(CNN) Australian feminist Germaine Greer has sparked controversy by calling for the punishment for rape to be reduced and saying that most rapes are just bad sex.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in the UK, she said that society should not see rape as a "spectacularly violent crime," suggesting that offenders should be sentenced to 200 hours' community service and perhaps an "r" tattoo on the rapist's hand, arm or cheek.

"Most rapes don't involve any injury whatsoever. We are told it's one of the most violent crimes in the world -- bull. Most rape is just lazy, just careless, just insensitive," she said, according to British press reports

"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," she added.

"It's an awful thing to be raped but to attempt to bring the person who raped you to justice and getting nowhere, getting discredited, getting humiliated, that's a tragedy." - @TheFemaleGreer #HayFestival2018 — Hay Festival (@hayfestival) May 30, 2018

Greer, 79, academic and author of the 1970 landmark feminist work "The Female Eunuch," was speaking at the festival to publicize her new book, which is due out in Australia in September.

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