Germaine Greer on rape - controversial

Fascinating and really enjoyable interview. I have heard her say similar about rape in the past - something along the lines of 'for god's sake it's only a penis'. I really admire her determination not to be defined by her attack, and I thought her explanation for not reporting it was crystal clear and very pragmatic. It's a very interesting approach and extremely thought provoking, as ever with Greer

I loved her fury at Mrs Brown's Boys too and her explanation of the difference between sex and gender was just great

I work with several police surgeons and one of the main difficulties in getting more successful prosecutions is the number of women who drank heavily on the evening they were raped and have hazy often inconsistent accounts of it. If you put this with a man saying she consented and people who saw them together looking very amorous then it is hard for those making the decision to be sure putting a man in prison and on the sex offenders register is the right thing. Making rapists' sentences harsher just makes this a more difficult decision especially if you combine it with a man who is poor at reading nonverbal signals and a woman who is poor at giving verbal signals.

I heard about the civil damages approach a few months back from GG, i didnt realise then it was a viable option. Some how to guides to get the info out and a charity set up to cover victims solictors fees would be good. Honestly if I was raped now unless it was a stranger attack I wouldn't go to the police but I would be desperately angry and want to do something .

Out of interest would a rape civil court case between husband and wife be available on Clare's law if a new partner asked?

(Obviously ideally rapists should be in prison but that doesn't seem to be happening.)

Women who want something done that is.

Many women simply want to just get on with their lives.

And I thought she wasn’t really adequately understanding the significant pressure many of the women who signed non-disclosure agreements were under.

Most women don’t want money. What they want is justice and protection.

GG’s idea re civil damages is not relevant to women who don’t trust or understand the court system, who don’t have economic power to bring a case, to women whose rapist is their husband or partner or father of their children, to women who need protection, to women who are raped by someone who isn’t wealthy....

So basically almost every woman who is raped...

IMO rape should remain a serious crime and we should get better at investigating it and prosecuting it and better at supporting victims to be witnesses in court.

More rapist should be sitting in jail feeling sorry, feeling pleased or feeling angry, as long as more of them are sitting in jail. Parole boards should take into account which type they are before they agree their release but apart from that as a victim your reaction is your reaction the rapists feelings about it are not relevant.

I do think it’s the goal yes and then there is a lot of difficulty re that being your actual experience. Because women are generally held collectively responsible and men are generally held only to be responsible for themselves women may well be vulnerable to feeling that the common narrative has to apply to them or their feelings aren’t valid or that if their feelings do correspond with the narrative that they are letting everyone down and the rapist has ‘won’.

We blame ourselves, we shut our mouths etc because every single woman is held responsible for everyone else in society.

Look at porn with the sheer number of porn videos and stories with ruined/destroyed in the title. If men get off on the notion of destructive acts towards women as wank fodder, is it not therefore possible to say that's a big part of a rapists motivation. I sometimes feel, and I could be wrong obviously, that the rapist enjoys his notion of the lasting damage he is causing more than any sexual gratification from the rape itself. If this is not the case, why do impotent rapists utilise objects in place of their floppy cocks.

I agree with GG up to a point, while not looking down on any woman who is traumatised long term as everyone has the right to their own feelings, because lasting harm is the rapists goal and they shouldn't be allowed the continuing pleasure of thinking they've had a lifelong impact on their victims.

Twice this week in the night a woman has come to MN to say that her husband has done something terrible and she doesn't know what to do.
She can't bring herself to call it rape but that is what it was and that is what we named it. She would leave right out the door right that minute because she can never trust him again but she has children asleep in the other room and she knows he will act like nothing happened in the morning because it is just a fuck.

Those are the men who have the backs of rapists everywhere. And there are many many men whose wives and GF wake up to being raped by the man they love who they thought loved them.

Blythe seeing your parents hurt can be worse than the ordeal it self. They love you and that's precisely why the put off telling you.

I think for me VAW is actually a men's problem, I'm so over nitpicking woman's reactions and feelings. We didn't do the crime so we shouldn't do the time. There is no "correct" way to react as a victim, the only person in the wrong is the perp.

She is doing really well Blythe but her mum not so much. It’s a very, very hard thing for a mum to deal with.

I’ve not read all the replies..although I will. I watched the link and as usual was wowed by GG.
I don’t always agree with what she says, but by god, she makes me challenge my thinking.
I’m so grateful to her thank you for having the strength to speak on our behalf.

Of course you're right Offred, parenting is about constantly exposing them to things and not protecting them but giving them the tools to deal with life.
I'm extremely proud of how they've dealt with what happened. And now its come out they've become very close which is lovely to see.

