The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde Explains Controversial Rape Comments In Interview

The Pretenders‘ Chrissie Hynde has come under fire recently for making controversial comments about rape. Asked about an excerpt from her new memoir, in which she details being forced to perform sexual acts on a member of a biker gang as a 21-year-old, she told the Sunday Times that the incident was her own fault and went on to imply that victims are partially responsible for preventing their own sexual assault. 

In a new interview with The Washington Post, Hynde has responded to her critics and elaborated on her reasoning behind her controversial statements. “They’re entitled to say whatever they want,” Hynde said, going on to ask, “Do I regret saying it? I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.” Read the interview here, via Stereogum.

When the Post‘s Geoff Edgers read Hynde’s comments back to her, she responded,

Sounds like common sense … If you don’t want my opinion, don’t ask me for it. At the moment, we’re in one of the worst humanitarian crises in our lifetime. [You see that picture of] a Turkish policeman carrying the body of a 3-year-old boy who got washed up on the shore. These are the heartbreaking images we have and we’re talking about millions of displaced persons and people whose families have been destroyed and we’re talking about comments that I allegedly made about girls in their underwear.

At one point, Edgers said that he felt bad reading Hynde’s remarks because it made him think of his own daughter, as well as Hynde’s. The Pretenders frontwoman responded that she doesn’t expect most people to do what she did (“most people aren’t as stupid as me,” she remarked), going on to say:

We have to walk the plank. I don’t think that’s a sign of intelligence, I don’t know what it is a sign of. I’m not saying I was asking for it. It wasn’t the same as walking down a street in the middle of a nice evening and somebody dragging you into a bush with a knife in your throat.

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