Sex in TV shows...

[TwoPintsOfAleAndABagOfPorkScratchings]

I'll start this by saying that I don't really watch TV. I have one and I'll sometimes watch a documentary on Netflix or something but I don't watch TV.

Shows that other people have watched over the years have completely passed me by. For example, last year, I watched the first season of Prison Break for the first time. I just find it boring. I don't get invested or care about the characters so I generally don't watch it.

Anyway, my partner is more of a TV watcher than I will ever be and, if he wants to watch something, I go and do something else.

But because of him, I've become more aware of what is out there. I still have no interest in watching any of it though!

One thing that has really come to my attention is how much violent and explicit sex is in just ordinary TV shows. I know he watched Game of Thrones before we got together and he talked about watching House of the Dragon although, as far as I know, he hasn't yet. He's also just finished watching the most recent seasons of The Boys.

I'm just really uncomfortable with the level of nudity and explicit sex in these shows. I haven't said anything to him about him watching it because we've only been together for 2 and a half years and these are things he started watching before we got together. But he does know I don't like it and doesn't suggest we watch anything like that together.

But he's now shown an interest in a new series on Prime called something like Those Who Are About to Die or something. I looked it up to see if it was something i could watch with him and again its full of explicit sex, nudity, prostitutes etc.

It just feels, I don't know, degrading to me as a woman that women are exploited in this way for entertainment? That entertainment has to include gratuitous sex and violence against women. And men too to be honest. I don't like that either. It just feels unnecessary And I don't like it.

It might sound extreme but I just can't get my head round being with someone who is so kind and loving towards me enjoying watching women being raped and brutalised. Or even just the explicit sex and nudity.

And I don't think I want to be in a relationship with someone who watches it week in and week out for entertainment.

But I also know that some women enjoy these shows too. I've tried telling myself that it isn't real but the nudity is real, the bodies are real and the sexual acts are either real or designed to appear very real.

What are other people's thoughts on this?

I wish I had the head space to get wound up over things like this tbh.

It's TV.

I hear you, OP. I find sex scenese really uncomfortable to watch and I can't stand rape scenes. Certain types of gratuious violence makes me uncomfortable as well. I feel like the producers of these shows have no faith in their story-telling abilities and no faith in their actors to make their characters relatable.

I noped out of Game of Thrones when I saw the scene with this small blond woman being married off to this massive dude and I saw where the scene was headed and I felt so alienated. It's like they used a porn-trope for shock value. The story itself seemed interesting and the actors very talented, but I really didn't want to see more. I later heard that the writers apparently could also not tell the difference between rape and consensual sex, so I am glad I stopped watching.

I noped out of The Witcher too when they came to a tower with a garden full of naked women. And I thought: Why? What is the point of this?

I mentioned to some friends why I did not like GoT and they suggested I watched Outlander, because that show is supposed to be more female-friendly. Yet in every episode the main character was either in danger of getting raped or was actually getting raped. It was such a one-note show. I found it really off-putting.

I am currently rewatching Scandal and although I like the show, I skip the sex-scenes between two of the main characters, but that is more because I hate the male character. He is such a manipulative bastard, but the show tries really hard to set him up as some kind of tragic, missunderstood character who just can't help how he behaves. I used to find these scenes hot, but now that I am older and have an understanding of how images like these mess with your head, I find it merely aggrevating.

I agree with you OP.

I agree with you too OP. I just find it so unnecessary, it's also awkward when watching with someone else.

It's just telly.

I am a kind, patient loving person and yet there is and never will be a show that I love more than Game of Thrones. I could watch it on repeat 24 hours a day!

You are going to find that the majority of men will watch TV shows and from the sound of it you're not going to approve of any of them, so what are they to do? Stop watching them? Are you going to reject a relationship with a good man because he watches and enjoys something that is perfectly harmless on the telly?

I think this is a problem that you need to get over and not put it on someone else.

Only 2 and a half years.....
That's quite a way in.. You should be able to discuss this sort of stuff after that length of time..

It's the pornification of society. It's very interesting to watch films and TV from the 80s as the camera doesn't focus on breasts and butts and women are not in tight revealing clothes.

Game of Thrones was particularly gratuitous especially for degradation of women. Many TV programmes include sex and nudity in order to garner viewers.

I tend to agree with you OP. Though Game of Thrones and Outlander are both based on books. A lot of historical stuff tends to use rape as a catalysing event in a female character's life, notwithstanding the fact that in the time it was set things would likely have been quite different.

