Game Of Thrones. Do I Give Up Now? WTF

[HotSauceCommittee]

Two episodes in.

Does it get better? The role the women have seems to be totally commodified. Sexual or breeding purposes only. Prostitution is the norm. Does it get "better"? Do the women claim more power as it goes on?
I think, at the moment, the entertainment value is totally occluded for me by the feelings of disquiet and nausea.

Yes, I agree it's really uncomfortable viewing!

I'm also not sure about the 'the men are treated badly too,' for the same reasons. Though I think some later plots make that slightly different.

I find it really fascinating how people respond to it (and how I respond to it). I'd love to carry on debating, I just don't want to spoil it for you.

LRD, I watched the first three series of GoT and now started reading the books. From what I can see after reading only 1/3 of book one, I agree with you that the books are more sexist than the TV shows. It's not so much what GM writes about but how he writes about it. He describes women's naked bodies in a rather lascivious way. The description of Danaerys's first sex on her wedding night is downright pornographic. And we are talking about a rape of a 13 year old girl here.

Still, I have to admit that GM can arrange a good plot and tell a good story. I like the fact that his characters are not just black and white.

Russian poet Alexander Pushkin said that evil and genius are incompatible. I am not sure I agree.

possible - but not detailed spoilers

HotSauceCommittee - men that are sexually abused (trying not to give any spoilers) include Theon Greyjoy, Varys, and all 8000 of Dany's unsullied.

True, it's not the same type of sexual violence (mutilation rather than rape) but I think it still counts. In terms of Buffy's proposed research, apart from Theon's, which was very graphic and deemed torture-porn by some reviewers, the others were not actually shown on screen, and therefore were not 'presented' in the same way (titilating, excessive focus etc). However, in a recent episode Varys actually states that he was 'glad' of what happened to him as a boy, which I personally found disturbing - as it minimised/excused sexual violence.

Professional troll Liz Jones has joined the Game of Thrones discussion in order to bait her readers with rape myths (I found this mildly triggering):

Rape with no violence, and little resistance, is in no way comparable to what the Russians did to the inhabitants of Berlin. A little faux resistance does not a crime make.

My feeling is that women should stop being so pathetic. We cannot have everything our own way: equal pay, year-long maternity leave, seats given up on the Tube, while on the other hand we get in a stew over a fictional bit of nonsense where a woman struggles, tossing her long blonde hair, before getting down and dirty and sighing with pleasure.

I haven't seen GoT so I can't comment on how this relates to the programme. She's completely wrong about rape, though.

She's incredibly thick.

Without wishing to spoil the plot, the whole point of the scene to which she refers is that viewers were disturbed because the female character appeared to be strongly non-consenting, then this became consent because she 'enjoyed' the rape.

The message (intentional or not) was that women secretly enjoy rape, so men shouldn't worry about them saying 'no' if those women have a history of enjoying sex with them.

This is an incredibly dangerous rape myth given how many rapes are by men known to the woman.