Dame Helen and date rape

Dame Helen loves “the fierceness of young girls nowadays, and the way they just say, “**** off”, because I wish I’d been taught to say “**** off” when I was younger to men who wouldn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer.”

She might envy their feistiness, but our daughters could surely learn something from Dame Helen’s voice of experience (especially if she had made her point in a publication that they read, rather than a lads’ mag). There is a big difference between unwanted advances in need of a “**** off” and a rare violent assault which, in the words of the feminist writer Wendy McElvoy, they might have to deal with by learning to “shoot lying down and to aim for the head”.