pertinent in McEwen’s passage is her mentioning of the natural or traditional family. In our last episode we briefly touched on the concept of the natural and how, in theory, the prevention of medical intervention with intersex babies in Malta and the prohibition of abortion may both stem from the Catholic idealisation of ‘the natural’. But did these values transcend Catholicism? Was there more that determined the experiences of transgender individuals, intersex individuals, and people capable of giving birth in the context of Malta? Were we overlooking the cultural and political elements in pursuit of applying a religion-critical lens?
In order to expand the dialogue on this subject, our travels took us next to the only people running an entirely queercentric gallery space in Malta. Where there is art depicting social struggle, queer struggle, there is always conversation and congregation. Our congregation in the gallery of RosaKwir- spelled K W I R- consisted of myself and the two founders of this brilliant and insightful project.
Romeo Roxman Gatt, in interview: I'm Romeo. I'm Maltese. I'm a multidisciplinary artist. I'm also a trans man. Alongside my art, I founded RosaKwir with my colleague Charlie Cauchi, and we've been doing this project for around... over a year.
Charlie Cauchi, in interview: I'm Charlie and I am half-Maltese, half-English, I guess. I'm also a multidisciplinary artist. And yeah, so I started working on this project a little over a year ago. So Romeo and I have known each other for quite a while, we always wanted to do something together. And he moved back to Malta during Covid and he had this brilliant idea. He was kind of, you know, very frustrated at the fact that there weren't any narratives relating to LGBTQ histories, but specifically transmasc histories. So we thought, let's apply for some funding and see if we can start something. And the idea was to curate and create an archive. So Romeo spent a lot of time interviewing people and gathering information, which- that led to it becoming a physical space rather than just a digital work. And the name comes from the research that Romeo was conducting.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Romeo and Charlie’s project and subsequent gallery space is, at its heart, thoroughly Maltese. Romeo was very happy to explain to me where the name of this place, RosaKwir, came from.
Romeo, in interview: Yeah. So we knew that our timeline would be really sparse, and we were doing some research and I came across Rosa Mifsud. This person, apparently the first documented intersex person born in 1774. And from documents, this person, they were called Rosaria, or Rose for short. And what we were noticing in the research is that we would have scientific and kind of criminal records and documentation but nothing necessarily to do with their gender or sexuality or nothing elaborated on this. So, Rosa inspired this project and we kept their name. And what I was confused about is we never got to know whether Rosa chose a different name after they were granted permission by the Grandmaster himself. So basically they petitioned in front of the Grandmaster and they said that they would like to be a man, maybe. So the Grandmaster is like an appointed, proficient surgeon’s position. And they did some tests and it shows that their male… their ‘maleness’ was stronger, so they kind of approved Rosa to start living as a man, really. And there are rumours that people saw Rosa peeing against the wall like a man do and all these things. So, yeah, but we never knew or got to know whether Rosa changed their name after then, you know? So we kept Rosa for this reason- and ‘Kwir’ is like how I used to think about spelling queer in Maltese.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Rosa Mifsud’s case stands out in Maltese history. In an article in a 1954 edition of the British Medical Journal, excerpts of documents from the original Grand Court of Malta in the late 1700s detail Rosa’s intersex status, described at the time with the now pejorative term of “hermaphroditism”. Assigned female at birth, the details of the invasive examination of Rosa’s body suggests that Rosa’s genitals were considered to be more comparable to those of male sex individuals than of female sex individuals- with this therefore being considered grounds for legally recognising Rosa as male. If you wish to read more of this article, it is available in our Gallery for this episode on the /Queer website.
Given Romeo’s personal experience of navigating Malta as a transgender man, I wanted to inquire as to how he perceived the climate around LGBTQ+ rights here. As with my conversation with Dr Frendo-Balzan, this conversation quickly expanded into a conversation encompassing bodily autonomy, but also about the restrictive nature of the Maltese language when articulating queer experiences.
