It’s become popular knowledge that the way ducks mate is almost all non-consensual. Less well known is that something like 90% of all orangutan mating involves

It’s become popular knowledge that the way ducks mate is almost all non-consensual. Less well known is that something like 90% of all orangutan mating involves violence by the male against the female. If we ended rape among ducks, or ended sexual violence among orangutans, that would probably be the end of their species. It’s extraordinarily sad and disturbing, but for some incredibly unfortunate animals, rape and sexual violence are load-bearing pieces of their existence. Obviously such is not the case for literal human existence, but we aren’t that far removed from orangutans; it does seem possible to me that human society (mostly invented hundreds or thousands of years ago, mostly by men with dim views on women) could have oppression of women as a load-bearing component. Some of the radical feminist thinkers in earlier waves certainly believed this was true, it was part of their argument that society needs to be completely rebuilt.