Consent and Misogyny on 'Game of Thrones'

What the hell world do we live in that we can't even have consensual menstruation incest anymore?

During this week's episode of Game of Thrones (which will get a full recap later this week) we saw some of the immediate follow-up to Joffrey's death, including a scene between Jaime and Cersei.

In the books, Jaime is not present for Joffrey and Margaery's wedding, and does not return to King's Landing until after his nephew/son is dead. His first encounter with Cersei is when he enters the sept -- this is chapter 62 of A Storm of Swords -- as she stands over the king's body in mourning. The pair have grief-fueled period sex right on one of the altars, which plays out like this:

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue. "No," she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, "not here. The septons . . . "

"The Others can take the septons." He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother's altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon's blood was on her, but it made no difference.

"Hurry," she was whispering now, "quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime." Her hands helped guide him. "Yes," Cersei said as he thrust, "my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you're home now, you're home now, you're home." She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei's heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined.

There is some resistance from Cersei at first, but ultimately she is enthusiastic about wanting him. The notion of consent in this scene as written starts off a little murky but is is, in my opinion, a clear yes at the end. This entire situation played out very differently in the show.

On television, Cersei never gives consent, and never says or acts as though she wants her brother/lover. Jaime forces himself on her, in a rather brutal and violent way, while she begs him to stop. It's rape. There is no other way to look at it. The show writers took a scene that is complicated and full of grief, passion, and a whole host of other emotions and boiled it down to Jaime assaulting Cersei next to the body of their dead son.

While the universe that this story is set in does include regular threats of rape, there are a lot of times where it fits. It's brutal and horrific, of course, and it's not comfortable to watch, but given the point in history on which Westeros is loosely based (yes, it is a fictional world, but there are elements and events that are inspired at least in part by medieval times), it does work within the narrative.

So, yes, I expect a certain amount of violence against women, because there's violence against everyone -- men, women, children, direwolves (I'm still not completely over Lady). But since there already is so much brutality going around, the show's writers do not by any means need to add in any additional horror, and they certainly don't need to mangle character development to do so.

Previously, they added in the murder of the prostitute Ros. If you don't remember, she was one of the women Tyrion hired to try and screw away some of Joffrey's more horrible qualities. That didn't work, of course, because instead of sex the boy king decided to make the women abuse each other, then ultimately killed Ros with a crossbow. It seems that the scenario was added in to highlight Joff's cruelty, but that was already quite clear. He beheaded the father of his betrothed and then made her look at his mounted head, among many other things. We were already well aware of what a skidmark the kid was, which made Ros' murder completely gratuitous. In the books, when Daenerys marries Khal Drogo, they do not consummate the relationship until she says "yes." However, on the show, he forced her to have sex regardless.

Jaime Lannister was, until last night, on something of a path to redemption. We knew him as the Kingslayer, and someone who is willing to murder a child, but on his road back with Brienne of Tarth, he seemed to be growing, even softening a little. He lied to their captors to save Brienne from being raped, for example. Even some of his prior brutality -- like pushing Bran from a window -- was done out of love. Whatever else he may do, he adores Cersei and will do practically anything for her. It was torture for him to know she was being harmed when she was married to Robert. There is no sense to or context for the way he attacked her.

There is simply no good reason for this scene to have played out the way it did. It's gratuitous, does not further the story, and is completely out of character. As great as this show is in many ways, it has made a few misogynistic missteps, and this week's unnecessary rape scene was one of the more egregious ones.

From the Archive: Writing to Congresspeople about H.R. 3

"From the Archive" is a series of posts that I wrote on past, no-longer-updated blogs that I feel are good enough to need a new home.

This post was originally written in January 2011.

Judging by this site, my Representative is Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez. I think she's pretty lefty and is probably opposed to H.R. 3 anyway, but you never know, so I wrote a letter that I plan to send her. I guess now it counts as an open letter:

Dear Congresswoman:

Let me start by saying that I'm adamantly pro-choice. I believe that if a woman needs or wants an abortion, she should have it, no matter the circumstances. Her family, her partner, her doctor (barring legitimate medical necessity) and certainly the government should not get to dictate otherwise. It's her decision. I also believe that all reproductive health procedures - yes, including abortion - should be covered by whatever insurance the woman has. If it's private, fine, but also if it's government-based care like Medicaid. Even the procedures that make people uncomfortable should be covered.

