Many feminists promote this historical myth that rape was okay historically or that society approved of it. Well, let's look the truth historically. This is divided into sections for those who demand a TL;DR.

Ancient/medieval times

In classical Greece, rape was actionable under public persecution, and the penalty would have been any which the prosecutor could succeed in pursuing. Fines were imposed on offenders, and rapists were punished. They even punished rapists of men or boys. They viewed rape against women as a damage on the bloodline of her and her family, and rape against men as a damage on his dignity.

Even anti-rape stories based on Ancient Rome existed, including the one where Lucius Tarquinius Superbus raped a woman and after she confessed it to her family and killed herself, her family had society overthrew him. While some Roman families may have disposed of a rape victim, that doesn't most did. There were punishments for rapists in Ancient Rome. It wasn't legal or socially acceptable to do. If a woman was an escort, slave or foreigner, then it wasn't considered rape (because people thought escorts automatically consent, people were xenophobic towards foreigners, and slaves were just property whom people thought you could do anything you want to), nor was marital rape considered rape (but it could've been still seen as assault, which I get to later in this article). Prostitutes could only charge a rapist with injury, which was a loophole. Wartime rape admittedly was legal, and it was done upon men and women, but soldiers who raped in peacetime were punished. Female prisoners who were raped, however, were not accused of adultery. Rape was punished in Ancient Rome, and legally, blame was only attached to rapists. Rape was a capital charge, especially in cases where someone raped a virgin, nun, widow or lady devoted to religion. Rapists could be executed, exiled or have their civil status reduced. Nonetheless, in Republican Rome, rape was often punished through private revenge, with rapists' statuses determining the penalty. Families of raped women often punished male rapists with death or castration. People accepted private justice during the time of the Twelve Tables (circa 451 BC), when while they demanded public arbitration of disputes. To avoid private penalties, rapists' defense was claiming that the woman consented, but this prevented them from being put to death, but they weren't let scot-free. They would still be punished. Republican Rome included the charge of vis, which was rape. It said anyone who violates a boy, woman or young girl was charged with vis. Anyone who raped a single or married woman faced the death penalty, even if her father forgave the rapist. In Caeser's dictatorship, rape was punished unless it was against a slave. Depending on the circumstances, either the woman or the father pressed charges, and if the father didn't, the community could prosecute the rapist. While raping a slave was seen as a property crime against only the slave owner. Raping a woman was seen as a crime against her and her father or husband, not because she's their property, but because her father was her protector, including the protector of her virginity and she was supposed to save it for her husband. Some laws in Ancient Rome, such as Justinian law, "as with the Constantinian law on raptus,Justinian forbade marriage with a ravisher, and he reiterated his position thirty years later stating that the penalty for raptus was death, with the woman receiving the ravisher's property, but no marriage could take place and parents permitting a marriage were to be deported".

According to the Code of Hammurabi, "If a man has ravished another's betrothed wife, who is a virgin, and has been caught in the act, that man shall be put to death; the woman shall go free". Of course, this paper says it's because it was seen as a crime against her husband but not her, but that's bullshit. It describes the attack as "ravishing", not vandalism, and the woman wasn't even punished. Lawmakers in Middle Assyria wrote that if a woman is raped, whether they witness the rape or they later prove the charges are true, the rapist is executed and the woman is let free. It does say she should fight back and it should happen in public, but that's because of lawmakers' ignorance and simple-mindedness over the idea that if she was with him at his or her home, she must've consented. Other laws said that if a man rapes a maiden in her father's house, her father can rape the rapist's wife and keep her as a wife (but that doesn't mean the father would've done so). If the rapist was unmarried, they must pay triple silver to the father, and he has to marry the victim. The father can still forbid him from marrying her, and then the rapist shall receive triple silver for the maiden, and the father can marry off his daughter to whomever he chooses instead of the rapist. Admittedly, the Old Testament did say that if a man rapes a virgin maiden, he has to marry her and pay fifty shekels of silver to the father, and he cannot divorce her. Nonetheless, this wasn't to punish the rape victim, but because her virginity was gone and she was supposed to save that for the man she marries (women couldn't fornicate to prevent bastard children from being born without a provider, and men could have premarital sex, but only with escorts). This was done to save her reputation as unmarriageable, but the rapist did not necessarily want to marry her, and he could not divorce her even if he did not want to marry her. He was considered to have violated her, so he was punished by not being allowed to even divorce her. While this was seen as protection of her virginity rather than her wellbeing, the fact that the laws distinguished this from consensual fornication shows that she was seen as being harmed. In the Old Testament, it said in the same chapter that if a man rapes a betrothed woman in the city and she doesn't scream for help, they both are executed but if it happens in the country where nobody will hear her, only he shall die. Obviously if it happened in the city, she can lie and say she screamed for help if nobody had heard her anyway, and obviously rapists won't rape someone where someone's a witness.