Romeo, in interview: I think politically, trans rights, intersex rights, like LGBT rights in general are doing really well legally, politically, in a sense, trans rights are much better than anywhere else I know, such as, like the UK. And people from the community genuinely work hard on bringing NGOs and a couple of NGOs like MGRM for instance, like Rainbow [Support Services], of course, services there… They work... the people are dedicated and passionate and they do try to educate the public, like, that is the mission. But we, both of us, think that we have all the rights and I think it's easy to get it right, and the legal side to it, But we need to start educating people from young and at schools and we still feel that that is lacking somehow...
Charlie, in interview: In terms of the language used and definitions and culture, acceptance...
Romeo, in interview: Moving on from there, would be mentioning also, maybe abortion.
Charlie, in interview: Yes, and women's rights.
Romeo, in interview: We have a kind of ban on abortion here. So it's like really... LGBTQ rights, we're praising them to be up here, but then...
Charlie, in interview: It's still very patriarchal.
Romeo, in interview: So for us it's something that we should already be working on and having conversations about and, in fact, we have held an event here which was a book launch of a Maltese writer based between Malta and Brussels and she's written this book that recently really tackles feminism from it’s core and the situation in Malta. Especially sexism, religion and also trying to navigate the queer language as well, the language is Maltese, you know, their mother tongue, which we were talking about. I never was able to talk about my identity and my sexuality in my own language. Somehow, I always was more comfortable to do it in English but it's kind of... I am Maltese. It would be really nice to have the language to talk about my sexuality and gender in my mother tongue. So anyway, we had this [at] the event in Malta, in the gallery and we had three events around the book launch.
Charlie, in interview: Which tied into topics related to the book but also what it is trying to do. And one of those talks was on abortion, we had three... two guest speakers, one was a lawyer and the other was a doctor and… it was really interesting because there was so much to be said and a lot of people that attended the event were from the... were practising doctors or lawyers but none of them wanted to speak publicly. Some of the... just the stories that were shared were horrific. But it's sad that we can't have those conversations in public still.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: As our conversation developed, naturally the topic of Catholicism came up- and the intersection of Catholicism and Maltese politics became a focus for Charlie and Romeo. A note here for clarification, the divorce referendum that Charlie mentions occurred in 2011.
Romeo, in interview: Believing in God or Christianity at least it also creates a sense of hatred or not accepting others and I think sometimes people use it as an excuse to just... because they just are hateful towards everyone who's not heteronormative.
Charlie, in interview: Yeah, this is a, really tough…
Romeo, in interview: Yeah it’s like people talk about it but I just… I personally think… I'm not against God at all and I do have some faith. But the church as an institution and how some politicians even... I think politicians-
Charlie, in interview: On this issue actually I think it’s more politics, rather than just the church. In many ways, it's very divisive.
Romeo, in interview: I mean, we would have said that maybe when we got gay marriage like you have the party choosing maybe they’d done it for votes or… but with abortion it's not easy.
Charlie, in interview: We only, we had a referendum on divorces in 2004? 8? [Author’s note: referendum happened in 2011]. Anyway, it hasn't been that long since [chuckles]. And even that, that was just such a big thing-
Romeo, in interview: ...But abortion is a tough subject and many politicians, you know, like they're not, they're not really trying their best because they know that they will lose votes. So I guess it is... [Charlie agrees] political gain. Abortion’s not going to gain any votes, and it's a very sensitive subject to speak about. But there are organisations like...
Charlie, in interview: …the Women’s Rights Movement and Foundation, there's a lot of activism here. There's actually so much more activism than there ever was and it's really good to see that more people are out and talking about these things or trying to even at the cost of, you know, being threatened and the likelihood to be threatened is still very… full-on.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: What RosaKwir was doing quite uniquely with their gallery space, was creating almost an artistic symposium on the subject of subversive and healthy masculinities. Naturally this meant that many of the artworks on display had been created by transgender men, butch-identifying individuals, nonbinary individuals and other artists for whom masculinity had been a subject of scrutiny and a goal for attainment in their lives. Of course, what is described as masculine is subjective to culture- and the subjectivities of a culture are grounded in the place and time in which it emerges and is maintained. Given the uniqueness of this art space and its current focus I wanted to ask the RosaKwir team, what does Maltese masculinity look like? How does the male identity slot into the contemporary Maltese cultural climate.
