Has Germaine Greer lost the plot?

political Sort of. I think she has a very specific point she is trying to make, and a few less specific ideas get thrown in for good measure. I float in and out of agreeing/disagreeing with her over it.

She is right, sex is a blood sport. We may not like it but that is how it is. The Hunt, whether conducted in a pub or on line, is much the same the word and many centuries over. As a society we have to make up our mind what we want to do with that.

Read the boards here and your read so very many women whose dearly beloved has, on occasion or very often, overridden their wishes not to have sex. That IS rape, Greer has said that consistently (though that lazy journo at Hay got that back to front). But we don't prosecute and the world around us would not understand or agree if we tried.

So how do we continue with that apparent dichotomy! Answer: we have to look closely at what we want to describe as rape, and to decide how we want it to be punished.

I tend to remember her asking the question: what do YOU personally think is rape? And the quote ‘If you look over the whole world spectrum of what is sexual offence, it’s completely confusing.’ If you do look, it really is confusing. Even UK definitions have changed in the last couple of decades.

So, mainly because this is how I translated her' I think she is trying to get us to look again at how we currently talk and think about sex and relationships and then on to how we want to punish sexual offences.

And I agree with her - but am probably biased by having been an FE lecturer for any years and having been dismayed at the changes in attitudes over the years.f

I heard her on Today yesterday - I agree that she needs to be heard in context - she is clearly trying to highlight the 'chronic' as well as the 'acute' (something that is often glossed over in many experiences in life - especially for women) - but unfortunately for the media that translates as throwing shade on the 'acute' where she maybe meant for more light to be thrown on them both.

I don't think she made what she was trying to say about the legal system very clear, but I think she has a point about our society as a whole stemming from a partiarchy. The roots of our laws are obfuscated by time and modern revisions - but those surrounding rape are surely stemming from a time when raping a woman was a crime against the man that 'owned' her - be that husband, father, etc. What she was trying to bring to light when I heard her was that even within the legal system the woman is still an object and without agency as a witness.

I get the feeling that people want to perform mental acrobatics and give her the benefit of the doubt because it's her. While others would be crucified.

CuriousaboutSamphire

But hasn't she pooh poohed the idea that this 'boring' type of rape is even a problem in the past? Some anecdote about her friend being raped by her husband and her describing her own heinously laid back response?

I think rat, bowl and kitty (others too!) pretty much sum it up. All I can say on the "ranking" of experiences is that in my case my long term corrosive relationship had far more impact on my mh than my rape. But of course others will disagree based on their own experiences. I don't think there's a right and a wrong here, it's just subjective and GG just wants us talking about the effects of the cumulative little things as well as focussing on the big things, iyswim?

It's the error of judgement in comparing one thing with another to make that point though...it causes me to question her judgement entirely. I think that has been constructed in translation, and her own attempts at explanation!

At Hay she didn't rank, just held them up as two quite different types of rape! Despite what many of the tabloids have said she said, I still have a clear memory that she was trying to get everyone in the room to understand that even consensual relationships have their problems and that the 'boring,' coerced, wheedled, expected sex within a relationship is just as damaging as violent rape but in different ways. No ranking, no hierarchy equal but different.

No, I lie! She did say that the 'boring' type of rape is more dangerous as we, society as a whole, haven't made our minds up about it and, until we had, and had come up with a very clear definition of what rape is, and so what constitutes consent, we wouldn't be able to prosecute all rapists appropriately!

And that is where she fell foul of a single lazy journalist, whose simplistic analysis was the basis of all other reports - as we discussed in one of the threads at the time!

[reads OP only]
[immediately rushes to keyboard]

YES.

Yeah sometimes she talks utter shite, but generally shes on point.

That sometimes the most corrosive experiences are those we consent to, enacted by those we love but who do not love us in return enough to refrain from harm.

I think that's quite powerful.

I think she forces us to think about women's issues in ways we may otherwise have overlooked. I don't think she's trying to establish a hierarchy, that might be an over-simplification. I think she's trying to broaden our understanding of how women consent to and navigate their relationships with men. Without this we will never be equal.

