I ONCE worked on a paper where a woman columnist caused uproar by quoting Marilyn French's classic mantra: "All men are rapists."

Stooped males in Val Doonican cardies pounded their Tupperware containers on her desk and demanded a retraction. Her defence, that she meant "potential rapists", went down as well as the corned beef sarnie Mrs Doonican had lovingly prepared that morning.

I hadn't heard a woman use such a sweeping statement on the "r" word until this week's TV documentary about Kate Moss when supermodel (is she still super?) Sophie Anderton said reading a kiss-and-tell about yourself "felt like being raped".

Now I've heard those people who stoop lower than a limbo-dancing dwarf-ant to sell bedroom secrets compared to many things, but never rapists.

And if we accept the analogy, we also accept a massive change in the perception that rape is exclusively a male crime. Because kissing-and-telling comes as easy to females as colour co-ordination.

Think of male love-rats and you think of James Hewitt and Charlotte Church's classy exes. Then you're stumped.

Think of female ones and a centipede wouldn't have enough toes to count them.

This week alone Rebecca Loos, not content with making a million out of the Beckham affair, is writing a tell-all book; David Blunkett's latest "friend", Sally Anderson, is in talks with Max Clifford and a model is hawking a Becks-banging story for #300,000.

They're just the latest examples of a black art that tarts with no heart have taken to perfection.

Bimbos go to papers on a weekly basis with tales of the latest footballer/reality show star/tragic Angus Deayton figure they've had.

Some, like Faria Alam, screw half the office, sell details to anyone who'll listen then seek compo on the grounds they've been badly treated.

The oft-quoted defence that vulnerable women have been exploited by sex-mad predators and simply want their dignity back has some credence. Until you see auto-biographies by Edwina Currie, Jordan and Sue MacGregor, whose selling points were their affairs with real bastards such as - wait for it - John Major, Gareth Gates and Leonard Rossiter.

Remember Adam Faith's mistress Tanya Arpino, who didn't allow his wife's tears to dry before telling how he'd died in her arms in a Stoke hotel room, uttering the words: "Isn't Channel 5 s**t"? Dignity? As Adam might have said: Wadda they want if they don't want money?

What about Julia Carling, Sheryl Gascoigne, Margaret Cook and Alex Best who've all profited from lambasting their ex-hubbies, but whose famous surname they cling to for future pay-days?

And what about Ulrika Jonsson, who, not content with betraying Sven Goran Eriksson, claimed she'd been raped by a TV star? A name she knew would get out. And when it did, finished John Leslie's career without a shred of evidence.

Hers is a story which, according to Sophie Anderton, defines Jonsson as the rapist and Leslie as the rape victim. And backed up by the sheer weight of similar evidence, means men have no option but to treat all women as potential rapists.

Andrea Dworkin disciples? Think again. Val Doonicans? Walk tall.