It is often the case that conservative or right-wing formulations of rape are described as requiring the victim (usually, if not always, a girl or woman) to present some form of evidence that the intercourse which she claims to have been unconsensual was indeed an act of barbaric force. Indeed, while the Old Testament condemns rapists to death, it also requires women to shout for help when raped, with the potential consequence of not doing so being death by stoning beside her rapist at the town gate (see Deuteronomy 22:23-27). While reading Bruno Jasienski's "I Burn Paris" I learned (whether this is true or not I do not know) that traditional Chinese law allowed a woman to condemn her rapist to death by means of her own suicide, which was to be a confirmation of the gravity of her accusation. Rape clearly was treated dead seriously by premodern societies.
Enter the legal principle of 'innocent until proven guilty', known and applied at least from later Roman times, and it becomes extremely hard to punish rapists. The crime of rape is perhaps the gravest of those which leave very little evidence. While proving intercourse itself is challenging enough, the main crux of proceedings would be to prove lack of consent, since it is this lack of consent that renders intercourse rape. We see here why Biblical and ancient Chinese law place such a burden on women to provide evidence of not consenting to what happened, either by shouting or even taking their own lives: the gravity of the offence, together with the surrounding ambiguity, call for the most drastic measures to prevent and punish it.
Since the occurrence of rape hinges on the notion of consent we might as well discuss that instead. We have come to think of consent as being an act of will, given at or before an act, constrained in time and definite. Any cases of uncertain consent, such as consent given under intoxication, are defined away by asking for the consent and responsibility of finding oneself in such a situation. So we might ask a woman who regrets sleeping with an ugly man after getting very drunk whether she understands that by intoxicating herself she accepted the risk of acting in a way that she might later regret. The example used is quite pertinent in that it works perfectly well when one flips the genders: our modern 'conventional' idea of consent seems to be genderblind, just like a good legal maxim ought to be.
Enter the feminists, with a diverse panoply of views about sex, rape, consent, men, women and all the rest. The key consideration that feminism brings to the table is that consent (at least, for a woman) is no simple, singular act of will and that rape may occur or may even retroactively be made to occur, in many different circumstances, such as when a man lies about his identity. This is an interesting thing to consider: say a man sneaks into the bedroom of his friend's wife and has sex with her in the dark. The wife, not recognising that the man she is having intercourse with, might give her, perhaps even enthusiastic, consent to it, only to later find out that she had indeed been raped. It would not be controversial to call this rape. However, what if a man, say, hides his tendency to drink alcohol from the woman he is dating. Upon marrying her and having a couple of kids, the man returns to drinking and even confesses that he had been a heavy drinker before or even during dating the woman. It may be that the woman only agreed to marry him because he was a teetotaller, a rare gem nowadays if you ask me. Would this also count as rape? Clearly whether a serious crime occurred or not quickly becomes dependent on one of the parties' subjective feelings.
While it has been argued, not without good reason, that this 'guilty until proven innocent' interpretation of rape accusations leads to, perpetuates and/or arises from a toxic cancel culture that undermines the most basic European values, I will play devil's advocate and attempt to briefly sketch out how this new(?) interpretation of consent is actually right-wing to the core, in fact perhaps more so than so-called European civilisation. The (broadly understood) feminist view of consent has non-trivial implications, such as introducing de facto different moral standards for masculine and feminine sexual conduct and implying that women are beings which are unable (or unwilling) to cling to a once made up state of mind. Those are not stances you would expect from the egalitarian left. But it gets better. Since it is up to the woman not only to accuse a man of rape, but actually to determine that rape occurred (since her subjective views are the only way to judge whether rape occurred or not, then any man who decides to have sex with a woman under any circumstances, be it with his loving wife or a drunk stranger in a club, must take the risk of not just being accused of rape, but of actually raping someone.
Sex becomes then an elaborate game in which a man, possessing clear will and plans, strives to appease a woman, which may or may not consent and may retroactively remove consent anyway. This means not only that fortune rewards the daring, but also that those deemed to fail, will be shunned. Men are therefore challenged to please (but not appease!) women and render themselves irresistible and therefore uncancellable. Only true Chads are not rapists and all the creeps better watch out, because their advances might end poorly for them. It is hard to think of a more 'conservative' arrangement than one which stresses the inherent differences between men and women, requires them to act differently and challenges men to perform not just to a certain standard, but to be the best among all men at being men.
