By the modern standard of consent, as an example, the patria potestas [0] rules effectively meant a power imbalance such that all hooking up would be under duress.

I'm not arguing that anyone thought it was non-consensual then, because I don't think it's appropriate to try to apply modern emancipative thinking to societies of previous millennia, but one could certainly argue it.

edit: markup

[0]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patria%20potestas

I'd say it's a fair assumption given how much of the world has approached relationships for such a long time. Sex slaves, brothels, selling women off to be married, pillage villages and taking their women, etc..

Women couldn't vote in the U.S. until 1920. That's closer to today than it is to the founding of the country. These are relatively new and human history is much much older.

Yeah, vast majority seems like a stretch. Back-of-the-envelope calculation:

Google says ~100 billion humans ever lived ~60 billion since 0 AD.

Let's say since 0 AD, 10% of the average person's lifetime encounters are non-consensual, while the ancient human had 33% non-consensual. These proportions are totally made-up by me.

Anyway, that would give us .33 * 40 + .1 * 60 = 19.2% of all intercouse being non-consensual. It seems like any reasonable estimate would put the number well below 50% just given how many modern people there are.

I think if you put the modern norm of affirmative consent on things, this is probably a “true” statement, although much less interesting. Otherwise it seems p hard to substantiate

It’s the norm with great apes and what few hunter gatherer societies we can observe. The vast majority of Europe also has male genes from only the Yamnaya implying a massacre of all men and interbreeding with the women. I can’t imagine all of that was consensual.