Romeo, in interview: Well personally, I'm really interested in kind of aesthetics as well you know, of how we perform this gender... So I look into much of this culture in myself and my artwork. And when we are doing this project, I was telling Charlie and it's like we read and we see some visuals throughout history of trans and people or cross-dressers at the time on butch lesbians, but I've never come across Maltese men- trans men or a butch lesbian being documented or in a book or footage or something. And that was for me really interesting because when I was growing up here I was dressing in a specific way very different to what people in London or in the UK would be dressed, or our tattoos would be a bit different. We are maybe you know like, yeah, all these different behaviours in Maltese men... You see this in other cultures, in other countries. Of course some people who have, you know men who have a specific walk, it's kind of more international you know? But there is a specific thing that I say “ah”, like that is like, Maltese, I could- I could perform a Maltese man and I wouldn't say I could perform that British guy for instance. I was interested in this style of like what are you wearing? how do we talk, how do we carry ourselves? Not all of us are the same. Maybe I'm copying my dad and I'm copying this community of men and other people are looking at another version of masculinity. So there are some versions, but you could also say oh, that's really a Maltese man. That's a Maltese man.
Charlie, in interview: And also trying to get away from this idea we can only talk about masculinity in terms of toxicity and that needs to change. So that's why the show is called ‘Tender and Masculine’. It's a phrase coined by Romeo, he created these beautiful t shirts with the word Tender and masculine. We knew we needed to end our year program with a group show. It was a no brainer, it has to be that and it is to see how often we discuss masculinity and by discussing different ways of forms of masculinity also discussed different forms of femininity. You can have a wider dialogue, and so many people that also came here from the cis community or are heterosexual and everyone could still have this conversation. That was what was very important.
Romeo, in interview: And this work in particular, where we see here, there's a sound piece based on like.. it's called ‘T Fags’ and like, El and Orion, they photographed their friends and they're talking about the conversations with all around masculinity, how to feel and what's the relationship between masculinity and femininity and navigating the space around this or beyond this and denoting relationships. And all of the people in this show in particular are also in.. what we have been trying to work on throughout this project really and trying to find other… alternative notions of masculinity or discussions around it and what could they be? Do we invent new ones? Do we... yeah, as you said, we weren't interested in reinforcing this idea around the masculinity, that we're going to have to talk about toxicity. So yeah, we wanted to steer away from that and to just show that there's other variants of masculinity.
Charlie, in interview: It's a bit of a celebration as well, rather than make it having the work that's going to be about victims. Anyone in this show feels like they are victims, we don't want that either.
Romeo, in interview: We didn't want to like... make a pity documentary story at all and not, of course not ignoring the fact that some people would have had it very hard like LGBTQ and... but it was about them being so happy and thriving. Like people would come and say, wow man... they are.. you know...
Charlie, in interview: Also talking about overcoming the challenges as well rather than just really focusing on... because even if you think about coverage here, especially local coverage- so TV programs on the subject, on the LGBTQ topics, it is usually always a very negative or... it's always a sad story and…
Romeo, in interview: Sometimes it feels like for us to be accepted, you have to see us suffer and then maybe you have some empathy and you start accepting us. Whereas we didn't want the spaces for us firstly. So yeah, it's so nice for kids to come here and feel like they're seeing themselves in someone who's like doing so well and they... have accepted them and they're doing general things like everyday things, like everyone else and with a smile, for instance, even just presenting like photographs with people smiling in them, you know? It's just like... just that simple, it's so beautiful. But then having to always read some form of depressing story and it seems to only be able to be reflected in that. And the show isn't like that, it's so playful and it's also positive, it's educational. There's like histories that we're making visible.