I'm very glad you were able to support your friends daughter, and I hope she's recovering now.

Just to add, both my daughters are now enrolling in self defence classes now, and they are much less affable with strangers, they're vocal with creepy guys in bars for example and they call out behaviour they don't like. This is a positive by product.

It is really sad, worse than that but I can’t even find the words, how awful it is that so so often women feel intense shame about rape to the point where they’d rather not tell a soul rather than risk hurting someone or being blamed or stigmatised. What other crime would make victims so ashamed or otherwise feel they couldn’t bring themselves to report it? It’s fucking terrible.

Blythe - my friend has found that aspect so hard but in reality you cannot protect them from the world. Nor would you want to if you think about it. Successfully protecting them from everything bad would mean depriving them of everything good.

Whenever I hear Greer I prickle initially but then think about what she’s said. She’s very confrontational. In the circumstances I conclude overrall that is not a bad thing. Reluctant affection I have for her and respect.

It reminded me of Alice Sebold's book Lucky. Certainly thought provoking.

I know but you are a beloved parent and you are right our anger should be directed at those who perpetrate the crime and apologists etc.

One of the things that struck me about a woman who was kidnapped, was when she was released, her mum said 'Oh you weren't raped were you!' So she pretended she had not been and I think it was not until her mother died that she felt able to say what had really happened.

To me bring able to describe and frame an experience is vital. nd that self framing should not determine how others view or describe their own experiences.

But as Ofred says, the legal side is different. A crime is a crime.

I'be not watched the interview, I may do. I have to whisper I don't much Iike Germaine Greer !

Yes, that was exactly it with my friend’s DD. She did tell and I helped her report because her mum was too much of a mess.

She chose me to be the responsible adult re the interview because she loved her mum and didn’t want to put her through the interview.

It was a very sensible and mature decision IMO from outside the family.

Thank you Italiangreyhound.
The only downside to being a parent, I think, is not being able to protect them from the real world.

@BlytheByName I am so sorry to hear of your experience and that of your daughters.

"Also knowing they felt it better not to tell me makes me achingly sad and sometimes like I've failed ... But then it's not about me, its about what they wanted."

I do not think you have failed at all.I expect their love for you made them want to keep you from something that would hurt you. That is all.

We absolutely can't police each other's reactions to our own and others rapes. Yet I do find the 'just a fuck' phrase angers me. Fucking is consensual, rape isn't.
When I was 17 I was raped. I wasn't traumatised forever afterwards, though I didn't tell anyone for several years for reasons of shame, rather I chalked it up to experience and was far more wary round men.

What I have been really traumatised by, is discovering last year, that both my grown up daughters have been raped too.

The 23 year old disclosed that she'd been raped whilst travelling round Europe when she was 19. She didn't report it, she just got the hell away from the campsite where it happened and didn't tell me for fear of worrying me.

In the course of that disclosure, her younger sister told us that her first sexual encounter at 16 had been rape. She didn't tell me either, she said because she was sure I'd make her go to the Police (I would have) and she decided that as the boy who raped her was the golden boy at her school, she'd have become a social pariah and her sixth form years would have been ruined.
I totally empathised with that as it was very similar to my experience which I had shared with both of them when they were a bit younger.

She talked of having processed it all, worked through her hurt and anger, and she assures me she's OK with it. I have asked them both if they want to speak to councillors but they say they've dealt with it.
I am in awe of both of them and how they've not been defined by the experience and at the same time I understand you can process and move on.

I have cried many tears over it though. I just wish they hadn't had that experience.
Also knowing they felt it better not to tell me makes me achingly sad and sometimes like I've failed ... But then it's not about me, its about what they wanted.

Most of all its just made me even more fucking furious with men. I absolutely hate them.

I'll be careful how I put this but the DD of a woman I met was very violently raped by a stranger. She was a 14 yo with no previous sexual experience. She apparently told herself - during the attack - that this wasn't sex, it was rape, and she set herself to memorize every detail of her assailant, while being totally compliant in the hope she'd survive.

The police said her evidence had been extremely valuable. The man went down for a long time. I was - and am - in awe of a child who could remain so cool headed in such circumstances.

But I'm sure her reaction was extremely unusual. Being scarred for life would be more common, I'd guess.

I think I feel the way I do about my rapes because I never blamed myself or felt shame. I was angry and I blamed the men. However, although I wasn't ashamed, I am still very careful about who I tell because some people react in unhelpful ways.