The comments have been widely criticised by survivors groups and political opponents who said they downplayed the seriousness and lasting trauma of rape.<\/p>\n
The SCRA, which comprises support groups in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and the Western Isles, said the impacts of rape can last a lifetime, and the crime should never be reduced to a theoretical debate. <\/p>\n
In an open letter the alliance said: “We are not demonising rape. We are naming it.”<\/p>\n
The authors strongly opposed the idea of rape existing on a “spectrum”, insisting “there is no hierarchy of rape” and that no survivor should feel compelled to ask whether their experience was serious enough.”<\/p>\n
The letter urged politicians “not to normalise” rape or sexual violence, and “not create hierarchies of harm”. <\/p>\n
While not naming Manivannan, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, posted on X that rape should never be spoken about in terms of it being a spectrum.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Children’s Minister Siobhan Brown told the BBC’s Sunday Show Manivannan’s words were misjudged. <\/p>\n
Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have also been critical, while the Scottish Conservatives called on the Scottish Greens to suspend the MSP.<\/p>\n
Meghan Gallacher, the party’s equalities spokeswoman, said: “It is deeply alarming that anyone, but especially an elected representative, would ever seek to minimise the seriousness of rape and suggest that there is a spectrum of offences.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The comments have been widely criticised by survivors groups and political opponents who said they downplayed the seriousness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-733741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}