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Throughout our time on this project, you may have noted that our conversations with transmasculine members of our community have been few and far between. As someone who, on the technicality of taking testosterone, falls into this community, I have long wanted to provide a stronger spotlight for those of us looking to embrace and even subvert masculinity through ourselves. My final question to Romeo was perhaps more personal than political; I wanted to know if there were any myths or assumptions about transgender men that he wanted to challenge or dispel.
Romeo, in interview: I don't know, I often think about this and I really, really work on what kind of man I want to be and become. I just came out like a year and a half ago. Even before then- I knew always I was a boy, but it was, yeah, you come out as a... lesbian. That's the coming out story for most people, I think, from our community. And I don't regret any parts of my journey. There was a time when I was angry. Why didn't I do it before? Why didn't I know how to say it... but there was no language for it... But now I was able to connect so much with my femininity- which I couldn't do before, and I pushed it away so much. Like.. because… I wanted to be accepted and see, and be seen as a dude. So I felt that there was no room. There were times when I didn't dance when I was a kid because I thought dancing wasn't.... And now I love dancing! You know that just these things. But I have to continue going back to my childhood and re-doing that.
And also now, like I said, as a man, how do I- Because maybe I picked up on things that are not so great or behaviours that all of us could do, like whether you're a transman.. a cis man.. I think we pick up some negativities in our behaviours, which is like misogyny, but this is like... or sexism, but this is like an overall thing instead of... and yeah, as a trans man, I really want to work hard on not spreading transphobia. Like, we all have some internalised transphobia. And at first I did have it. And so I like to work on that. And I think it’s- I don't want to go spreading these thoughts out loud because I don't want to affect my other transmasc friends. So it's just constant. I try to talk with cis dudes, like other men, like trying to see how we would work together and maybe have room to.. yeah for people to start thinking more about talking about these subjects, maybe because maybe we don't talk about it too much either…what kind of behaviour even between friends, maybe men aren’t very like, you don’t… unpack masculinity together on a night out. [all laugh].
Charlie, in interview: But I've seen you in spaces where I thought, oh, my God, why are we going in here? I think this is going to just turn... and it's been totally fine. And Romeo will start to discuss topics where I think no one's going to want to engage. And they do.
Romeo, in interview: Yeah. So it's kind of like floating around. So I'm going to give my best example to him to share because I have my own bad habits and traits and flaws in my character, and I'm not doing it all right for sure. But there are some… things that I look at closely. I look at this subject all the time. One, because I'm going through it and I'm becoming that. Yeah, I think just unpacking all the time, little things that are taken so for granted. This is what a man does. This is what a woman does, like, we are still very binary here as well. Trying to avoid that, trying to even… sometimes I think sometimes people are all right with a trans man because you start passing that man is like, all right, you're one of us now. You're a dude. Then when it comes to non binary, people, like, find it still... They want to make a whole argument around why they don't understand. We’ve had people, like, going hard- “This is too complicated, and blah blah”. You say you're really intelligent, you're at this position. It's like, there's people who do not want to change or learn, and they're hard headed with their values and their habits-
Charlie, in interview: I think there's also people that are worried, fearful of making mistakes and upsetting someone.
Romeo, in interview: Yeah that's true.
Charlie, in interview: Which is why I think the work... the scope of the work here is it's okay to ask
Romeo, in interview: And yeah that's exactly that. Because all of us make mistakes, I do constantly. Recently with the archives, we both had to sit down, and re-kind of-edit our description of the project because maybe it would have been excluding some people. But it's like a constant change, a constant learning together. So we're always looking for that. And our language changes really fast. It’s like we always admit we can make mistakes, but once we know that that one hurt someone, or we hurt someone, and all we want to do is learn from that and change, and that's the beauty of us sharing and learning together. That's what we kind of want this place to become. And I think through our events, everyone who has come here has always felt really comfortable. And we've had people who are not from the LGBT community, and they come and they don't feel threatened or anything because it's not the point that-
Charlie, in interview: Which is great!
