I AM so angry this week I hardly know where to tip the bucketload.

On Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, for his dodgy statements on rape?

Or the BBC hack who described IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged crime (he’s accused of attempting to rape a chambermaid at his New York hotel) as ‘a disaster’ for HIS political career?

Or Mr Justice Eady, who, with barely a shred of tested evidence, allowed Big Brother star Imogen Thomas’s name to be dragged through the mud again while Mr Family Man soccer star, with whom she claims she had an affair, kept his out of the papers?

Or should I shower all those folk who keep urging Vicky Pryce, ex-wife of cheating Minister Chris Huhne, to behave with dignity, instead of explaining to police what she did on the night he was alleged to have been speeding?

Truly, it’s like the 20th century never happened.

We’ve had the so-called justice minister proposing to halve sentences for rapists and then, in response to the statement: “Rape is rape,” saying that actually, it’s not.

We’ve had BBC hacks virtually commiserating with the plight of Strauss-Kahn, and never mind the feelings of the alleged victim.

Then there’s Imogen Thomas whose crime – apart from being female, obviously – was not to shut her trap when Mr Family Man footballer allegedly got tired of playing away from the home and family he claims he cares so much about.

“The world knows my name and I’m expecting to get slaughtered on the internet but he can carry on with his life,” fumed Imogen.

Makes you wonder why the court didn’t just arrange for her to be branded a trollop and have her paraded around the streets on a carty thing, as a warning to all other women tempted to do likewise.

And finally there’s Vicky Pryce, a respected economist and, as far as I can make out, decent wife and mother who was callously dumped by her scheming old man, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne.

No one knows all the details yet but if Vicky wants to reveal things from the past, why shouldn’t she?

Why should she behave with ‘dignity’?

What’s in it for her?

And why wasn’t her husband exhorted to behave in a similar manner when he apparently told her, after dumping her for an aide, that they had: “Thirty minutes to kill the story.”

All the women at the centre of these very different stories have one important thing in common: they’ve had the nerve to stand up for themselves.

How very inconvenient that they aren’t prepared to be treated like a bit of used Kleenex.

How very annoying for some men that women they may have tried to coerce into having sex with them don’t just put up and instead, report them to the police.

How irksome for the Justice Secretary that us ladies won't go along with his plans to halve the prison population by going soft on the men who do us the most harm.

And how very dare Imogen Thomas stick up for herself against Mr Family Man footballer!

Fact is that it is less than 100 years since women in this country received the vote.

It’s only 41 years since we were entitled to equal pay.

Just 21 years since it became illegal to rape your wife. And we still do not have a law against forced marriage.

We do have ‘human rights’ laws that protect sexually-incontinent men, a Justice Secretary who, whatever he may have said later, evidently believed that some sex offenders deserve a softer ride.

And a general feeling, I think, that women should get back in their box.

In the old days men strapped inconvenient women into the ducking-stool to teach them a lesson.

Today they bind our mouths with superinjunctions and tell us to be dignified. And it’s absolutely, totally outrageous.