But back to the point, it is deeply unpleasant and is one of the reasons I mostly watch documentaries. It seems that nearly every show has to include a rape scene too.

I would love to hear some recommendations. I was still very young in the 80s and don't know a lot of shows from then.

I agree with you OP. I don't really watch TV but find it awful how we watch scenes of rape and murder for entertainment. I've just been watching Bridgeton - first TV in years really, a fair amount of sex in that but to me it makes sense, it shows the relationships, there is tenderness, uncertainty, wanting, it follows the normal patterns of relationships. In fact the most tender part is the touching of hands, the longing. I really don't want to watch banging for the sake of it, but I guess how to producers and writers keep the attention of a pornified society? I find it sad.

I completely get you. I also find the volume of sex scenes and focus on female nudity /sexuality degrading and incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I detest programmes that use it as a prop to further the narrative (always bad boy cops/gangsters in strip clubs) and can't stand GOT, HOD, The Boys etc etc. and programmes where the women are always half naked and the man wrapped up in multiple layers.

For this reason I find it incredibly difficult to watch anything on TV. My partner however absolutely loves TV and watches pretty much everything going including the shows I hate.

We have talked about it and I have explained why. We try to find one programme that we can watch together and when he wants to watch something I don't like i go and do something else.

I really wish that TV & film producers would think of more innovative ways to further characters and plots that doesn't always rely on sex, boobs, or women's bodies. Or at least chuck a naked man in there every now and then.

So you see using rape as entertainment as acceptable?

To be fair, season 1 of Bridgerton also includes a scene that could be classified as rape.

It's utterly ridiculous. If I want to watch porn it's not hard to find.

@housemaus yes, it did. We become so desensitised to it that it almost seems normal. In that context it was normal at the time, it made me reflect on how desperate women living in those times must have felt and I've wondered if you could have had a period drama without showing the reality of that. I actually can't remember how graphic the scene was now. I've been thinking I'm a right prude because I'd have felt embarrassed to have been watching even Bridgerton with anyone else. Sex scenes just make me feel uncomfortable, but I barely watch tv.

It’s TV.
Luckily I can choose what to watch or not.

I don't think it's about watching porn, I think it's because porn is so ubiquitous that it's infused in everything and people are no longer outraged by gratuitous nudity and sex.

Thank you.

He's also watched The Witcher too.

I knpw I can't ask someone not to watch something but I would honestly rather be single I think than know that I'm with someone who is potentially getting sexually aroused by scenes of rape and sexual violence. Or even just enjoying it or not even recognising it for what it is.

I've tried watching films with him that seem innocuous but there is so often a rape scene or a conversation that, for some reason, has to take place in an strip club. I often go and do something else when that happens but he will often already turn it off because he knows I don't like it.

The way women are viewed and regarded is getting worse.

It makes me feel very uncomfortable to be around someone who can enjoy watching it for entertainment.

I also don't expect a man to understand it. But it's making me view him differently.

I just can't cuddle up to someone in bed or have sex with someone knowing that they've just spent an hour watching women get brutally raped or gratuitous explicit sex scenes. It just feels hugely dissonant.

But I also feel like I'm the one in the wrong because everyone else seems to enjoy it.

Agreed.
Husband is indifferent to this, I switch over or walk away.
Fed up of it all 🤢

Totally agree with you OP. There's so much nudity and violence that it's become normalised. That's just bog standard TV.

To me it reflects real life in a way, life is not all fluffy bunny rabbits and Jane Austen, everyone is polite and nothing bad happens so I don't have to like it in real life bit it reflects society

I watch a lot more of these fictional shows than my husband I always have and I always will

I agree with you too. But I think the channels like Netflix, Amazon etc are more violent and uncensored than the terrestrial channels. You wouldn't get that in Downton Abbey! It's as though they want to portray a certain version of 'reality' - where they do things that can't be perpetrated IRL because they'd get locked up.

I thought the same - I actually think (some of) the sex scenes in Bridgerton do a lot for the plot in terms of the dynamic of the time between men and women. But I do think it's interesting that a TV show very clearly aimed at women and shot in a more 'artistic' way (the earlier seasons were slightly more graphic, the most recent one much less so) gets let off so lightly for that scene, which I saw lots of people talking about positively, when if it were the other way round it would have gone down much worse!

🤣🤣

Normal sex scenes make me feel uncomfortable too. We all know it happens, I don’t need to see it.

The fact that Bridgerton (which, let's face it is aimed at women) could contain a scene that could be classed as rape says it all really.