I think that H.R. 3, which would limit access to abortion funds for rape victims based on the circumstances of the attack, is disgusting.

I'm not, at this point, a rape survivor. Luck has been on my side and I am not one of the 1 in 4 women who has been sexually assaulted.

So far.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where that could change at any time. It's something I think about when I walk home from the subway at night; when I have to cut through a park; when I meet a new man; when I get a drink at a party or a bar. Despite how cautious I am in all those situations, I could be attacked. Simply because I was born female, I have to worry about this.

John Boehner does not.

As a heterosexual, cisgendered man, the new Speaker of the House has likely never dealt with that sort of fear. He has probably never been cat-called on the street or had someone stalk him back and forth on a nearly-empty subway platform. No one will ever tell him he was asking for it; that he shouldn't have been drinking, shouldn't have accepted that ride home, or shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt.

The same goes for most of the sponsors of the bill -- if you read the list, all but a few are male.

Congress has no business creating a hierarchy among rape survivors. All rapes are horrible, violent crimes by nature. Whether the attacker used physical force, drugs, coercion or some other method doesn't matter. Rape is rape, a crime is a crime, and a survivor deserves the dignity of having all options available to her (I say her, because while men do get raped, they will never need to seek an abortion after).

Sadly, we live in a world where I could rattle off a short list of friends I know to be rape survivors -- and I'm sure there are even more who haven't told me.

I don't know the details or circumstances for all of them -- and I don't need to. Each of them, along with all other survivors, deserves the same -- justice, of course, but also access to all the treatment they need and choose to have, including abortion. No matter how they got there.

And if my luck runs out and I am ever attacked, I would demand the same.

So I urge you to respect all sexual assault victims and preserve their dignity by voting NO to H.R. 3. It is a horrifying, appalling and unnecessary bill that will ultimately harm more people than it could ever help.

I urge everyone to write to their representatives about this. No matter who they are, but especially if you live in a district represented by one of the people who support this bill. Especially if you can inform them that next time you are in the voting booth, where they stood on this bill may influence what lever you pull (or button you push, or whatever).

Also, if you click on the link above and look at the full text, at least four of the sponsoring Representatives are women. That just makes my soul ache.

From the Archive: #DearJohn - another hashtag of note

"From the Archive" is a series of posts that I wrote on past, no-longer-updated blogs that I feel are good enough to need a new home.

This post was originally written in January 2011.



This time, it's not horrifying the way #rulesforgirls was.

The #DearJohn hashtag started in response to the HR3 bill - which is on the surface about federally-funded abortion but more importantly would re-define rape to include ONLY instances of force. Rapes that involve coercion or drugs, as well as statutory rape and incest on anyone over 18, would not be covered if they resulted in a pregnancy that the woman wanted to terminate.



Basically, it's a giant clusterf@#$ that serves only to endanger women and empower rapists.

So some awesome feministas have taken to Twitter, much like they did with the #mooreandme tag, to address tweets to Speaker of the House John Boehner, explaining to the self-righteous, overly-spray-tanned disaster of a speaker that HR3 is disgusting, appalling and unacceptable. They are also directed at different members of Congress to urge them to vote AGAINST this terrible bill.

The original call to action (with hashtag) appeared on Tiger Beatdown. They also linked to a site where you can find your representative and write to them.



I don't know if a Twitter campaign can truly change policy. I'd like to think it can - it certainly shows that the people are unhappy with this bill, and theoretically it's the people that Congress was elected to represent. I'd like to think at least some Representatives see what their constituents think and act accordingly. It's also somewhat heart-warming to see people use social media this way. In between idiocy and terrible grammar, people are speaking out about something important.

Are we really doing this again, Facebook?

Remember back when it took a media shaming campaign to convince Facebook to remove a blatantly pro-human-trafficking page?

Well, it seems this time they're deliberately allowing a pro-rape image to remain on their site.

I'm not going to embed it, but it's a picture of a female doll being gang-raped by male dolls, with the caption "Bitches be like, I hang out with guys because they're less drama." It's pretty obvious, blatant, and terrible. If you want to see it, it's here, but that's your call.

And yet Facebook allows it to remain. It takes media shame to get a trafficking site removed, and now they're letting yet another rape-promoting post stay up.

The message is clear: the site doesn't care about women.