Who else is talking about consent in any meaningful way right now? All I see online is young women desperate to be submissive and cool, within a very toxic culture.
So no.

She talks shit most of the time. Especially in this instance. I wonder if we should just ignore her and she might go away?

It's the error of judgement in comparing one thing with another to make that point though...it causes me to question her judgement entirely. There was no need to make the point in those terms.

I didn't see her at Hay but friends had tickets and one of them, returning to our campsite afterwards, summed up her interpretation of what GG had said as 'exploring the issues of sleeping with the enemy.'

Fwiw I didn't think, in the talk she gave that I attended anyway, that she was trying to rank trauma.

It's late and I'm not very good at paraphrasing, but she was critiquing the concept of 'consent' as being a line that divides harmful sex from non-harmful sex. She was making the point that, due to living under patriarchy, women are socialised to consent to all sorts of things that are harmful. Some of which take place in long term relationships or marriages. And that if our idea of harm is limited to violent rape by a stranger, we are missing a large part of the picture of female experience.

That sometimes the most corrosive experiences are those we consent to, enacted by those we love but who do not love us in return enough to refrain from harm.

I heard GG speak in person a few weeks ago. I wanted to hear her in context, because so often all we hear of her is a controversial sound bite.

She was speaking on consent (and an interesting article on the topic on Feminist Current atm, not by Greer). I didn't think she had lost the plot. She is unorthodox; she is also a rape survivor herself, which gives her more right to comment than I do.

I think she expressed very clearly the corrosive nature of bad relationships. Her view is that men in long term relationships can do as much damage to a woman as rape by a stranger.

For someone who is anti marriage, never had kids, I feel she has a lot of compassion for those of us who do, and who struggle with our relationships with our male partners.

I also think she is quite tired. She commented more than once that she is getting old. She finds solace and instruction in poetry, apparently.

It's not possible to agree with all things Germaine. She's said some stuff I've raised an eyebrow at, and more. But she is a brilliant woman, and - I felt upon seeing and hearing from her - ultimately a compassionate woman, especially but not only towards women and children.

I'd encourage people to read her essay On Rape, because I think GG is always better in full context.

Yes, thank you Bowl. Your last post but one is what I wanted to say but couldn’t express.
I was raped when I was 12. It didn’t have a lasting traumatic effect on me, thankfully, but my ex, The only man I had consensual sex with, who was the sort of bloke who jumped on top, then sniveled and apologised afterwards, did. Enthusiastic consent was never a bar he aimed for. He’d make out like there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t interested in sex and didn’t enjoy it, so I ended up believing it.
Turns out there was nothing wrong with me, I just didn’t want to have sex with him, or any other man. When I came out as a lesbian I then had lots of people saying ’but you’ve only slept with one man, how do you know you won’t find another man you want to sleep with?’ So my sexuality still wasn’t my own, and I just hadn’t found the right man to bring it out yet, but that’s a whole different conversation.
It’s ridiculous to try to rank trauma, if that is indeed what GG is suggesting. Some trauma is short lived and passes with time, some trauma can take years to surface, and comes out in ways that are hard to unpick, some trauma can build up slowly over time and unnoticed, but its damaging effects can‘t be predicted and it works differently in each individual.

I find it troubling that her words appear to create a hierarchy of what is worse- stanger rape vs abuse in a relationship.

I don't think it's even about abuse - or what is recognised as abuse - exactly. More the constant low-level lack of respect from men to women, the prioritisation of the male orgasm, the way sex ed is focused on reproduction and the avoidance thereof (diagrams with no clitoris, anyone?) and so on.

