Germaine Greer has sparked anger after she said that rapists should be given an ‘R’ tattoo on their cheek instead of being jailed in a speech at the Hay Literary Festival. Greer, who was raped at a party days before she turned 19, said that most rape was actually just ‘bad sex’ and ‘don’t involve any injury whatsoever’.
She told an audience: ‘We are told it’s one of the most violent crimes in the world – bullshit’. She added: ‘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.’ Her comments caused some people to walk out of the festival in anger. Sherry Pack said: ‘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.’ Greer was asked what she thought an appropriate sentence for rape would be.
‘Two hundred hours of community service would do me,’ She said. ‘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.’ Speaking about her own attack she said: ‘I was beaten half unconscious. I kept saying “no” so he hit me. I can’t tell you how many times, maybe a dozen.’ However she did not report the rape saying that it would have been a waste of police time and she would have been discredited.