Even back in the Anglo-Saxon era of England, rape was strictly frowned upon, and even rape of slaves was more expensive than seduction of a free woman, which just shows negatively rape was viewed. Rape was punished and not viewed as acceptable (Source: Fell, Christine (1987). Women in Anglo-Saxon England (US ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell.). In early modern England (1500s to 1700s), many rape accusations led to prosecution of alleged rapists but also the woman for slander. Not many of these men were convicted/hung, but most were let free or found not guilty, but this presumably was due to due process (which I mention later). Thirteenth century statues in England defined rape as a property crime, but it's because virginity was a woman's property to preserve, and if it was a crime against her father or husband, it's because her dad had to protect her virginity from sexual predators when she wasn't married and she was supposed to save it for her husband. Henry de Bracton (an English man from the 1200s), the most prestigious legal authority of the Middle Ages, said:

The rape of virgins is a crime imputed by a woman to the man by whom she says she has been forcibly ravished against the king’s peace. If he is convicted of this crime [this] punishment follows: the loss of members, that there be member for member, for when a virgin is defiled she loses her member and therefore let her defiler be punished in the parts in which he offended. Let him thus lose his eyes which gave him sight of the maiden’s beauty for which he coveted her. And let him lose as well the testicles which excited his hot lust.

Henry did view the relationship between her and him and quality of loss (i.e.: virginity) as relevant though. Though medieval laws of rape persisted from 1558 to 1700, in the late 16th century, rape began to be viewed as a crime against a person rather than property (a woman's virginity). This changed in 1554 with the publishing of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert's The Nevv Boke of Iustices of Peace. Nonetheless, many people wondered if a woman consensually fornicated and lied about being raped. She had to prove it was against her will, by showing blood on her clothing, bruises, and a cry to people around her, etc. to make herself look believable. Of course, this article on rape back then ignores all the quotes condemning rapists and how evil their acts and portrays the quotes as defending the rapist when they're clearly not defending the rapist.

Early America, and other Western countries a couple centuries ago.

In colonial America, rape was never seen as acceptable. There wasn't enough rape prosecutions back then, but historians overlooked many cases where a man was arrested for rape, but was charged with assault, assault to carnally know, or perhaps attempted rape. He was still arrested, but a different charge. In other words, it was quite common for rapes to be arrested. If he molested a young girl, he was charged with carnal abuse. Many newspaper articles described a man assaulting a woman and forcing her into sexual activity. If convicted, many of these men were whipped, put on the pillory or given other harsh punishments. Newspaper articles described how horrific and brutal the crime was, and called it an outrage. They may have emphasized that wives and daughters were attacked, but it's not because women were "property", but because men historically were supposed to protect their wife or daughter, and married men's wives could've been impregnated with a bastard child who doesn't belong to him. They still emphasized the damage done to the woman and the trauma that would ensue, and people condemned it. Novels back then also depicted villains who had raped women, and emphasized their sexual violence to portray how evil they were. During the American Revolution, Americans used anti-British propaganda where they accused the British of rape, and emphasized British soldiers raping American women. The British saw this as complete slander and they accused the Americans of being rapists to demonize the other side. Even colonial American newspapers described white men raping white women as heinous crimes and viewed the victim as young and vulnerable. Many of these men did get convicted, and many admittedly did not, but the court was usually like this due to due process, innocence until proven guilty, or ignorance about rape and consent, not misogyny. It is possible that rape was less reported in early America (although the evidence on it is mixed), but in 1790 England, most crime in general was unreported. The population in early America was small, so everyone knew each other in town. As a result, it was rare for rapes to be a stranger, and people could easily discover who the rapist was.

