IaM not sure whether Richard Dawkins's rape tweet last week was a stroke of genius or a sloppy, attention-seeking mistake.

The controversial scientist may have thought he'd landed on the perfect tweet when he typed the words: "Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think." He may even have revelled in what he described as the "tsunami of hate" that followed, enjoying the way it demonstrated his contention that some subjects have now become no-go areas, in which emotional response excludes rational thought. But in some ways this tweet was still flawed and ill-judged.

It was not the first tweet of this kind Dawkins has made. For some time he's been troubled by the fact that when anyone says "X is bad, Y is worse", the assumption is that they are "endorsing X". Partly this concern dates back to his comments in the autumn of last year about paedophilia, in which he described his own experience of "mild groping" by a teacher while at school. At the time he was widely condemned for talking of "mild paedophilia". And indeed, last week, he tweeted again on this subject, saying, "Mild pedophilia [sic] is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think."

Though these statements may be crude, they do draw attention to something important: a shutting-down of conversation that starts to take place when we are in the grip of a moral panic, when we come to believe that certain behaviours are so despicable they cannot even be graded.

On paedophilia, I think he is drawing attention to a very real problem: the way our debate on the subject is confined to simplistic expressions of horror. Paedophilia, whether prefixed by the word "mild" or "violent", is a black hole of a subject; it has become impossible to talk of it with any nuance - and this is of no help to us in dealing with it.

But I am not sure rape is really the same "no-go area" for discussion. I think there is plenty of very sophisticated debate on this subject, even if it is sometimes over-polarised by the mechanisms of media and social media. And if Dawkins doesn't see that, it is perhaps because he, too, is guilty of reading just the headlines and the soundbites.

While it is true that the message "rape is rape is rape" has gradually become the dominant, more politically correct message, there is a staggering amount of discussion on the subject, not to mention a chilling backdrop of rape jokes, threats and victim-blaming, which in their own way form a rather depressing part of the debate.

Indeed, read the comments around the so-called "tsunami of hate" that followed Dawkins's tweets and it is possible to find plenty of complex and textured discussion. Some of this may have been prompted by Dawkins's exhortation to "think" and not treat this subject as a "no-go-area", but I think a lot of these arguments were out there anyway.

In fact, I am an admirer of Dawkins. I like the fact that he exhorts us to question rather than believe, and to think for ourselves. But the problem is that I am not sure he has thought sufficiently about the complexity of the debate that already exists around this specific subject: rape.

I do feel uncomfortable with the fact that Dawkins used the term "date rape". It is in itself a belittling one, overused, and in my view best avoided. But I imagine Dawkins knew that. Perhaps he was intending on slinging out the most controversial line, the one that most accorded with the stereotypical misconception that the most common, harmful and harrowing rapes are those done by strangers, and that those committed by someone known to the victim, possibly intimately so, are less traumatic.

In a later tweet and an article published on his website, he reversed this original rape comparison. "'Being raped by a stranger is bad. Being raped by a formerly trusted friend is worse'. If you think that hypothetical quotation is an endorsement of rape by strangers, go away and learn how to think." If only he had tweeted this first, he might have appeared more enlightened and less like another privileged, compassionless, middle-aged man spouting a patriarchal view. He would, indeed, have seemed more like someone involved in a genuine thought exercise.

But it is possible he didn't want that; it is possible all he wanted to do was provoke. That in itself could be seen as a success. It meant his tweet reached many people.

Sadly, however, it probably reached all too many in a fractured form, less as an exhortation to think; more a reinforcement of the idea that date rape is no big deal - perhaps not worthy of endorsement, but certainly not worth the fuss. And in that sense, as a manipulation of the media, it was more than a little sloppy.