Outspoken writer and academic Germaine Greer is being accused on social media of comparing the trauma of rape to the fear of huntsman spiders during her appearance on Monday night’s Q&A.

Greer – who was joined on the panel by journalists Andrew Neil and David Marr, and author Simone Msimang — was asked by an audience member to expand on a quote in her essay On Rape.

“You [Greer] say that, and I quote, ‘Most rapes don’t involve any injury at all’. Are you saying that being violated physically doesn’t come with any mental anguish?” Dianne Patane asked.

“I am not saying that it is not damaging. I was raped at 19 and actually … I was sorrier for the man who raped me than I was for myself because I thought what has happened to his sexuality?” she explained.

“‘Why has he turned into this mad dog? They will shoot him. They will kill him. They will wipe him out’.”

Germaine Greer: Are you saying that physical assault doesn't come with any mental anguish? #QandA pic.twitter.com/5aD9zoohU4

— QandA (@QandA) September 17, 2018

Q&A host Tony Jones interjected: “Are you saying it didn’t traumatise you, though? That goes to the heart of the question.”

“Trauma is something that is dictated really by the sufferer. You know, I can’t bear huntsman spiders. It is not their fault. It’s my fault … I decided to be frightened of them,” Greer said.

“It is interesting to me that women are encouraged all the time to be terribly, terribly frightened and nearly always of the wrong thing.”

The remark went mostly unnoticed by other members of the panel but drew scorn on Twitter, with some people accusing Greer of “comparing spiders to rapists”.

With that huntsman spider analogy, is Germaine Greer insinuating that it is the fault of a woman that has been raped that she experiences injury/trauma/ongoing suffering, not the fault of the rapist? …….🧐 #QandA

— Ellie Grounds (@elliegrounds) September 17, 2018

You can't tell people what to be frightened of. I'm afraid of both huntsmen spiders & rape too. Doesn't make rapists as innocent as a huntsman. #qanda

— Kathleen (@Smithy_kath) September 17, 2018

People’s panellist Elena Jeffcoat, a maths and debating teacher from Perth, said she did not know how to respond to Greer’s analogy.

“I don’t know how I feel about the huntsman analogy for rape and the trauma involved there,” Ms Jeffcoat told the audience.

“[But] this is an immeasurably complex issue. One of the things that I took away from reading Germaine’s book is that I think as women of different generations … and I think my generation owes a lot to Germaine, but we have slightly different priorities with regards to rape and women who are raped.”

Msimang, however, defended some of the criticisms of Greer’s essay, which she said she was surprised to have enjoyed reading.

“One of the things that I think is important in there is this idea is not that rape doesn’t involve injury — because it clearly involves loads of injury; mental and sometimes physical — but what Germaine asked us to grapple with is what do we do when the people who rape us are people that we know and love?” she said.

“This is a complicated question.”

Sisonke Msimang and Elena Jeffcoat on rape and trauma #QandA pic.twitter.com/2HyVn6UcJm

— QandA (@QandA) September 17, 2018

Marr also praised some of the content of Greer’s controversial essay.

“I read the essay as an eloquent work of despair because everywhere you explore in the essay you come up against a brick wall or a failed initiative or an old problem,” he said.

“I came to the end of the essay, not growing with you on many, many things, but thinking that if you want to know what the challenges are in this area, this is not a bad place to start to read them.”

Greer also addressed her exclusion from the line-up of multiple writers’ festivals around the country and the merits of “deplatforming”.

“People are constantly leaping up and down and saying, ‘I mustn’t be allowed to speak hither or dither or beyond’, they are going to come and break up the meeting,” she said.

“And you know the interesting thing is they never show up. That is the thing that gets me.

“Universities have spent money hiring extra security and they didn’t need it.

“I am sick and tired of this bullying, because that is really what it is.”

-ABC