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.

The Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: Can We Not?

Last week, a group called Stop Patriarchy kicked off what they are calling their "abortion rights freedom ride" with the goal of ending both patriarchy and pornography. There is so much wrong here it's hard to know where to begin.

Let's start with the name. "Abortion rights freedom ride" obviously calls to mind the freedom rides of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. If you need to brush up on the history there, Wikipedia has a pretty good detailed description, but the quick and dirty overview is that a group of civil rights activist rode buses throughout the southeastern US to challenge segregation. Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregation in public places were not being enforced, and Jim Crow laws were still in place. The riders were frequently subjected to arrest and violence, and were even decried by the Kennedys as "unpatriotic."

The freedom rides were an historic milestone for civil rights. There is no denying their importance, and wanting to recreate that is an understandable feeling. However, using the name is misguided at best. The riders were putting themselves in very serious danger to correct an injustice, and appropriating their language dilutes what they did and disrespects their memory. And considering that one of their biggest name draws is Eve Ensler (who wrote an endorsement for them; it's unclear what her involvement is beyond that), I'm going to go out on a limb and say they are a very White Feminist (TM) group and didn't actually consult any activists of color when choosing this name. It's incredibly egregious when you consider how mainstream feminists have ignored non-white voices in the past and present.

In another linguistic form of appropriation, the group refers to forced motherhood as "female enslavement." While I agree that forced birth is horrible and torturous, using slavery-related terminology to discuss anything BUT actual slavery is simply unacceptable. There are many other ways to phrase this and get the same message across, so let's not misuse this one. Plus, "female" ignores trans* and other non-binary individuals who may have a uterus but do not identify as women.

Image from http://www.stoppatriarchy.org/

We need to talk about their routes, as well. The three states that have been in the news lately for their horrific anti-choice legislation -- Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina -- barely feature on the tour. It seems they are going to blow through Texas and North Carolina without doing anything at all. There is one stop in Cleveland. You know, the major city that is only a few hours drive from New York, where reproductive rights are still pretty well protected. People in rural Ohio aren't on the group's radar, I guess.

If you look at the map above, you'll notice that even in states that are less known for their reproductive freedoms, the rides still stop in major cities. Chicago, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and so on, are included instead of the small towns where people in need of abortion services are being the most screwed over. This indicates to me that the tour is more about making headlines and less about actually helping people.

The rides kicked off July 23 in, of all places, New York City and San Francisco. This makes the whole event reek of "let's take a poverty tour" where the activists can stay safely contained in their buses until they reach the nice cities where they can hold their rallies.

This group has raised plenty of money, as well. The figure I've heard is somewhere in the $20,000 range, and while I cannot find a specific plan for the money listed anywhere, I have to assume much of that is going toward travel costs. This amount of money could do a lot more good being sent directly to clinics or to organizations that provide funds or transportation to impoverished people who need reproductive services. Paying to bus in some coastal activists seems like such a waste.

The last thing that really needs to be addressed is the group's anti-pornography stance. I understand that the mainstream porn industry has a lot of problems, but ending porn altogether -- as if that were even possible -- is not the way to go. There are many people out there who identify as feminists who find sex work in varying forms empowering. Many people who do it voluntarily, because they enjoy it and can make a good living that way. Dismissing all porn and sex work as evil shames and degrades these individuals while also attempting to remove their freedom to choose their profession. It would be much more useful to reform the porn industry and legalize different forms of sex work so that they can be subject to regulations that protect against the more negative aspects.

This group needs to rethink its events and stances. There are ways to fight the anti-choicers and problematic aspects of our society without wasting money or appropriating language.

Opinions on this post are my own. However, I want to give credit where credit is due and thank @AngryBlackLady, @dwalton1, @meadowgirl, and many others for the Twitter discussions that brought this to my attention.

Facebook's Sex Trafficking Problem: A Follow-Up

So, the Sonagachi Facebook page has finally been removed. This is a good thing, and I'm proud to be part of the group of people who worked to have it done.

