Minnie Driver hit out at Matt Damon after he said being given an unwanted 'pat on the butt' is not the same as rape or child abuse

Minnie Driver has launched a withering attack on her former boyfriend Matt Damon after he spoke out on the sex scandal engulfing Hollywood.

The British actress vented her fury on Twitter after Damon said the recent wave of sexual misconduct allegations are not all equal.

He told ABC News in America: 'I believe there's a spectrum of behaviour. There's a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation.

'Both of those behaviours need to be confronted and eradicated, without question, but they shouldn't be conflated, right?'

'Good God, seriously?' Driver tweeted in response to his claim. 'There are so many men I love who do not frame the differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault and rape as an excuse or worse – our problem. Such b*****ks.'

'It's interesting how men with all these opinions about women's differentiation between sexual misconduct, assault and rape reveal themselves to be utterly tone deaf and, as a result, systemically part of the problem,' adding that it was 'profoundly unsurprising'.

The mother-of-one said: 'You don't get to be hierarchical with abuse. And you don't get to tell women that because some guy only showed them their penis their pain isn't as great as a woman who was raped.'

Driver's career took off following the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting, written by Damon and Ben Affleck and produced by the alleged serial rapist Harvey Weinstein.

She and Damon dated for a year after that, until he dumped her on TV, telling Oprah Winfrey he was 'single'.

Last year Driver, now 47, told of her experience with sexual assault while on holiday in Greece as a 17-year-old.

She said: 'This guy elbow-grabbed me and said, 'You're going to dance with me.' I said 'No' and pulled my arm away.

'He grabbed me by the back of my hair. I tried to kick him and then he punched me.'

Damon, a father of four girls, was also attacked by actress Alyssa Milano who said: 'I have been a victim of each component of the sexual assault spectrum of which you speak. They all hurt.

'And they are all connected to a patriarchy intertwined with normalised, accepted – even welcomed – misogyny.

'We are not outraged because someone grabbed our asses… We are outraged because we were made to feel this was normal. It's the micro that makes the macro.'

Both Weinstein and Affleck have been accused of sexually assaulting women, but deny the claims.

Damon has said he was aware that Weinstein was a womaniser, but added: 'This level of [alleged] criminal sexual predation is not something I ever thought was going on.'