Down with the Free Folk

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

13 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Exactly. Coerced consent is no consent at all, is it?

No ma'am. 

[Julia H.]

3 hours ago, Mystical said:

Of course you could then say, well that's only for the Westerosi nobility, the smallfolk can choose to marry who they want and whom to have sex with.

I've seen this argument several times, I think, and I'm curious - do we really know that the smallfolk in Westeros can choose their spouses freely? Do we know that it's not fathers selling their daughters to the highest bidder or lordlings rewarding their servants with whatever girls among their peasants the faithful servants fancy? Do we know that boys who own nothing are indeed allowed to marry the daughter of a wealthier peasant or the daughter of a shop owner if they are in love? Do we know that a servant girl is free to leave her place of service to marry her sweetheart when the lord of the house fancies her or when the lady of the house is unwilling to let her go away because she wants the girl to continue serving her? 

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, Alexis-something-Rose said:

Layna, the thirteen year old who was raped by Gregor Clegane, then passed around to his men. That was right after the tourney of the Hand. The only reason Chiswyck died was because Arya heard him tell the story. The man thought it was the funniest thing in the world what happened to that poor girl. 

How many women do you think Gregor Clegane and his men raped in peace time? With everything that we know Clegane has done, Tywin protected him because he was terrifying. He protected him the same way Roose protected Ramsay and protected himself from the miller's brother. It's not like the northmen don't know that Ramsay was born of rape. "A quiet people, a quiet land." Who knows how many women those two raped between them.

Lollys Stokeworth. As far as we know, no one even looked for her rapists. I read them say plenty of times that they could not find Tyrek Lannister and not once say that they found one of her rapists. But you know, she comes from a small House, and she has the mental age of a 5 year old.

Tysha. Raped over and over. But I guess that's fine since the great Tywin Lannister said it was all good, so I guess she doesn't count.

It seems rape in the 7Ks doesn't hold the same sort of vitriol as it does when it's the wildlings that commit it. Rape is rape. It shouldn't matter who commits it.

ETA - I would also include Elia Martell in this. But her rape happened at the Sack of King's Landing, so she doesn't matter as much, I guess, even though everyone knows who raped and murdered her. Murdering an infant by dashing his head against a wall must be rewarded with rape afterward.

Gregor Clegane is a murderer, rapist, and criminal under the protection of his lord. And he is a member of low nobility himself. Those kind of things apparently do happen.

It is the same with Roose and Ramsay.

Tysha being raped on the order of a great lord of the Realm as well as involving the son of said lord definitely didn't get any justice. But then - we can be pretty sure that 'raping a woman who is declared/seen as a whore' is likely no crime at all in the Seven Kingdoms. Especially not if she paid her due, as Tysha was. This is of course horrible but this seems to be how things are.

The Lollys case is never touched upon, but we can be reasonably sure that the authorities tried to punish some of the rioters. We see how Jaehaerys I severely punishs the murderers of Rego Draz, and how Aegon II executes hundreds of the worst rioters during the uprising against his half-sister. But Tyrion and Cersei (who were attacked themselves during the food riots!) did have other things on their plate than dispensing justice. They had to fight a war and prepare for a siege.

That raping women is still a crime, even in war, can be seen by Stannis gelding rapists in his own army. Stannis doesn't care about women, but he cares about the law (or at least pretends he does).

2 hours ago, Mystical said:

The Wildlings call it 'stealing'. Westeros calls it 'marriage alliance'. Both is rape culture. Is the latter better than the former just because Westerosi think it's more civilized? You could actually argue that the former only has one victim, the stolen party. Whereas in a marriage alliance both parties are the victims because neither gets a choice in the matter.

That's just wrong on so many levels. Yes, both is rape culture, just as the US and Tudor England are both death penalty countries. Yet you are not hanged, drawn, and quartered in modern Texas whereas you died that way if you were a traitor in Tudor England. Most death cell inmates would prefer modern execution methods, however shitty they might be.