Georgie Williams, voiceover: Romeo and Charlie’s work was, especially in a country as small as Malta, unique and arresting. What they were doing with this space was giving agency back to the queerly masculine artists of their exhibition- allowing them to present their bodies and stories without censorship or the requirement of shared tragedy to facilitate sympathy or empathy in their audience. Beyond this though, RosaKwir was providing a space for congregation- as Charlie mentioned, their visitors had been cisgender and transgender, heterosexual and non-heterosexual. Although issues surrounding gender equality, bodily autonomy and religious bigotry persevere in Malta, RosaKwir was and remains a site of decentralised action- independent from both church and state. If subjects close to the focuses of RosaKwir remain taboo in the Maltese public consciousness, there is immense power in what they are doing in creating a hub for education, conversation and subversion of these inaccurate narratives. Malta’s first queercentric artspace is achieving phenomenal things- and the conversations their space generates will likely reverberate throughout Malta in the years to come.
The Maltese sociopolitical climate is a complex one- and perhaps best represents how varied the mechanisms behind social change can be. From a distance, we may be inclined to presume that the state of intersex rights and freedoms in Malta has emerged from a society whose perspectives on bodily autonomy, gender and sex are relatively progressive- at least, relative to the rest of the world. But it requires us comparing the welfare of intersex people to the welfare of other groups- Maltese women, Maltese LGBTQ+ identifying citizens- for the reasons behind Malta’s stance on the intersex community to become more apparent. An anonymous source in Valletta who moved to Malta from an Australasian country a few years ago described the Maltese government’s approach to progressive legislation as a roll of the dice; if a political group landed on an idea which was well received by the younger voters, that idea was very likely to be used to win those votes. But that theory didn’t explain why Maltese politics still handled the subject of abortion with such reluctance and resistance. As pleasant a notion it would be that Malta’s progressive approach to intersex rights represented the general values of a forward-thinking Maltese government, it seemed an increasingly unlikely prospect.
As our time in Malta was nearing a close, I wanted to follow up on one final lead- a contact Romeo and Charlie had recommended to me. As this project is always inductive and participant led, I trusted their judgement, to the huge benefit of this project.
Gabriella Calleja is the head of the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Unit at the Human Rights Directorate in Malta. A well established LGBTQI activist in Malta, she previously worked for nine years as the coordinator of the Malta Gay Rights Movement- an organisation founded in Malta in 2001. If anyone was going to be able to provide the final context and insight I needed for the gendered and sexual cultures present in Malta, it was likely Gabi. Although we were not in a position to record audio for this interview, Gabi was gracious enough to allow me to transcribe our conversation.
My starting question in our conversation was as follows: Malta leads Europe with regards to intersex healthcare but seems to lack the same progress in women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights- what did Gabi think accounted for this disparity, and did she agree or disagree that Malta is progressive with regards to intersex rights?
Her response was as follows: So Malta introduced a ban on normalising surgeries on intersex children in 2015 through the gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics act- article 14 in particular. In this case you could say that Malta's legal framework protects the bodily integrity of Malta's intersex persons. We're still in the process of concluding the treatment protocol overview, so that's taken longer than was anticipated. Of course, the ban still applies- so the revised protocol is also intended to support the setting up of an interdisciplinary team that will assist the medical professionals in the advice that is given also to family members of intersex children and intersex persons themselves. There's a working group that has been meeting regularly over the past two years and they are coming towards the conclusion of that process. I have to say that also before the law was passed, this was already in practice, so the law normalised this practice.
They're seen and perceived to be quite different issues (abortion and intersex welfare) in terms of who is impacted but also in terms of how Maltese people would frame them from a moral and religious perspective. I think it's factual to say at this point in time that although the majority of people oppose abortion here, there is a growing movement that is supporting the decriminalisation of abortion but also supporting access to abortion. I think in terms of political will, the furthest political parties have gone is to state that this is an issue that needs to be discussed or debated.
