Myers draws ire over rape remarks

THE Rape Crisis Network has criticised columnist Kevin Myers for comments he made describing date rape as less harmful than other forms of rape.

Mr Myers was speaking on the Newstalk Lunchtime show after he wrote a column backing British Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s comments last week that date rape is not a “serious rape” but some form of lesser offence. Mr Myers said Kenneth Clarke was ” stating the obvious — that some kinds of rape are worse than others”.

Mr Myers, who regularly likes to lampoon feminists, was arguing that feminists “cannot allow reason on any issue” and do not like victims of sexual assault to be questioned, as they believe a victim’s story is “beyond any dispute or discussion”.

“Up goes the cry, rape is rape! Any attempt to introduce some reality into the discussion is defeated by an Orwellian ‘heads I win, tails you lose, when did you stop beating your wife’ kind of argument,” he wrote in his column earlier that day.

Reacting last night, Rape Crisis Network Ireland spokeswoman, Cliona Saidléar said it is dangerous to categorise any form of sexual violence into a lesser or greater offence.

“To categorise or make judgments on trauma suffered is to do further violence to the victim. Each case of rape is very individual and the effects on a woman of rape are all very different. There used to be an opinion out there that to rape a virgin was a worse kind of rape, and this kind of comment is more of that.

“We should not be grading victims. You will find that, in a court of law, each case is individual and you can’t be speaking in general terms,” she said.

Ms Saidléar added that Mr Myers has spent years “having a conversation with himself about feminists” and “constructing a straw feminist woman that is an untrue stereotype”.

“I believe that at this stage Mr Myers is just pleading with feminists to argue with him and he is pitching his offensive comments higher and higher so we’ll respond.

“He’s trying to smoke us out with his self-created stereotypes,” she added.