Rapists should not be jailed as it is not a ‘spectacularly violent crime’, Germaine Greer claimed yesterday.
Instead the majority should have an ‘R’ tattooed on their cheek and be made to do community service, the controversial feminist said.
Miss Greer insisted that most rape is just ‘bad sex’ and poured scorn on the idea that victims can suffer from post-traumatic stress.
The 79-year-old told the Hay Festival: ‘Most rapes don’t involve any injury whatsoever. We are told it’s one of the most violent crimes in the world – bull****.
But last night former Cabinet minister Priti Patel called Miss Greer’s views ‘sickening’.
She said: ‘These comments are an affront to the victims of appalling crimes such as rape. We should have zero tolerance of sexual violence.’
Germaine Greer, 79 (pictured at the Hay Festival in Wales today) has said she doesn’t believe rape is a spectacularly violent crime and it mostly ‘bad sex’
And one audience member at Hay, Sherry Pack, said she was so outraged she had to leave.
‘Dreadful ramblings by Germaine Greer … I’m usually happy to listen to opinions different to my own but today after around 20 minutes I had to walk out,’ she said.
Miss Greer said: ‘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.’
When asked what would be an appropriate punishment for men found guilty of rape, she said: ‘Two hundred hours of community service would do me.
‘I have suggested maybe a little tattoo would be a good thing, maybe an R on your hand. I’d prefer it on the cheek really.’
The Australian author said she knew she risked the wrath of feminists when she admitted that after she was raped at a party days before her 19th birthday, she had not been ‘angry enough’ with her attacker, a rugby-playing public schoolboy.
She said she had been ‘violently raped about as badly as it is possible to be raped if you take in the number of punches’.
She added: ‘I was beaten half unconscious. I kept saying ‘No’ so he hit me, I can’t tell you how many times, maybe a dozen.’
But she did not report the man to police because she believed it would have been a waste of time – although he went on to rape at least one other woman.
‘If I had appeared in a police station and complained against this man I would have wasted many, many, many hours, I would have been discredited and everyone would have known my ugly little story that I have shared with you,’ she told the audience.
The author is pictured in 1970, two years after she was raped. Her book On Rape is out soon
She was ‘determined to get over it and not go around for the rest of my life being a rapee’.
‘Feminists would tear my head off for saying this. My feeling when it happened to me was … something awful has happened to him, was he abused as a child? I still don’t feel angry enough and I feel ashamed in another way.’
Miss Greer, who has courted controversy since the publication of her first book, The Female Eunuch, in 1970, was speaking at Hay to publicise her forthcoming book On Rape.
In it, she argues that the crime of rape should be abolished and in its place the assault law be expanded to include sex offences in varying degrees of gravity.
These offences would carry lesser penalties but would require a lower burden of proof concerning consent.
Miss Greer also appeared to question whether rape victims can suffer from PTSD and said a ‘narrative of victimising women’ meant they ‘wanted to believe they were badly hurt’.
‘The official position now is that 70 per cent of rape victims suffer from PTSD and only 20 per cent of war veterans,’ she said.
‘What the hell are you saying? That something that leaves no sign, no injury, no nothing is more damaging to women than seeing your best friend blown up?
‘We don’t get as badly hurt as you want to believe, you want us to believe that we’ve been destroyed but we haven’t been destroyed we’ve been annoyed.’
She also renewed her criticism of the MeToo campaign, saying it would be ‘extraordinary if it makes any difference at all’.
The only ones who will benefit from putting Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on trial are lawyers, she said.