Also, it is a joke that both parties are victims in an arranged marriage. If I'm a nobleman - Stannis, say - and I have to marry an ugly wife like Selyse who I can barely stand than I'm not suffering much. I can go to the brothel to have sex, I can take mistresses, I can confine my lady wife to her apartment in the large castle we live in so I barely even see her much less interact with her. I can take high office at my brother's court and not take her with me. And so on. I can even refuse to have sex with her if I do not particularly care about legitimate children. As a man, I'm the one who initiates sexual relations in this world. No nobleman is going to be forced by his lady wife - who is sworn to obey him - to have sex with him (aside from, perhaps, very weird cases of half-crazy or psychopathic women).

2 hours ago, Mystical said:

Of course you could then say, well that's only for the Westerosi nobility, the smallfolk can choose to marry who they want and whom to have sex with. But the smallfolk (and even Lords or Ladies) also get raped at random by armies, during riots, on the orders of a Lord or just some person with an itch to scratch and no one gives a damn despite rape being a crime in the 7K. And a woman, especially a Lady, is seen as damaged goods after being raped through no fault of her own. Abhorrent as it is, the Wildlings don't seem to rape at random (at least I don't think) like that, they do it for the expressed purpose of choosing a partner to 'marry' and procreate with.

To me, neither is better than the other. Both are rape cultures, they just go about it in different ways.

There is no indication that rape is so prevalent among the Seven Kingdoms that women cannot leave the house - whereas wife-stealing and wildling raids are so common in the Gifts that they were depopulated and it is also a severe issues for the Northern clansmen and the Umbers.

Nowhere in the Seven Kingdoms do women/families leave certainly places because they fear their daughters are raped by their countrymen.

The idea that rape in peace time is some sort of epidemic in the Seven Kingdoms is nowhere established.

Also, the idea that the wildlings do not also rape enemy women in their many wars also makes little sense. Not every sexual encounter (think of Ygritte's earlier relationships) involves something they would call stealing. Meaning that rapes can and do certainly also happen in addition to the rapey wildling 'marriage practices'. Not every wildling wanting to have sex also wants to 'steal' a woman and then apparently have to deal with her for the rest of his life.

1 hour ago, Bernie Mac said:

Yes. A thousand times yes. Violently dragging someone away, possibly hurting maybe even killing their family as a consequence is far, far worse than the Westerosi equivalent of two families agreeing to a marriage alliance.

For one, the Westerosi nobles can actually put their foot down and say no. The noble men may be forced to leave and seek employment elsewhere, such as the Blackfish, and the women may face the possibility of being sent to the Faith, but they do have a choice in the matter.

Not to be rude, but the practices are night and day.

We see how properly arranged marriages go with Alysanne brokering them. The best arranged marriages are matches based on attraction and/or love. Alysanne married her son Aemon to his half-aunt Jocelyn because they were into each other. Baelon and Alyssa married because they had the hots for each other. Daella married Rodrik Arryn because she chose him, etc. This is the way to go.

One can assume that many arranged marriages went that way, but clearly not all of them. And in the case where women were forced into such marriages (like Lysa was) or in cases where the woman is later raped by her husband during the marriage (like Cersei was) we call that out as rape in our modern societies.

Yet this kind of thing is indeed much less worse than a scenario where you as a woman are abducted from your home by some stinking, foreign savage who, to be able to abduct and eventually rape you, most likely either killed or severely injured quite a few of your male family members, i.e. your father, brothers or husband.

1 hour ago, Bernie Mac said:

True. Unfortunately that is still true even in our society. Do you think out society is just as bad as Wildling society?

This kind of thing is just basic misogyny we still have in our day and age. We do see a worse kind of misogyny in wildling culture, though. Expressed by Ygritte when she pointed out that to get out of a 'stealing match' you as a woman can slay the man who stole you in his sleep. This sets the standard for an 'honorable wildling woman' (I know they don't think in such terms, it might be better to say 'self-respecting' or 'properly free wildling woman' nearly impossibly high. It means that the wildling woman who, for some reason or another, doesn't want to or cannot become a murderess deserves her fate as stolen woman. And that's just one of the ugliest things I've read about gender issues in ASoIaF. It borders on the fucked-up mind of Shae who actually mocks Lollys for her trauma of being raped dozens of times which isn't a sign of strength on her part but merely illustrates how much she has internalized sexual violence considering she started out as a rape victim herself.