Even in 1700s Ireland, although there were mobs rescuing prisoners from being punished or executed for rape, it had more to do with antipathy towards the legal system rather than lack of sympathy for rape victims. In that century in Ireland, there were vigilante attacks against rapists and child molesters. This became more common in Ireland in the 18th century, and protests against public whippings suddenly did not happen when a rapist was whipped, showing that although mobs hated the legal system and protested against it whipping criminals, they eventually decided to stop protesting when a rapist in particular was whipped. Offerings of rewards were even given to people who apprehend a rapist. Rape victims also now were allowed to decide if they want the rapist hung, beheaded or forced to marry her. The criminal justice system in Ireland did not necessarily go easy on rapists, and they re-presented rapists if they were let off from an execution so they could finally execute them, which they did for a man named Edward Grady in the 1770s for gang rape, finally executing him on May 5, 1777. Bail was also not allowed in cases of rape, and sometimes, authorities paid for the confinement of female witnesses to ensure she turned up in court to prosecute her assailant. There were times in 1700s Ireland where the court appeared to go easy on rapists, but contrary to researchers thinking it was due to "patriarchy", it was probably due to due process, and rape was harder to prove back then, and certainly it still is now. Men in Ireland back then did not have a positive image of rape.

Even in Australia, there was capital punishment for rape until 1955. Admittedly only 14% of white Australian rapists and a third of aboriginal rapists were put to death, but people did advocate the death penalty for rapists many times. They especially wanted to use executions for disreputable white men and any aboriginal man. Although many politicians advocated executing rapists, rape had a low conviction rate, but a lot of evidence shows that this is usually because of due process and because rape is a hard crime to prove, not sexism. I have no doubt that it was harder to prove back then. Many abolitionists said rapists should not be executed, and they probably generally opposed the death penalty, but many people supported executions, and they viewed rapists as not an actual man, saying that men needed to protect women. Australia especially executed aboriginal men, but in NSW, 41% of rapists executed were white and the rest were aboriginal or black. Many times, a white man was executing for raping children, but many times it wasn't for raping a child. After 1880, the NSW started only executing white rapists, and aboriginal men were now suddenly seen after the 1870s as sexually powerless by many and thus not deserving of execution for rape. On September 9, 1886 in Australia, a 16 year old girl named Mary Jane Hicks was gang-raped by a group of young white men (mostly in their late teens). A man named William Stanley tried to save her but was attacked by bricks, stones and bottles by the gang. He called police and the police arrived and tried to arrest them but they fled. 12 men were arrested, but Hicks said others were also participating. The rape caused an outrage all over the media, and even one newspaper called it a crime as one "which no parallel can be found in the crimes of civilized life or in the savageries of barbarism". Justice Windeyer declared the crime as a "most atrocious crime, a crime so horrible that every lover of his country must feel that it is a disgrace to our civilization". The first nine men were convicted and sentenced to death; the last two were acquitted. The main offender, Charles Sweetman, was given 14 years in prison and 50 lashes. During the hangings of the rapists on January 15, 1887, about 2,000 people arrived outside the prison to witness the hanging eagerly, but only people with reputable credentials were allowed to see it. A newspaper article written by a witness describing the execution may have described them as "poor boys", but appears to be taking pity on them in a disappointed manner rather than compassionate manner, describing rape as one of the most atrocious crimes and condoning the execution, saying they feel the other offenders who weren't executed should've been executed.

