Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi, in a confrontation today in a parliamentary session with PDK MP Ariana Musliu Shoshi, used sexist language that is unacceptable to the Assembly, but also to the wider public. He told the MP: “Your desire to get public attention is also meaningless.” Such language, in addition to covering up the lack of arguments, paints an extremely problematic picture for politically engaged women. Bislimi seems to have used this terminology by translating the term “attention whore” from English. So “attention whore.” The emphasis here should be on the term whore. In the Albanian language dictionary, the word lust has an exclusively sexual connotation. According to the definition, lust is “A great desire to fulfill bodily pleasures, a great fire of flesh and blood.” Consequently, no one can have a desire for engagement in politics or even for attention, except for fulfilling bodily pleasures sexually.
The association of a woman’s political engagement with the word lust is a denigration of women in public, and it invests in the already existing patriarchal cultural prejudices of our society. A publicly engaged woman is viewed with suspicion. Almost as if she were shunned. This is how Besnik Bislimi is also viewed. To think that this is the Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic. To think that this is declared as a progressive Government coming from a declaratively social democratic party (which ironically has just concluded the traditional activities “March brings spring WOMEN EQUALITY”). To think that Mr. Bislimi is a teacher, so he should be distributing knowledge to students.
The Musine Kokalari Institute asks the Deputy Prime Minister to immediately withdraw from these gender-based attacks and insults. We ask the government and the Prime Minister to also withdraw from this sexist language. We ask the Speaker of the Parliament to be more determined in condemning the use of such language in the sessions of the Parliament. One of the worrying issues in Kosovo that is also taking place in international reports on Kosovo is the increase in violence against women. Even the use of this language is classified as violence against women. So stop it!
Prishtinë, April 6, 2023