16 minutes ago, Bernie Mac said:

No, that is not really the case. Most noble women we have seen in the series have not been raped in their marriage. Some certainly have, but they don't seem to be the norm.

Yes. And most nobles have consented to their marriage, even if they did not want to marry that person. Consent was still given. Saying no was still an option.

Here we have to watch about what we talk about. By our standards marital rape occurs whenever there is non-consensual sex/sexual acts in marriage. Westeros doesn't have the concept of marital rape (or, as I assume, the concept that you can rape a whore even if you pay her) but we have. Thus we wouldn't say that a woman consenting to a marriage consented to sex whenever her husband demanded it of her. Although of course women in Westeros are demanded to obey their husbands and know they are expected to be deflowered, have sex, produce children, etc. That's what it's all about.

We can expect that Cersei, for instance, consented to her marriage to Robert ... and then she later reconsidered that consent during individual interactions with Robert, hence our realization that she was raped.

The same with Dany whose story is nearly the same story of the average 'stolen woman'. Drogo didn't abduct her, but she was forced to marry a man she didn't like, who sexually abused her, forced her into finding him hot (which is actually a very rapey thing to write) to continually rape her during the first weeks of their 'marriage'.

This fate, perhaps a little bit worse would be the fate of the average stolen woman from the Gifts or the North.

But you are of course right that a (noble-)woman in Westeros usually does give some sort of consent to being married to a man, something a woman that is stolen cannot really give considering she is acting under real threat of violence.

It is an attempt to derail the discussion to shift the focus to the objective fucked-up state of the arranged noble marriages. This is definitely shitty, but it is no way as shitty and fucked-up as abducting and raping women and calling that 'marriage'.

If I had to choose a culture insofar as the danger of rape is concerned I'd definitely go with the Seven Kingdoms if the choice was wildling shit or Ironborn shit - after all, a very prominent case of male-male rape in the books is the case of poor Maester Kerwin, who is routinely raped by the Ironborn aboard Victarion's ship because he doesn't resist - which is exactly the kind of scenario Ygritte demands of women to fight off rapists/stealers. And I definitely don't want to live in a culture where I have to always keep up my guard and project strength and the willingness to maim and murder only get along with my everyday life.

[Lord Varys]

24 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

I've seen this argument several times, I think, and I'm curious - do we really know that the smallfolk in Westeros can choose their spouses freely? Do we know that it's not fathers selling their daughters to the highest bidder or lordlings rewarding their servants with whatever girls among their peasants the faithful servants fancy? Do we know that boys who own nothing are indeed allowed to marry the daughter of a wealthier peasant or the daughter of a shop owner if they are in love? Do we know that a servant girl is free to leave her place of service to marry her sweetheart when the lord of the house fancies her or when the lady of the house is unwilling to let her go away because she wants the girl to continue serving her? 

We just don't know. However, there is no point in marriage, let alone arranged marriage, if poor sot marries poor sot. Rich merchants and peasants likely also arrange marriages, but there wouldn't be the same force behind that than with the nobility - who really drill their children to know that it is their responsibility to marry and produce children.

But, honestly, we have no idea whether marriage even takes place among the rabble. In TSS the septon only shows up once a year in the Osgrey villages and the peasants are not exactly happy when he shows up. Are we do believe that all marriages in those villages - if there are any - take place only at a short period of the year? Not all that likely.

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

43 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Also, it is a joke that both parties are victims in an arranged marriage. If I'm a nobleman - Stannis, say - and I have to marry an ugly wife like Selyse who I can barely stand than I'm not suffering much. I can go to the brothel to have sex, I can take mistresses, I can confine my lady wife to her apartment in the large castle we live in so I barely even see her much less interact with her. I can take high office at my brother's court and not take her with me. And so on. I can even refuse to have sex with her if I do not particularly care about legitimate children. As a man, I'm the one who initiates sexual relations in this world. No nobleman is going to be forced by his lady wife - who is sworn to obey him - to have sex with him (aside from, perhaps, very weird cases of half-crazy or psychopathic women

I agree with all of this. Just thought I'd let ya know since we disagree on so much.