People also don't remember how common it was historically in America for people to panic over black men raping white women. White women constantly accused black men of raping them, sometimes after having consensual sex with them to save their reputation. People always gave her the benefit of the doubt, and the man was lynched. Hell, rape was the second most common accusation involved in lynchings. Hell, in 1872, a man in his late 30s named Charles G. Kelsey was tarred, feathered and lynched in New York when he fell in love with a woman named Julia Smith. After she married another man, he stalked her and wrote poems and love letters. Her aunt set a trap. After swapping bedrooms with Julia, the aunt reported that Kelsey entered through the bedroom's window and put his hand on her breast. She shouted and he exited through the window. The next day, Kelsey was lynched by a mob of masked men. The incident went all over the news.

In the late 18th century, Americans were paying much more focus to father-daughter incest. Towns across the United States heard about stories of father-daughter incest and were horrified. When allegations of father-daughter incest appeared, local men, without thinking of whether the allegations were real, went to the alleged offender to tar and feather them and kick them out of town. Alleged suspects who were in police custody had been heavily guarded to protect them against lynchings. A white man accused of incest named A. A. Stegall was grabbed out of a Texas jail and hung by a mob. One specific high-profile father-daughter incest case was a man named Ephraim Wheeler, who was hung for the rape of his 13 year old daughter in Lenox, Massachusetts during the winter of 1806. At least 5,000 people witnessed his execution and his crime received a lot of headlines on the news. Over 500 newspapers about father-daughter incest were found from between 1769 and 1899, most happening between 1817 and 1899. Given that newspapers occasionally reported on a case for days and more than one newspaper might report or reprint the same story, the number of stories published about these incidents almost doubled, to more than 900. People at the time had a hysteria about father-daughter incest, and people wanted to kill you if you did such a thing to your daughter.

Marital rape was not acceptable, nor were women property.

Contrary to popular belief, women were historically never property, and they were allowed to own property, and many did. In fact, 40% of slave owners were white women in Southern 1800s United States. It is often told that rape was a property crime. This may have been possibly true in some societies long ago, but it wasn't because she was someone's property. It's because her chastity or sexuality was property belonging to her (hence, phrases like "robbed of her chastity"). She was supposed to save her sexual inexperience for the man she marries to prevent bastard children from being born (because a bastard child did not have a provider and she needed a provider. This is why women were expected not to fornicate, not to control women). If it was ever seen as a property crime against her husband or father, too, it's because her father was supposed to protect her chastity against sexual predators, and her husband was supposed to have sex with her for her first time, so her virginity was taken by them, and she shared her sexuality with her husband. It was still seen as a crime against her and her sexuality, which is why there are descriptions back then of women being ravished, not "a man's property was ravished".

Also, marital rape was never okay. I made a thread about it earlier before. A long time ago in America or the UK, if you raped your wife, you were charged with assault, not rape. In the late 20th century, they finally made it legally rape. You still were arrested, but with assault instead. The reason why it wasn't rape wasn't because women were husband's property. It wasn't even rape for a woman to rape her husband. It's because when two people marry, they became one flesh and consented to sex for the rest of their lives. Still though, even if all marital sexual contact was automatically consensual, using force on someone was still viewed as assault. In fact, many 19th century marriage manuals instructed men not to have sex with his wife unless she gives him an explicit consent and even invitation first to have sex. He was told never to use force or even persuasion to get her to have sex. There was also often family intervention if they found out their female relative was being abused by her husband. They did not put up with it. Later in the 19th century, American courts increasingly allowed sexual cruelty as a reason to divorce someone. They did not allow a man to divorce his wife because she wouldn't have sex with him, but she was allowed to divorce her husband if he had sexually assaulted her, and after the divorce, he was socially shunned but not her. If he cheated because she won't have sex, she could divorce him for adultery. Feminists don't show the entire truth, just bits of it. Attitudes towards marital rape were extremely negative. Hell, there's also the myth that you could beat your wife with impunity historically until the 1970s. This is also a myth. It was illegal, and wife beaters often were arrested and some were victims of vigilante assaults. Even in countries like Arab countries, it might be seen as a private family matter by the governments, but this is because it's a personal thing for many victims and the family allowed them to marry to begin with. Usually, the woman contacts her family and the family intervenes. They don't tolerate it.

