How dare the sisterhood attack Aunty Irma for her wise words about rape?

VETERAN agony aunt Irma Kurtz has been dispensing advice to anxious women for nearly four decades. On the pages of Cosmopolitan magazine and elsewhere, Irma patrols the troubled territory peopled by the heartbroken and the worried, the lovelorn and the lost.

In all her writings and musings and replies, she has never been anything but sensible, wise, intelligent and thoughtful.

She is also a vintage feminist, not just by instinct and inclination, but also as a trailblazing survivor of the Seventies sex wars. This was back when speaking out about equality and women’s rights really meant something, instead of just being a cocktail party pose with which to impress yourself and others.

And she has always been crisp and forthright. Twenty years ago she advised a reader: ‘If your ambitions are not supported by the man you love, scrap the man.’

Now — after all these years of unstinting support for the sisterhood, after all this blameless time hacking away at the coalface of guidance-giving — ka-boom! Kurtz is suddenly in the dock, accused of being a rape apologist, a victim-blamer and worse.

Point a shaking finger at Irma! See her as the very devil, a traitor to the cause, a turncoat and vile witch. The 78-year- old’s ‘crime’ was to mildly suggest in a Radio 4 Woman’s Hour interview this week that women should not get drunk around men because it put them at risk of being raped.

TAKEN out of context, it sounds terrible; as if both sexes were out of control after a few shandies and all men were potential rapists. However, I think we all know what Kurtz meant and the common sense that informs her view.

Her suggestion seemed to be that women who got drunk with (or without) members of the opposite sex were less able to defend themselves if the worst happened. ‘ You really have to be a little bit defensive when you’re around people who are stupid and armed,’ she said, meaning armed with a penis.

For this entirely reasonable view, Kurtz has been branded as totally irresponsible and accused of dishing out advice that is ‘misguided, unhelpful and judgmental’.

Among her detractors is the chief executive of a campaign group which acts to reduce violence against women, who said: ‘Whoever the rapist, whatever the circumstances, the state of intoxication of the victim is irrelevant. Rapists are the only ones responsible for rape. Every time.’

Of course, that is absolutely true. A thousand per cent true. However, it is also true that getting very drunk on a night out makes a woman — or a man — more vulnerable to misadventure, to sexual assault and to becoming a victim of personal crime.

And stating that does not detract from the culpability of the criminal or rapist. Or make a drunken rape victim somehow less worthy of sympathy and justice than a sober one.

It is more that we should accept that there are measures you can take to keep yourself out of harm’s way — and not getting smashed out of your skull is one of them. Yes, we all do things that are idiotic and careless. I shudder to think of the wine- fuelled scrapes I might have gotten myself into over the years.

However, I will say this. Had the very worst happened to me, had some awful assault or accident followed a wild night out, I would definitely feel a measure of guilt.

I would suspect that any mishap was partly, at the very least, my own stupid fault for not being focused and aware. For not sensing the jeopardy, for being unable to fight or flee, for stumbling intoxicated into the maw of danger. And I think I would be right to do so.

WOMEN cannot exult in the freedoms and emancipations that come with being captains of our own ships without accepting responsibility for our big bad selves at the same time. And acceding that being drunk just might make a woman more vulnerable to rape is not at all the same thing as suggesting she is somehow responsible for the rape.

Surely someone such as the unimpeachable, kindly and helpful Irma Kurtz can suggest this without being shrilly accused by indulged, militant modern feminists of being a victim-blamer? Sigh. Obviously not.