[Mystical]

37 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

That's just wrong on so many levels. Yes, both is rape culture, just as the US and Tudor England are both death penalty countries. Yet you are not hanged, drawn, and quartered in modern Texas whereas you died that way if you were a traitor in Tudor England. Most death cell inmates would prefer modern execution methods, however shitty they might be.

Pick a lane. Either I'm wrong on so many levels or you agree with me that both is rape culture. It can't be both. What the rest of this quoted part has to do with rape culture I wouldn't know.

40 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Also, it is a joke that both parties are victims in an arranged marriage. If I'm a nobleman - Stannis, say - and I have to marry an ugly wife like Selyse who I can barely stand than I'm not suffering much. I can go to the brothel to have sex, I can take mistresses, I can confine my lady wife to her apartment in the large castle we live in so I barely even see her much less interact with her. I can take high office at my brother's court and not take her with me. And so on. I can even refuse to have sex with her if I do not particularly care about legitimate children. As a man, I'm the one who initiates sexual relations in this world. No nobleman is going to be forced by his lady wife - who is sworn to obey him - to have sex with him (aside from, perhaps, very weird cases of half-crazy or psychopathic women).

What happens in the marriage is not the point. Of course the man would have an easier time due to greater rights via the patriarchy. The fact remains though that in an arranged marriage, both parties rarely consent to it because the match is not a love match but done by the respective parents or Warden or even King for political reasons, personal ambitions, keeping the peace...you name it.

45 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

There is no indication that rape is so prevalent among the Seven Kingdoms that women cannot leave the house - whereas wife-stealing and wildling raids are so common in the Gifts that they were depopulated and it is also a severe issues for the Northern clansmen and the Umbers.

All well and good but whose fault is that? The undermanned Wall which is the fault of Westeros and the North? The Lords not adequately protecting their citizens? The thousands of years of strife with the Wildlings? The Wildlings for fostering such a way of life? That no one has tried a different approach on both sides and let this be a 'tradition' that festered and continued since forever? I'm willing to bet that Westeros wasn't much different than this in it's own history.

54 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The idea that rape in peace time is some sort of epidemic in the Seven Kingdoms is nowhere established.

I didn't say there was. I said that due to it's higher population, the cases that this happens are more diluted. Doesn't mean it doesn't constantly happen all over the realm. Considering that we are talking millions vs 100 thousand, there are more rapes daily in Westeros than done by the Free Folk.

 

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Also, the idea that the wildlings do not also rape enemy women in their many wars also makes little sense. Not every sexual encounter (think of Ygritte's earlier relationships) involves something they would call stealing. Meaning that rapes can and do certainly also happen in addition to the rapey wildling 'marriage practices'. Not every wildling wanting to have sex also wants to 'steal' a woman and then apparently have to deal with her for the rest of his life.

I was specifically talking about the stealing. Since that was my original comparison, stealing vs arranged marriage as rape cultures. So why are trying to infer into my post something that I didn't say? I didn't think I need to mention that rape in war happens (which I did mention already) no matter what culture or how civilized, since that happens today in our world still. But that has nothing to do with my original post about both practices being rape cultures.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

Pick a lane. Either I'm wrong on so many levels or you agree with me that both is rape culture. It can't be both. What the rest of this quoted part has to do with rape culture I wouldn't know.

I tried a concrete analogy to underline how the rape cultures of the Seven Kingdoms and the wildlings are different. Just as the rape culture of modern western societies and, say, in the US slaver states of the 19th century are different (i.e. one is relatively better and one relatively worse).

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

What happens in the marriage is not the point. Of course the man would have an easier time due to greater rights via the patriarchy. The fact remains though that in an arranged marriage, both parties rarely consent to it because the match is not a love match but done by the respective parents or Warden or even King for political reasons, personal ambitions, keeping the peace...you name it.

