Controversial Australian writer Germaine Greer has claimed non-consensual sex is a common part of most relationships and harsher sentencing for rape is just leading to “a war with men”.
This is the second time the 79-year-old so-called feminist has come out swinging with shocking statements, and it seems her views have not changed, claiming people need to re-think how they perceive rape.
Although she was herself raped as a teenager, Greer was adamant in the interview with ABC Radio National’s Saturday Extra that more lenient sentences would actually help the courts convict more people of rape and that it shouldn’t be treated as such a serious crime.
“One of the problems is by making the sentences heavier, you get a jury that is less and less likely to convict, because it’s so serious.
“Do we really think that rape without excessive violence – I mean physical injury – is more serious than murder?”.
Greer went on to say that rape is “not an unusual form of behaviour” and that those in most long-standing relationships would experience non-consensual sex at some point.
“We want them put away for longer, we want them to be punished for what is actually not an unusual form of behaviour,” she claimed.
“Non-consensual sex is common; it’s possibly practically universal that in every long-standing relationship there have been occasions of non-consensual sex.
“And the actual definition of rape is that.”
Just weeks ago, she came under fire for suggesting the punishment for rape should be changed to 200 hours’ of community service and an ‘R’ tattoo on the attacker’s hand or cheek. She also claimed that rape was just “bad sex”.
“Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacular 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,” she said during a speech at the Hay Festival.
“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.”