But I'm also incredibly disappointed in Facebook. Why did it take this much work to remove a page that was blatantly graphic and in promotion of human trafficking? Why was this example of violence against women not immediately recognized as a violation of their terms of service?

In light of WAM's successful campaign to get Facebook to agree to give gender-based hate speech the same treatment as homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, Islamophobic, etc, hate speech, it seems especially appalling that it took as much effort as it did to have this removed.

Here is a brief overview of the process of reporting this page:

June 4
-My friend Liz discovered the page while doing research into the Sonagachi district for a blog post she is writing.
-She shared the page with a Facebook group that we are both members of, asking anyone who could stomach looking at the page to please report it.
-Many of us reported it as sexually graphic content.
-After a short period of time, those of us who reported it began receiving the emails saying it would not be removed (I included the language in my post last night). Many of us filled out the feedback form with some strongly-worded disagreement.
-Some of us reported it a second time, only to receive the same email, and fill out the feedback again.
-Liz wrote about the process on her own blog. Another friend, Slay Belle, wrote about it for the Powder Room section of Jezebel.
-We share these posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, sometimes tweeting at well-known feminist activists and groups who might also promote the issue.
-Emails were sent to WAM

June 5
-The Jezebel post was promoted to the first page of the site.
-More people tweeted at Nick Kristof, Anderson Cooper, and other individuals they thought might be interested in the story.
-Women's Media Center shared Liz's blog post
-Liz's post was also published on Persephone Magazine
-The Daily Dot picked up the story
-Another member of the same original Facebook group created a Change.org petition (which has been refocused to be a more general plea for the site to take trafficking pages more seriously)
-The Sonagachi fan page was removed

I repeat my question: why did it take almost a full day, dozens of reports, a social media barrage, and blog attention to get this page removed? Why was it not enough that it was full of graphic imagery and victimization of women, many of whom appear underage?

Why, despite their recent promises, does Facebook still not care about women?

Facebook: Breastfeeding Bad, Sex Trafficking Good

Earlier today, a friend made me aware of a Facebook page for Songachi, which is the red light district in Kolkata, India. She just returned from a trip there and was working on a post for her own blog when she came across the page -- which, by the way, has about 3,000 likes. She explained that many of the women who are sex workers in the district are minors, and most are there against their will. Essentially, this page and those who like it are supporting sex trafficking.

In addition to the trafficking element, the page contains many explicit photos, including women masturbating and performing oral sex. There is really nothing about the page that doesn't violate Facebook's TOS.

So I and many of my friends reported it. I believe most of us chose to call it sexually explicit. I would think that, in light of Facebook's recent announcement that it would take pages encouraging violence against women seriously, it would be a no-brainer and the page would be removed.

So imagine my rage when I got the following reply.

Hi,

Thanks for your recent report of a potential violation on Facebook. After reviewing your report, we were not able to confirm that the specific page you reported violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Learn more about what we do and don't allow by reviewing the Facebook Community Standards: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards.

Thanks,
Viki

Give us feedback to let us know how we are doing: https://www.facebook.com/survey/take.php?survey_id=242477152482072&cid=258497640937891

I don't know who Viki is, but she's not very good at her job. In fact, I've reported it twice and gotten the same reply. Maybe Viki is actually a robot.

Let's get this straight: Facebook takes down images of women breastfeeding, images of cancer survivors showing off their scars and tattoos, and body-positive images because there is a nipple distant in the background. However, Facebook leaves up pages that talk about raping women, calling them sluts, and this one, which promotes the sexual exploitation of minors AND blatantly displays graphic sexual images.

This is unacceptable and disgusting. Facebook's recent promise to take threats of violence against women seriously (which they should have been doing all along) indicates that this page has no business being on the site. Leaving it up, especially when positive non-explicit images are removed, just shows that in Facebook's eyes, women are unimportant. They are openly supporting hate, violence, and exploitation, and we need to stand against it.