“Most rape is just lazy, just careless, insensitive”

Controversial feminist author Germaine Greer shocked audience members at the Hay Festival in Wales yesterday.

The 79-year-old writer attended the event to discuss the topic of rape - a subject she is notorious for giving controversial opinions on.

Greer argued that the prison sentence for a convicted rapist was far too high and should instead be reduced to 200 hours of community service. Most rape is just “bad sex” and involves no injury whatsoever, the author added.

Germaine Greer at the Tata Literature Live Festival 2015, Mumbai, India (Getty)

“Most rapes don’t involve any injury whatsoever. We are told that it is a sexually violent crime, [that] it is one of the most violent crimes in the world. Bullshit,” Greer said.

“Most rape is just lazy, just careless, insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal rights he is raping her. It will never end up in a court of law.

Germaine Greer addresses her audience during a media call at the NSW Teachers Federation Conference Centre on March 13, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. (Getty)

“Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly 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.

Greer also argued that we should stop “pathologising” rape claiming it destroys women’s lives.

“We haven’t been destroyed, we’ve been bloody annoyed, is what we’ve been. I reckon 200 hours of community service will do – would do me. I suggested a long time ago that maybe a little tattoo would be a good thing. Maybe an ‘R’ on your hand. I’d prefer it on your cheek.”

Some members of the audience attending Greer’s talk left in disgust, while the Twittersphere exploded in outrage.

Greer herself was violently raped by a man when she was 18, but never reported the incident to police, saying she didn’t feel “angry enough. I still don’t”.

This isn’t the first time the Aussie writer has touted her controversial views.

After a number of women made public allegations of sexual assault from Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, Greer hit back.

Greer in a photoshoot for the satirical underground magazine 'Oz', UK, March 1969. (Getty)

The author said the women who spoke out against Weinstein were “career rapees” and that they had “spread their legs” to gain film roles.

“If you spread your legs because he said ‘Be nice to me and I’ll give you a job in a movie’ then I’m afraid that’s tantamount to consent,” she said.

She criticised the #MeToo movement as a “whingeing” movement saying “in the old days" women would "slap down" men who assaulted or harassed them.

In 2015, Greer also famously offended many in the transgender community when she said “just because you lop off your penis… it doesn’t make you a woman”.