Rape is not okay in non-Western countries.

Contrary to what Westerners think, it's not okay to rape people in non-Western countries. It could be that the government doesn't convict rapists as much in some of these countries, but when you are convicted, they often still execute you. Nonetheless, there's often vigilante attacks or even lynchings against rapists in these countries. Take India for example. In India, any woman can falsely accuse a man and ruin his life and get away with no consequences even when it is proven that she lied. Many women are abusing this law to settle personal scores, extort money, intimidate others and even for social media attention. For example, a woman threatened to file a rape case on a bank official who went to collect debt. He had to touch her feet and beg for forgiveness and write an apology letter which she later posted on her social media and bragged about. Btw, the video you see in the example below was recorded and uploaded by the woman's family themselves. That's how confident they were that she would face no consequences and they were right. She received no punishment despite the incident becoming viral on social media and getting a lot of attention.

Example:

Woman threatens to file rape case on bank employee who went to collect debt.

Police in India take rape very seriously, and they're very corrupt and don't care about their job. They shoot alleged rapists to death and don't even give them due process and everyone praises the police as a hero, and many false accusations in India DO happen because of the benefits women get from it there. Because it's legally rape to have sex with a woman with the promise of marriage in India, many women falsely accuse their ex of rape in India. There is also massive outrage from society and public marches on the street demanding justice when rapes happen and non-stop coverage on the news channels. You will never ever see even a fraction of this when a man is raped or killed or falsely accused by a woman even if it drives him to suicide. Nobody here condones rape and even being accused of rape is enough to be beaten to death by a mob. Police may not have done anything about notorious Indian serial rapist and gang leader Akku Yadav, but that's because he kept bribing them. Eventually, he got lynched in a courtroom by many people and they didn't get arrested. Here's other examples of suspected rapists in India being lynched or viciously attacked.

Hell, according to Gallup, in most sub-Saharan African countries, most people view rape as a big issue in their country, and if they don't, it's because they probably think it doesn't happen when it does. Most advocated jail for rapists, but some advocated death or castration. Even almost all South Africans, a country with a high rape rate, said rape is a big issue in their country. Almost all of them said rape should be reported to the cops. A majority advocated jail for rapists, but some advocated executions and even a minority said they should be castrated. The vast majority even said life cannot be the same after being raped.

In fact, if you go on any gore website, you'll see many videos where rapists get brutally murdered, and it often takes place in Africa, India, Latin America, etc. Even articles mention it, too. A statistic even found that in South Africa, mob justice victims are more men than women, and they treat women more leniently unless she's accused of witchcraft (because witches aren't viewed as human and just considered evil). Mobs attack people over accusations of theft, murder, rape, robbery, gang activity, etc. In a survey of Brazilian people, many condoned lynch mobs, especially where a man is lynched by a family for raping or murdering women and children. People were the most likely to condone lynching for rapist, and they believed lynching a rapist was more justified than lynching a murderer or molester. They often condoned lynching murderers and sometimes even molesters, but not pickpocket thieves or car thieves. They were less likely to condone lynching a woman and more likely to condone lynching a man. They were somewhat, but surprisingly not significantly, more likely to condone lynching a criminal who harms a woman than a man, and were significantly more likely to condone lynching criminals who harm children. Another survey of over 300 provinces from 18 Latino countries (over 19,000 respondents) found that people are more likely to condone lynching a rapist of someone's son or daughter than lynching someone who threatens a community, and it was somewhat common for people to condone lynching a rapist. Even in Egypt, vigilantes began, in 2012, grabbing men who catcalled women and spray painting "harasser" on them, with a lot of people applauding them.

Society doesn't, and probably never, hated rape victims.

