She is best known for her sex-filled novels which feature a host of testosterone-fuelled Lotharios, but now Jilly Cooper has given her opinion on modern men who she says are having gay affairs because they are “terrified of women”.
The 81-year-old author, who has penned classics such as Riders, Mount and Tackle, also branded men cry-babies and said that feminist movements such as #MeToo have contributed to their fears of the opposite sex.
Speaking at the Hay literary festival on Thursday, Cooper said: “I have one adorable gay friend whose lover died. He’s just started going on the internet now.
“It’s all married men wanting to have gay affairs. Do you think men are so terrified of women, it’s safer to get [it] on with their own sex?
And when asked about the effect that social campaigns against sexual harassment – such as the #MeToo movement in Hollywood – are having on relationships she reportedly said: “One lovely man said ‘I can’t flirt any more’. You have a mini skirt up to here, then ‘do not touch’ tattooed across your knees.”
Cooper also admitted that she was “worried” about the impact that changing attitudes may have on her characters.
Speaking about the behaviour of modern men, she told the audience: “Men cry all the time now. The whole time, always crying. And they have beards”.
However the writer, who started out as a newspaper columnist, added that she believes modern men put more effort into making relationships work, saying: “I think a lot of the young men I know love their wives and are determined to make their marriages stay. But being happily married doesn’t stop you falling in love with other people.”
Cooper also waded into the debate surrounding Germaine Greer, who appeared at the same festival on Wednesday, and branded her recent comments about rape as “outrageous”.
She said: “I think she’s terribly clever … I think she’s brilliant, but is there a word for applause junkie? Is that terribly rude? I don’t want to be rude, I think she’s wonderful, but I think she will say something outrageous just to get everybody going.”
Read more: Rape isn’t a ‘violent crime’, just ‘lazy, bad sex’: Germaine Greer
Greer came under fire this week after she described rape as just “bad sex”. She said: “We are told that it is a sexually violent crime. Bull**t. 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.”