The concept of sexual consent is a disturbingly recent one. Of course, the concept of rape is far older; but historically, rape was seen less as a crime against a particular girl or woman than it was a crime against the head of the household, or against chastity. As a consequence, the rape of a virgin was often a more serious crime than of a non-virgin; and the rape of a prostitute or other unchaste woman was, in some laws, not a crime because her chastity could not be harmed. Furthermore, the woman's consent was under many legal systems not a defense. Even fairly recently in the Western World, in seventeenth-century France, marriage without parental consent was classified as rape.
The penalty for rape was often a fine, payable to the father or the husband, as they were in charge of household economy. In some laws the woman might marry the rapist instead of his receiving the legal penalty. This was especially prevalent in laws where the concept of sexual consent either didn't exist or was viewed as irrelevant, thus dividing the crime in the current meaning of rape, and a means for a couple to force their families to permit marriage. Modern doctrines today have different views on the type of crime that rape is. It may be seen as constituting an act of violence; as a moral injury; as an act of violation of autonomy; as an act of invasion of integrity; and/or as an act of patriarchal oppression and subordination. And the concept of sexual consent isn't a prerequisite for either of the first two definitions of rape as a crime, or of the historical view of rape as a crime of theft or property damage.
So then, how plausible might it be for an ATL to exist, in which the concept of sexual consent either never comes into being, or remains a strictly fringe and radical concept, and as a result is never acknowledged by any nations' legal systems, even by the time we reached the present day? When would be the latest plausible POD for this to feasibly happen? And it goes without saying that such a world would be dystopian, but just how dystopian would it be, in your opinion?
EDIT: BTW, I'll leave it up to the mods- do you think people will be able to handle this thread being discussed here, in this forum? Or should this thread be moved to the Political Chat forum instead?