If a promiscuous woman was raped historically, yeah, people probably were less empathetic, and it could be they may have felt that way about any sexually experienced unmarried woman, but what we need to realize is that this isn't due to hatred of women. It's because people thought men couldn't be raped because while women were expected to wait until marriage to deter bastard children from being born, men could fornicate, but only with escorts (escorts often engaged in infanticide or sterilized themselves, and society viewed their kids as disposables). Because men were expected to have premarital sex with hookers, people thought that men are supposed to automatically consent to sex. That's why there were no laws regarding women who rape men as rapists. People, as a result, thought if a woman fornicated or engaged in promiscuity, that must mean she automatically consents to sex because that's how they perceived men who got raped for the same exact reason. People had monkey brains, and thought very simple-mindedly about this. Now that premarital sex is no longer taboo for a woman (although feminists somehow think it still is), nobody thinks a woman who is sexually experienced automatically consented. People also thought that if rape is so bad, any victim would always fight back. That's why people thought if she didn't fight back, it was consensual. It's because people are simple-minded, and often ignorant, about rape or the idea that rape victims freeze. That didn't even enter their minds.

Moreover, as a guy who has met people from other countries, I can promise you that people in Arab, African, Latino, South Asian, etc. countries all hate rapists. They are horrified if they know a woman had been raped. We often hear that if people discover a woman is raped over there, then her reputation is gone because she's unmarriageable now. Here's the problem: Because a woman was supposed to save her sexual inexperience for marriage to prevent bastard children from being born (she needed a provider and couldn't provide for the child herself), people thought she couldn't be married. People even thought a woman who has premarital sex would inevitably cheat because she wouldn't be the type who would refuse to fornicate. Obviously, the system there thinks way too cartoonishly simplistically about this, but that doesn't mean people there normally do. They pretend to. People in these countries probably don't hate rape victims, but because the system is so powerful and because many of these countries are dictatorships or kingdoms, they can't protest their government or have free speech. As a result, people who view rape victims that way over there are a loud minority, and most people pretend to agree with them out of fear of being silenced by them. This is called the spiral of silence. That's why it seems most people there would hate a rape victim.

When investigators looked at wartime rape in Syria, they found that men got raped at wartime as often as women did. They even asked families in Syria if they know any men who were raped, and they all were shocked they'd ask such a thing. They all said yes, they know many men and women in their families who were raped, and it horrified them. People pretend to hate rape victims there, but they all privately don't. We all hear about people honor killing their daughters in these countries for being raped, but honor killings don't happen as much as the media says, and a considerable percentage of it happens in a couple specific countries. Even in those countries, most murder victims are men, and a considerable percentage of honor killing victims are men, sometimes for impregnating a woman out of wedlock, and her family kills him. Nonetheless, honor killings happen just a few thousand times each year, and most murder victims in these countries are men. If male rape victims don't get honor killed, it's because 100% of them keep their mouths shut about what they went through, but in Syria, it's different. Their families know, and when people in these countries know someone in their family was raped, they're usually horrified and want justice towards the rapist. They usually would never kill their relative who was raped and they keep it a secret from the public because of that loud minority who commands everyone to stigmatize rape victims.

Historically, people probably pretended to stigmatize rape victims, too, and if someone in their family was raped, they probably wouldn't reveal to the public that their friend or relative was raped. Governments always influence people to pretend to think a certain way, but people don't actually think like that. It's kinda like how in Iran, people pretend to be religious, but people there secretly aren't. Just look at how people were before the 1979 Islamic Revolution there.

Overall, historically, society could've been better with rape victims, and many rapists didn't get convicted, but a study I cited earlier shows it's usually because of due process, not misogyny, especially given rape is a hard crime to prove. Historically, it probably was harder to prove, and societal ignorance of how rape works probably made it harder, too, but not hatred of women. Nonetheless, society wasn't some pro-rape place that feminists say it was. Rapists have always been hated, and people have always viewed rape victims as victims of a crime. People just were more ignorant about rape historically, but rape was never viewed as okay and when you see how women were described as ravished, you can see that it wasn't seen as merely a crime against her dad or her virginity.