What I would say is that we have one of the best legal frameworks globally with regards to legal gender recognition- so the process is based on self-determination and the right to gender identity. we also have no age limits, so minors can access legal gender recognition. Since 2018 we have also had the gender wellbeing clinic which is also providing trans-specific healthcare. For trans people, this includes hormonal therapies and surgical interventions but also psychosocial support. Although not everything is currently covered under our national health service, what is available is increasing and in the electoral manifesto in April they promised to extend these health service to include genital surgeries- so that should become available. I think where we of course lag a little behind is in social acceptance- the results of the fundamental rights agencies also indicate that levels of harassment and violence here are lower than in other EU member states- so there is a positive trend, but transphobia is of course still present in our society and with social media this is a more difficult problem to eradicate because Maltese people are therefore impacted by transphobic views from anywhere in the world. Our trans community is however more integrated into schools and families- there is, of course, still work to be done to address transphobia in society. We don't really have the TERF movement- we have some right-wing evangelical groups and movements bringing up gender ideology and all of this but they don't really represent all of Maltese society and don't really have the same influence on the political sphere as in other countries.
It's true, Malta has advanced considerably in parts of LGBTQ+ rights but lags behind in others which have proven to be more challenging.
My favourite line from Gabi’s statement was this: Mainstreaming equality is an ongoing, never-ending process.
Oftentimes as a researcher on this project I will discover that there are episodes which cannot be tied up neatly in a bow- that is to say, with a sense of closure about the direction of the sociopolitical climate of a country or an uplifting message about the progressivism that has made itself apparent. It would be distasteful if we were to hail Malta’s stance of intersex rights as some kind of sign of their overall awareness of and support for minority groups. This is not an episode in which I will sweepingly praise a government for their inclusive policies and legislation- even if a community who have gone without these basic rights for so long are finally being recognised and included. When I spoke to Intersex activist Sean Saifa Wall in Episode 13 back in 2021, he made it clear that there is and will always be intersections between the gender and sex related rights and freedoms of intersex people and LGBTQ+ identifying individuals- although their needs and goals are still, crucially, very distinct and should be treated as such. But Malta’s approach to intersex welfare needs to be rooted in respect for autonomy, not merely the unaltered state of the human body. Medical freedom should always be grounded in information and choice, and, like with the leaps and bounds they have made with LGBTQ+ rights compared to many European countries, Malta could lead by example with a more progressive approach to both women’s rights and abortion access.
Both Romeo and Gabi pointed out that the climate for transgender rights in Malta far outshines the climate in countries such as the United Kingdom. Gabi mentioned the TERF movement; TERF standing for ‘Transgender-Exclusionary Radical Feminists’- a group who have been previously mentioned as part of this project who apparently believe in women’s rights but do not believe in including transgender women in that movement. This group is incredibly harmful and I was very pleased to hear that that issue has not reached Malta- at least, not yet.
So although the complexities of Malta’s approach to these sensitive subjects cannot be reduced down to exclusively positive or negative statements, the voices of the Maltese leg of this project have shone light on the immense progress made in this country. Time will tell what can yet be achieved in, as Gabriella said, the process of mainstreaming equality. But it is beyond doubt that movements and motions are taking place in this country- and the people behind them have proven themselves both formidable and devoted. Much has been done and there is much left to do- and there is strength in the growing number of Maltese progressives, fighting for the liberation of the Maltese body.
This episode of the /Queer Podcast was edited by Sam Clay, transcribed by Bronya Smith, scripted, produced and hosted as always by me, Georgie Williams. A very special thanks to Charlie Cauchi and Romeo Roxman Gatt from RosaKwir and to Gabi Calleja from the Human Rights Directorate for their invaluable contributions to this episode.
Many thanks also to our Patreon subscribers old and new- we are over the moon with the recent uptick in supporters and we would love to keep this trend going. You can find our Patreon at patreon.com/slashqueer. That’s S-L-A-S-H Queer. You can also find our /Queer merchandise on Threadless and we are still accepting donations via Ko-fi- the links to both are in the description for this episode.
This episode was recorded on location in Malta. Music in this episode was composed by our resident audio king, Sam Clay. If you enjoyed this episode or have any feedback, please get in touch on Instagram or Twitter at @SlashQueer or email us at info@slashqueer.com. As we press on- stay kind, stay radical and stay queer.