Outspoken feminist Germaine Greer has sparked outrage after calling some alleged victims of sexual assault “career rapees”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4‘s Today programme, the 79-year-old has called for urgent amendments to the law, and said while the ‘Me Too’ and ‘Time’s Up’ campaigns have gained huge momentum in the last few months, we still need to “sort out our concept of what rape is”.
She went on to call some alleged victims of disgraced Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, who have accepted money for non-disclosure agreements, “career rapees”.
“Some of whom have been paid six figure sums in the form of non-disclosure agreements,” she said. “That’s a dishonourable thing to accept and it’s not something you should boast about.”
Citing Weinstein’s former assistant Zelda Perkins in her chat, Greer said her whole life was “taken over”. Explaining her point, she added: “The amount of legal muscle that will be used to defend these people is massive.
“I’m concerned for damage limitation rather than maximisation. Rather than wrecking people’s lives, so they become career rapees, as it were.”
It sparked an angry response from listeners, who called the star out for her comments on Twitter shortly after. One wrote: “Germaine Greer: ‘I’m concerned about wrecking people’s lives so that they become career rapees’. It’s just an outrageous thing to say #r4today #bbcr4today.”
While another added: “Did I really just hear Germaine Greer say some women have become career rapees! #R4today,” and one wrote: “Remember when Germaine Greer was a feminist.”
Calling for more to be done to stop sexual assault and ensure the correct punishments are delivered, Greer slammed the number of cases where there’s a “clear case of sexual assault, of rape” with no conviction at the end of a lengthy investigation.
Asked by the radio host if it’s down to a “power balance”, Greer replied: “I’m not sure it is, it’s the inscrutability of consent.”
She went on to address the recent Hollywood scandal in particular, and explained: “They’ve probably been sexualised before they were ever in the casting couch situation. Because that’s what we merchandise. We use it to sell everything that’s sold.
“A woman selling drinks in a half-lit bar in southern United States would tell me that she wore a bustier or fishnet tights because if she didn’t, she wouldn’t get any tips. This is capitalism, the objectification of human beings, this is our culture, our we going to change it?”
She added: “We are in such an odd situation at the moment. You cannot call people who have been subjected to sexual abuse victims, you have to call them survivors – as if it was the wreck of the Titanic, it’s a bit silly.”