Most noblemen and noblewomen do consent to marry a person of their father's, mother's, guardian's choosing. That's what expected of them. And very few marriages are made against the expressed will of one of the people involved (in the books it is clear that only Daenerys' marriage to Drogo is done against her will, as is Sansa's marriage to Tyrion). Marriage is not seen as something where 'love' figures into. It is what you do to be part of the society you live in.

Overall, though, this is a side issue and no good comparison to the shitty wildling practices, because nobility are only a tiny fraction of the people of the Seven Kingdoms. The women and men hurt by those practices do not equal the same amount of people that are affected by wife-stealing in a wildling-controlled/threatened environment.

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

All well and good but whose fault is that? The undermanned Wall which is the fault of Westeros and the North? The Lords not adequately protecting their citizens? The thousands of years of strife with the Wildlings? The Wildlings for fostering such a way of life? That no one has tried a different approach on both sides and let this be a 'tradition' that festered and continued since forever? I'm willing to bet that Westeros wasn't much different than this in it's own history.

Easy. The fault of the filthy, stinking, savage rapist who do the actual raping and stealing of women. There is not a single historical case where a leader of the Seven Kingdoms invaded or attacked or tried to conquer land north of the Wall which was not previously provoked by the shitty and aggressive behavior of the wildlings. The wildlings attack the Hundred/Seven Kingdoms, not the other way around.

The Seven Kingdoms have no need to change anything about the way they live. The wildlings have. They have to stop attack other people, steal from them, abduct them, rape them, and kill them. It is as simple as that.

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

I didn't say there was. I said that due to it's higher population, the cases that this happens are more diluted. Doesn't mean it doesn't constantly happen all over the realm. Considering that we are talking millions vs 100 thousand, there are more rapes daily in Westeros than done by the Free Folk.

That is a diversion to avoid the actual problematic issue - the shitty culture of the wildlings. Sure, it might be that perhaps more women are raped in the Seven Kingdoms than there are in the lands beyond the Wall if there is really an enormously larger population in the Seven Kingdoms (although I don't believe that). But that doesn't change that wildling culture is more shitty than the culture of the Seven Kingdoms.

1 hour ago, Mystical said:

I was specifically talking about the stealing. Since that was my original comparison, stealing vs arranged marriage as rape cultures. So why are trying to infer into my post something that I didn't say? I didn't think I need to mention that rape in war happens (which I did mention already) no matter what culture or how civilized, since that happens today in our world still. But that has nothing to do with my original post about both practices being rape cultures.

Again, that's comparing apples and oranges. Wife-stealing is common among wildlings, arranged marriages are not common among the people of the Seven Kingdoms (as far as we know they are a custom that's prevalent only among the nobility).

[Alyn Oakenfist]

52 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Wife-stealing is common among wildlings

Also a thing that hasn't been mentioned is that a lot of wildlings take their wifes from south of the Wall, by killing their families and kidnapping the wifes. Now that is obviously rape 100% of the time.

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We just don't know.

I'd disagree. We have several examples of smallfolk marriages (Davos, Ramsay's mom, the whore that talks to Alysanne at Mole's Town, the people we meet in the Riverland from Brienne's POV, Jenny of Oldstones and maybe some others,not really sure). Not a single one of these marriages seem to have been coerced, being consesual from either side. So as of now we can probably safel assume, that smallfolk marry out of love (or convenience, either way it's still consensual)

2 hours ago, Mystical said:

All well and good but whose fault is that? The undermanned Wall which is the fault of Westeros and the North? The Lords not adequately protecting their citizens?

That's like saying that the person guilty for the rape is the boyfriend who got knocked out by the rapist.

[Lyanna<3Rhaegar]

I've seen the Ironborn mentioned several times but haven't seen Asha's "by proxy" marriage spoke about. I don't want to derail the thread but I do think it's related & interesting. Do we know if this is seen as legal in the 7k? Is is legal among the Ironborn? Do we hear about anyone else this has happened to? 

I don't recall hearing about it anywhere else but I haven't read all of the other books, just the main series & some Dunk & Egg. I suppose it's legal among the Ironborn in the sense that Euron is saying it is but could Asha petition to the King of Westeros to have this undone? 