And not just going along with stuff to avoid nagging or sulking - it doesn't need to be that blatant or the man in question to be so disrespectful - but because of the wider socialisation, the not really being aware what you really want or don't want, I don't know, I'm still working on the semi-automatic response of smiling and saying thanks when some dickhead decides to positively appraise my sexual worth in the street...
Arghh I'm struggling to put this into words! But I think the insiduous nature of what I'm describing vs the "stranger rape - clearly wrong" narrative has a lot to answer for in terms of damage. Not so much pitting them against each other as to which is "worse", but comparing and contrasting to highlight the damage done by male-based norms.

I find it troubling that her words appear to create a hierarchy of what is worse- stanger rape vs abuse in a relationship. I think that she is trying to say the opposite, or that's how it came across when she was speaking at Hay. She is saying that society accepts one as rape and the other as the cost of being in a relationship... she is asking us, society as a whole, to question that! She suggests, strongly, that the day to day humdrum 'little rapes' are more damaging in more ways!

She is, as usual, being provocative and, sadly, most media outlets are being incredibly simplistic in their translation of her words!

I think I’d have phrased it as: low level crap is just as damaging but in a different maybe less visible way. That our ‘honor’ is a tool to beat us with and that on top of the trauma that accompanies any violent assault, the concept of a woman being ‘damaged goods’ is further damage created by society.

I have never been raped by a stranger - but I have consistently "given in", gone along with it, kept the peace and done many things I did not want to, simply because the consequences of not doing them seemed worse.

Over time I became numb and very much damaged. The man I married didn't seem to care if I wanted sex or not and he didn't realise what he was doing was wrong. He just got very irritated and punished me in small ways if I refused. It was a clever strategy on his part. I blamed myself for my sexual dysfunction.

I have no idea how I would feel if I was raped, one time, by a stranger or acquaintance in a more violent way. That's never happened to me. But I do feel changed forever by my marriage.

Maybe trying to conflate these two types of rape is not the answer.

I think her point is more subtle than has come across in the newspaper headlines.

Rat and kitty have summed up quite well what I took from what she said.

Im still not entirely sure how I actually feel about what she said (if I’ve understood it correctly.)

I DO agree that constant low level shit is seriously erosive - there’s research to back that up in fact. What triggers most divorces (and most divorces are triggered by women) is multiple small acts over years rather than single betrayals. It is apparently easier to forgive an affair than to regain respect after twenty years of low level inconsiderate man child behaviour. I’m sure the same is true for nagging for sex.

I DO agree that the construct of women’s ‘honour’ is a tool to control and oppress us with.

I’m not sure I agree with how’s shes constructed the argument - I get she wants to use the shock value of violent rape to get people talking but anything which plays down the impact of a violent assault (and I know that’s maybe not quite her intent but it’s how the media has played it) is not great.

GG always gets me thinking. I don’t agree with everything she says but I can’t remember when I’ve been able to dismiss whatvshe says out of hand without it raising some sort of further questioning.

I guess on one level it’s easier to retain your self respect after a single violent act - you can rationalise it as the act not being due to you, that it was violent, you tried to resist and couldnt etc. The women I’ve seen in sexually coercive relationships have been crushed by it. It’s eroded their boundaries md self worth at a very critical level. So in that sense o get what she’s saying but I Don’t think that reduces the harm done by violent rape at all. Any violent assault can create a levelnof trauma that is damaging, and that damage occurs both with and separate of societal expectations around it.

My relationship with an inconsiderate-sex man was waaaayyyyyy more damaging to me mentally than the one time I was stranger-raped.

I definitely consider the relationship rapey in my head, but I wouldn't dream of saying it in public iyswim.

Having your Boundrys suddenly and violently violated, or having your self worth slowly eroded over time by someone you trust. I’m not sure whether one could say one is worse than the other, because I think that both scenarios are both incredibly damaging

And only one of those scenarios is considered illegal (or even a negative thing) by our society.

do women not have the right to refuse sex

We have that right, but unfortunately "consent" is not always given within a vacuum. Pestering, sulking, withholding affection, the threat of removing children, of removing financial support, etc.
all of these affect the "consent" given. Not all women have access to formidable resources such as Mumsnet, and even those that do often feel constrained by societal norms.