[The post is called "Against Sexual Consent"]

When we came down from the trees, children and females were dependent on males for protection from predators, and males were dependent on each other. Contrary to Locke’s original state of nature, we were not distant and equal, but instead close and unequal.

Chimps and men are unusual among apes in that we hunt, and unusual among mammals in that we make war. Lions and hyenas are instinctively and permanently at war, but conflicts between lions are normally one on one, and at most one pair of brothers against another pair of brothers. Chimps, on the other hand, while mostly at peace with neighboring tribes of chimps, are frequently at war, and these wars often total and genocidal. Since chimps and men are omnivorous killer apes, it is a good bet that the common ancestor of chimps and men were omnivorous killer apes.

When our ancestors first came down from the trees and out of the forest onto the plains, they could not walk or run very fast or far, and to this day, we are lousy sprinters compared to almost any predator. So, our ancestors avoided being eaten by being the meanest sons of bitches on the plains, with a team of killer apes using their superior ability to cooperate and coordinate against a team of lions.

Under these circumstances, it is unlikely that women got any opportunity to consent to sex or refuse sex. It is also unlikely that females were shared, as this would undermine group cohesion. Yes, the male penis is shaped to scoop out competing sperm, but the male hands are designed for a more permanent and final solution to sperm competition. In the trees, females could screw around because they did not need male protection, and because meat was less important in the trees. On the plains it would likely be a really bad idea for a female to wander out of sight of her owner. Human and chimp males are both shaped for violence, but human males arguably more shaped for violence than chimp males. Humans are more sexually dimorphic than chimps, and the dimorphisms all bear a fairly obvious relationship to the capability for violence. Almost every human male can easily subdue almost any human female. This is not true among chimps.

The ancestors of men, the omnivorous killer apes that came down to the plains, survived because they loved their comrades and cooperated well. And the main thing that they cooperated to do was to slay their enemies. Humans are more specialized for cooperation than chimps, for example the whites of our eyes that make it easy to accurately tell what direction a human is looking. Our ancestors were, compared to most other creatures, and compared to chimpanzees, loyal, good, and kind – good to and kind to their comrades – brutal and deadly to everything else.

Consent does not make sex right. Nor does lack of consent make sex wrong. Lots of societies have arranged marriages, and some societies have marriage by abduction. Women seem to like such marriages just fine.

In the early settlement of Australia, the authorities regularly applied shotgun marriage on a large scale, and often assigned a woman to a man without bothering with the formality of marriage or any pretense at female consent, and it does not seem to have led to any difficulties. Whereas porn stars give carefully recorded consent to everything, and usually wind up badly disturbed by all the disgusting things they consented to.

Sex is far too important to be left to the decision of those directly involved. And women are not much better at making the decision at thirty than at ten.