[Alyn Oakenfist]

7 minutes ago, Lyanna<3Rhaegar said:

I've seen the Ironborn mentioned several times but haven't seen Asha's "by proxy" marriage spoke about. I don't want to derail the thread but I do think it's related & interesting. Do we know if this is seen as legal in the 7k? Is is legal among the Ironborn? Do we hear about anyone else this has happened to? 

I don't recall hearing about it anywhere else but I haven't read all of the other books, just the main series & some Dunk & Egg. I suppose it's legal among the Ironborn in the sense that Euron is saying it is but could Asha petition to the King of Westeros to have this undone? 

It's hard to say if it's legal. First off for now at least given that it isn't consummated, it's clear that Asha could annul it (she could also nominally convert to Rhllor or the Seven in order to get rid of it). However on weather the ceremony was valid, well that's another question altogether. First off the marriage was done in the faith of the Drowned God, so we don't really know the rules there. Also the supreme authority on the matter is either the priesthood or Euron seeing as he's a nominally independent ruler. So all in all we don't know weather it is ok or not, but given that Euron has absolute power over the Iron Isles, it doesn't really matter. And if he were to lose that power, the marriage could simply be annulled on the basis that it wasn't consummated.

[Lord Varys]

54 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Also a thing that hasn't been mentioned is that a lot of wildlings take their wifes from south of the Wall, by killing their families and kidnapping the wifes. Now that is obviously rape 100% of the time.

Sure, that's usually ignored. Also the fact that people are murdered to 'arrange a marriage' by this particular type of 'stealing'.

54 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

I'd disagree. We have several examples of smallfolk marriages (Davos, Ramsay's mom, the whore that talks to Alysanne at Mole's Town, the people we meet in the Riverland from Brienne's POV, Jenny of Oldstones and maybe some others,not really sure). Not a single one of these marriages seem to have been coerced, being consesual from either side. So as of now we can probably safel assume, that smallfolk marry out of love (or convenience, either way it's still consensual)

Well, quite a few marriages among the nobility and royalty are also love matches or at least such that are rooted in affection. A very prominent example would be Aegon the Uncrowned and Queen Rhaena - Rhaena may very well have been gay and may have never desired her brother sexually or romantically, but she still was very happy marrying him the Targaryen way. There was no force involved there. Her way of trying to find love and happiness in love took place outside of marriage.

But, yeah, what we know about smallfolk marriages implies that the more ugly arranged marriages (like Lysa's, which really destroyed her as a person, piece by piece) are not as prevalent as they are among the nobility.

54 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

That's like saying that the person guilty for the rape is the boyfriend who got knocked out by the rapist.

Or that the men didn't protect 'their women' well enough. I rarely read anything as misogynist on the boards as that.

[Mystical]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Most noblemen and noblewomen do consent to marry a person of their father's, mother's, guardian's choosing. That's what expected of them.

'What is expected of them'. You made my point for me. That's not free will or choice. Nobles are brainwashed into a system as soon as they come out of the womb. It works better on some than others (see Sansa vs Arya for example), so a problem of consent is there before we even get to an actual arranged marriage. And as you said, it is expected of them so consent isn't involved there. I'm sure nobles can protest a match (very powerful ones and especially men) but for most of them it's done by someone of higher authority which again means no consent.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Easy. The fault of the filthy, stinking, savage rapist who do the actual raping and stealing of women. There is not a single historical case where a leader of the Seven Kingdoms invaded or attacked or tried to conquer land north of the Wall which was not previously provoked by the shitty and aggressive behavior of the wildlings. The wildlings attack the Hundred/Seven Kingdoms, not the other way around.

The Seven Kingdoms have no need to change anything about the way they live. The wildlings have. They have to stop attack other people, steal from them, abduct them, rape them, and kill them. It is as simple as that.

You said it yourself in this paragraph. The 7K have no reason to go north of the wall because it's a shithole.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Again, that's comparing apples and oranges. Wife-stealing is common among wildlings, arranged marriages are not common among the people of the Seven Kingdoms (as far as we know they are a custom that's prevalent only among the nobility).

