That's a great, and deep, question.

The idea of consent is a rather dumb one.

It came out of kink. Communication and consent in that case is rather important since the difference between rape and battery and a fun night is rather thin. For some getting a toilet brushed vigorously stirred in their privates is a good time for most it isn't.

Trying to apply that to normal people is not only bizarre but actively harmful. A much better one is harm minimization, everything people do is bad for them, we just want to make it the least bad it can be.

When you start using that lens pretty much all our laws which deal with children are there to make adults feel better and nothing to do with actually protecting children. E.g. sexting is the safest way to have sex. It is also the only way to have sex that two 12 year olds will be arrested and put on the sex offender registry for.

I will also point out that we are happy to wave the consent banner when it is convenient and hide it away when it is not. Where is consent in the workplace? In our economic system? Eldercare? Marketing? Data collection? Drone attacks? And on and on. We basically run our society on meme morality.

"The idea of consent is a rather dumb one. It came out of kink."

We had Contracts for thousands of years, they are a form of concent in exchange for something.

Without concent, you have no rights.