I seriously doubt Britney Spears was referring to domestic violence in her 1998 hit …Baby One More Time. Nor do I believe she was glorifying sadomasochism, at least, not to my knowledge.
That song came to mind when I came across a disturbing social media post by a deputy mayor who joked that women “enjoy being beaten.”. It was riddled with misogyny, wrapped in a pathetic attempt at humour. To make matters worse, he claimed this so-called joke was rooted in a Maltese pearl of wisdom suggesting that women like being beaten during sex. Where this twisted idea comes from, I don’t know, but what’s clear is that it feeds a culture already steeped in sexism and normalised violence. To the best of my understanding, the word tissawwat is gender-neutral and not rooted in the idea of women’s subordination during sex. During the same week of the tissawwat post, a footage went viral of a man bashing a woman for asserting her right to walk on a pavement.
The so-called joke on social media isn’t just a matter of poor taste, it’s dangerous. We are living in a time when reports of domestic violence are steadily rising, and countless femicide cases remain unresolved, trapped in a justice system. In this context, remarks like these aren’t merely offensive, but they trivialise the real, lived experiences of women facing violence.
Yet, what struck me most was the underlying insult aimed at his opponent. The deputy mayor’s punchline wasn’t just that women enjoy abuse, it was that being a woman is, in itself, a lesser man. He was trying to emasculate his opponent by comparing him to a woman, as if that were the ultimate degradation. This isn’t new. It echoes language embedded deep in our culture, phrases like “M’intiex raġel” don’t just question someone’s masculinity, they equate femininity with weakness, disloyalty, and lack of integrity. And this, to me, is where the real damage lies: in the everyday reinforcement of women as “less than”. This reminds me of Simone de Beauvoir’s ground-breaking 1949 work, The Second Sex on how women have historically been defined not as autonomous individuals, but in relation to men as “the other”.
Equality isn’t about ticking boxes on gender quotas or increasing social benefits. It’s about dismantling a deeply ingrained cultural mindset. One that belittles and degrades women, that ridicules women who speak up as “aggressive”, labels female leaders “bossy”, and paints those who ask questions as “difficult” or “stubborn”. Think about world leaders in the last 50 years. If you had to carry out content analysis of newspaper articles, you can easily discover how women world leaders who are assertive are often targeted and labelled as bossy, stubborn and domineering.
The currents of misogyny and resistance to feminist discourse are far from isolated or local phenomena but they echo a broader backlash currently unfolding across Western societies. These attitudes are embedded in global conversations, amplified by influential voices that actively seek to undermine feminist progress. Consider, for example, the recent comments made by American right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk in response to pop icon Taylor Swift’s engagement. Rather than acknowledging her achievements as one of the most successful cultural entrepreneurs of our time, Kirk chose to publicly diminish her. His statement “I think that Taylor Swift having two or three children – she should have more children than she has houses….Reject feminism, submit to your husband, Taylor – you’re not in charge.” This is not just a misogynistic comment; it’s part of a broader ideological project. It feeds the dangerous belief to control again and domesticate women.
These undercurrents reveal a great deal about how we raise our boys and girls, and the differing expectations we place on them from an early age, as well as the distinct roles society continues to assign to women and men. They expose what we demand of women in terms of restraint, endurance, perfection, and what we routinely excuse or normalize in men, such as aggression, entitlement, and emotional detachment. These moments are not isolated incidents; they are windows into the deeper cultural patterns that shape our values, behaviours, and shared sense of what is acceptable.
Until we shift that cultural narrative and stop laughing at abuse, using femininity as a punchline, and dismissing microaggressions as harmless jokes, there can be no meaningful progress.
Prof. Valerie Visanich is an Associate Professor in Sociology