I don't care about apples and oranges. Rape is rape. What's the difference between institutionalized rape and barbaric rape? The way it happens. But it's still rape no matter how many fruits you use in your analogies. And regular rape outside of arranged marriages also still happens in Westeros as well.

1 hour ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

That's like saying that the person guilty for the rape is the boyfriend who got knocked out by the rapist.

Nice try to label me a 'victim-shamer' but that ignores my point. Both sides of the wall are responsible for causing the situation to get as dire as it did. And innocent people had to pay the price for it. In this case the people who lived in The Gift and those on Umber land etc.. It's not their fault, it's the fault of their overlords (and the Wildlings on their side for inventing this way of life) who failed in the duty they have to their people.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

1 minute ago, Mystical said:

Nice try to label me a 'victim-shamer' but that ignores my point.

I'm not trying to label you as anything, I'm only using a compassion (just turning the group into characters) to show that your point is wrong. In the case of raiding and raping the guilty ones are just the guilty ones. It's not the 7k's fault that the wildlings are a bunch of savages who think kidnapping and rape act as marriage and who idolize rape, raid, pillage and murder.

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, Mystical said:

'What is expected of them'. You made my point for me. That's not free will or choice. Nobles are brainwashed into a system as soon as they come out of the womb. It works better on some than others (see Sansa vs Arya for example), so a problem of consent is there before we even get to an actual arranged marriage. And as you said, it is expected of them so consent isn't involved there. I'm sure nobles can protest a match (very powerful ones and especially men) but for most of them it's done by someone of higher authority which again means no consent.

So what? It is also expected of me to work for a living as per the rules of our society, that monogamy is the norm, that something like marriage exist and the legal baggage that comes with that. Am I brainwashed into this, too? People live in cultures and internalize their values. Catelyn wouldn't feel raped by Ned due to her cultural upbringing although a person in our day and age (not living in a cultural were marriages are still arranged to this day) would. And if somebody like Catelyn gives consent to Ned - a complete stranger - to marry and fuck her, then this is consent. Consent in a shitty world, yes, consent in a world we would not like to exist in reality and one we would not want to live in, but still consent as per the rules of their society.

Wife-stealing, both beyond the Wall as well as in the Seven Kingdoms, is completely different. In the form we criticize here, where it involves actual violence, attacks, murders, raiding of homes it is most clearly force done without the consent of the woman in question. There is no consent there by the standards of the Seven Kingdoms - and also not by the wildlings themselves if we talk about wife-stealing where the stolen women are taken by force.

4 minutes ago, Mystical said:

You said it yourself in this paragraph. The 7K have no reason to go north of the wall because it's a shithole.

The Seven Kingdoms also don't invade and try to conquer the Free Cities of Essos - which are wealthy and not exactly shitholes. They are just not a cultural caring much about conquest and expansion, unlike the wildlings.

4 minutes ago, Mystical said:

I don't care about apples and oranges. Rape is rape. What's the difference between institutionalized rape and barbaric rape? The way it happens. But it's still rape no matter how many fruits you use in your analogies. And regular rape outside of arranged marriages also still happens in Westeros as well.

You are just wrong that all arranged marriages involve institionalized rape. But even if they did - if you compare the culture the one with arranged marriages and no wife-stealing is simply much, much worse than the one with wife-stealing.

4 minutes ago, Mystical said:

Nice try to label me a 'victim-shamer' but that ignores my point. Both sides of the wall are responsible for causing the situation to get as dire as it did. And innocent people had to pay the price for it. In this case the people who lived in The Gift and those on Umber land etc.. It's not their fault, it's the fault of their overlords (and the Wildlings on their side for inventing this way of life) who failed in the duty they have to their people.

No, it is only the fault of the people who commit those crimes. It is not the fault of the people who are victim of the crimes or their leaders. That is a ridiculous claim.

[SeanF]

Wildling culture is anarchic.  I don't think that makes the average wildling worse than the average inhabitant South of the Wall.  The behaviour of the average wildling chieftain doesn't seem notably worse to me than the behaviour of the average lord of Westeros.  The latter just exploits people with a veneer of chivalry.

