Rape is rarely violent and doesn’t merit a jail term, claims Germaine Greer

Some people may not have believed what Germaine Greer had to say at the recent Hay Festival, shower she was talking about rape.  While she did not downplay rape - or did she - she said that rape was not usually violent and that the idea that victims are left suffering from post traumatic stress disorder may not be true.

It is important that Greer’s words not be taken out of context.  She herself was raped as a teen, and it was a violent rape.  She feels that rapes, when there is no violence, should be punishable by 200 hrs of community service.  And that the rapists should have an R tattooed on a visible part of their face.

The thing is, who knows when a rape is violent.  Very often, or always, the rape is emotional violence.  The scars may not be visible but they are there.  So although Greer may say that most rapes don’t involve violence, we are not quite sure what she is talking about.

It is possible that Greer is talking about the latest #MeToo movement where she feels some people are jumping on the bandwagon.  But this is insulting to women who have genuinely been raped and scarred from the rapes.  Not everyone deals with rape the same way Greer does.  She may not have PTSD but most rape victims do.

Greer argued that we ‘pathologise rape’ and we say it destroys women’s lives.  From a feminist point of view, she is saying nothing and nobody will destroy us.  And perhaps we should stop giving men that power.  Greer always ended with these words:-

'In case you’re wondering whether with my apparently flippant attitude I actually have any understanding of the gravity of the crime of rape, I was violently raped days before my 19th birthday.’