Germaine Greer claims most rape is just ‘bad sex’
Germaine Greer. (Kane Hibberd/Getty)
Germaine Greer has called for sentences for rape convictions to be slashed, and attacked evidence that the crime is traumatic as “bullshit.”
The ‘feminist’ author has been increasingly at odds with the women’s movement over the past few years due to outspoken comments about transgender people, sexual assault and body image.
But Greer’s comments during an event at the Hay Festival last night stunned even her critics – as she hit out at society’s treatment of rape.
(Kane Hibberd/Getty)
Greer told the audience: “[Most] rapes don’t involve any injury whatsoever. We are told it’s one of the most violent crimes in the world. Bullshit.
“Most rape is just lazy, just careless, just insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal right, he is raping her. It will never end up in a court of law.”
“Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime — and some rapes are — think about it as non-consensual, that is, bad sex.
“Sex where there is no communication, no tenderness, no mention of love. We used to talk about lovemaking.”
(Gaye Gerard/Getty)
Dismissing studies that show rape victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), she added: “At this point you think, what the hell are you saying? That something that leaves no sign, no injury, nothing, is more damaging to women than seeing your best friend blown up by an IED is to a veteran?
“We haven’t been destroyed, we’ve been bloody annoyed, is what we’ve been.
“I reckon 200 hours of community service will do — would do me. I suggested a long time ago that maybe a little tattoo would be a good thing. Maybe an ‘R’ on your hand. I’d prefer it on your cheek.”
She added that she expected “feminists would tear my head off for saying this.”
(Channel 4/Genderquake)
The noted author has come under scrutiny a number of times for her extreme views about trans people, famously claiming: “Just because you lop off your d**k and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a f***ing woman.”
Ahead of Australia’s vote on equal marriage, Greer claimed it is “unfair” for trans women to be married to other women.
She said: “I don’t believe a man who has lived for 40 years as a man and had children with a woman and enjoyed the unpaid services of a wife, which most women will never know… but he then decides that the whole time he’s been a woman?
“At that point I’d like to say, well hang on a minute, you believed you were a woman but you married another woman. That wasn’t fair, was it?”
She has previously opposed male same-sex parenting on the grounds of “motherhood”.