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

Wildling culture is anarchic.  I don't think that makes the average wildling worse than the average inhabitant South of the Wall.  The behaviour of the average wildling chieftain doesn't seem notably worse to me than the behaviour of the average lord of Westeros.  The latter just exploits people with a veneer of chivalry.

It is not just about the people with power, also about how the average people interact with each other. The average guy in the Seven Kingdoms does not want to emulate a wildling raider, an Ironborn reaver, or a savage from the Mountains of the Moon ... the average wildling and Ironborn does.

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, Alyn Oakenfist said:

Also a thing that hasn't been mentioned is that a lot of wildlings take their wifes from south of the Wall, by killing their families and kidnapping the wifes. Now that is obviously rape 100% of the time

Can you provide a quote to bqck up this claim of yours?

We are specifically told otherwise.

ASoS, Jon V

"You know nothing, Jon Snow. Daughters are taken, not wives.

And we know the Crowfood's daughter was taken, and no one was killed. And 3 of Flint's relatives were taken, and by the Weeper, who is a nasty PoS. He blinds the girls he doesn't take, but even he didn't take wives nor killed the whole family. 

[SeanF]

3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is not just about the people with power, also about how the average people interact with each other. The average guy in the Seven Kingdoms does not want to emulate a wildling raider, an Ironborn reaver, or a savage from the Mountains of the Moon ... the average wildling and Ironborn does.

I think you can draw a sort of parallel between thirteenth century England and the Scottish lowlands, and the Highlands, Ireland, and Wales at the same time.  Warfare was a good deal more savage in the latter than the former, with head-taking and enslavement very much the norm.  But, I think that simply reflects the fact that the latter societies were tribal, whereas England and lowland Scotland were feudal.  There was more effective law enforcement in feudal societies than in tribal ones.

That said, English lords (like their Westerosi counterparts) could turn very savage.  The wars fought by Edward I were brutal in the extreme, and the wars fought between rival factions under Edward II were very nasty.  If civil warfare in Westeros were to last decades, I think society would become every bit as savage as it is North of the Wall.

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

I think you can draw a sort of parallel between thirteenth century England and the Scottish lowlands, and the Highlands, Ireland, and Wales at the same time.  Warfare was a good deal more savage in the latter than the former, with head-taking and enslavement very much the norm.  But, I think that simply reflects the fact that the latter societies were tribal, whereas England and lowland Scotland were feudal.  There was more effective law enforcement in feudal societies than in tribal ones.

But the wildlings beyond the Wall are not that tribal. Some seem to stick with their own, but people like Ygritte or Val aren't part of a family or tribe - Ygritte doesn't even have any loyalty to Rattleshirt to whose band she belonged for a time. These people are more about themselves and band together for common interests, but within each group each individual thinks about themselves first. That's why they don't have any discipline and do not work well as an army despite the fact that many of them might be great and powerful fighters individually.

If I'm not very much mistaken then the term 'free folk' cannot be used to describe all wildlings - the Thenns are explicitly said to not be free folk, and one assumes that those who have a more fixed clan structure (like the Ice River clans, say, or people that are referenced as specific cultures like the hornfoot men - who seem to be sub-species of normal humans having actually horned feet, whatever that means) are more closely sticking together than the kind of wildlings we see in Ygritte.

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

That said, English lords (like their Westerosi counterparts) could turn very savage.  The wars fought by Edward I were brutal in the extreme, and the wars fought between rival factions under Edward II were very nasty.  If civil warfare in Westeros were to last decades, I think society would become every bit as savage as it is North of the Wall.

That might be, but the fact is that it doesn't, not is there an indication that the Seven Kingdoms were as savage as the wildlings when Aegon came to end the constant warfare that had indeed plagued the Seven Kingdoms before the Conquest.

[Alyn Oakenfist]

2 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Daughters are taken, not wives.

You're right. That's so much better. It's completely different. Kidnapping and raping wifes would be horrific but doing it to daughter's is no biggie. You're missing the point. 7k people don't go to another country to kidnap and rape their future wifes. (and stop comparing it to arranged marriages, those are a fringe phenomena with even fringer chances of it posing problems ie marital rape)