The Use of Rape in ASoIaF: The Critics Speak

[Iotun]

No, I realise that - didn't mean to imply otherwise. :) I'm just choosing the most unambiguous example that came to mind.

This seems to me to be an oversimplification and even a bit of a reach. The situation is more fairly characterised as being that if Mance comes to believe that Jon's conversion is less than genuine, he will kill him. It's possible for Jon to risk rejecting Ygritte and hoping to find an alternative way to persuade Mance of his sincerity.

It's also worth noting that Ygritte wants to sleep with Jon, but she also does not want him to die! She intervenes primarily because of the latter, not the former. She's not using the threat of force to extract sex, she's trying to protect him from that threat. I totally disagree with the claim that she doesn't show 'compassion' for Jon's predicament: she very clearly does show compassion for Jon. The issue is that she isn't actually aware of the full extent of his predicament, because he doesn't tell her. She thinks his predicament is that Mance is suspicious of him. She does not know that his actual predicament is that he's still loyal to his oaths, because he's on a secret mission. (She might, I suppose, have some suspicion of the type, but if so it's very vague and ill-formed.)

I disagree. Circumstances conspire to leave him little realistic choice, but that is not the same as being forced and is entirely different from being raped. It's much more complicated than that: he wants to have sex, but he doesn't want to break his vow. He can thus be said to both want and not want the situation. You can't disregard the former any more than you can disregard the latter. Both Jon's desire and his reluctance are valid elements of his feelings. The situation is much too complicated to be simply characterised as 'rape', IMO.

I'm sorry, but this is a straw man.

The final passage of the chapter is:

"It was not until they were halfway across the Milkwater that Jon felt enough to say, "I never asked you to lie for me."

"I never did", she said. "I left out part, is all."

"You said -"

"- that we fuck beneath our cloak many a night. I never said when we started, though." The smile she gave him was almost shy. "FInd another place for Ghost to sleep tonight, Jon Snow. It's like Mance said. Deeds is truer than words".

Jon has just been threatened with death, and Ygitte is stating to him that tonight they will fuck to prove what she said to Mance. Its disingenous to say that Jon had a 'choice' to convince Mance in other ways. He's a, what, 14, 15 year old by that point, in a band of hundreds of thousands of wildlings who would have no issue in killing him, and Ygritte has just told a lie which if she reveals to anybody else to be a lie, Jon will die. You don't find 'another way' in this situation. There's never a point of consent in this case. Ygritte states to Jon that tonight they will fuck, even though at every point until then Jon has rebuffed her. What does it matter if Ygritte doesn't know that Jon is held back because of his oath? Since when is a rapist excused because they are unaware of the reasons behind their victims refusal. For Jon, his oath is a critical part of his identity, and despite his attraction to Ygritte, he is uncomfortable breaking it. Whether Ygritte knows this or not is inconsequential - a victim does not need to explain their reasons for their choices. Jon is 'forced' to break an aspect of his identity that is held very dear to him, without his consent.

Look I'm not saying its the worst thing that has happened in the series, or that Ygritte is evil - she is clearly acting within what is expected of her society, and she clearly truly has feelings and cares for Jon. It is also clear that Jon has feelings for her, and that he later enjoys the relationship, but his own decision is that other aspects of his personality are more important than his sexual urges. He does not consent to the sex, and he does suffer an internal stuggle and humiliation beause of it, even as he gains greater value through emotional affection. However he, and we, can only know of what he will gain in hindsight, after the fact has happened. Non-consensual sex is rape, and it bothers me that you're not willing to name it for what it is. If the gender roles were reversed, if a female attracted to a man but unwilling to have sex with him because of her own internal reasons, is essentially told by the man as a statement of fact that tonight they will fuck to prove a lie he just said to some other guy threatening her, it would unquestionably be seen as rape, regardless of whether the man is also protective of the woman and has feelings for her. But the same concern is not granted to the man in the reverse sitation, and you keep making excuses for it.

[Dreadwolf]

Not exactly rape but we also have some other interesting moments of sexual harassment against men in the books:

• Cersei twisting Tyrion’s cock when he was a little baby;
  
• Threats addressed to Arya when she was Ary. As stated above It*s done by sick sociopath, pedophile and a irreparable criminal but still that was present in the books.
  

On Jon - Ygrytte casus: I personally believe he liked her and it between them was more or less sexually attracted by the girl. There was indeed a moral fight he struggled for her however I do not think a man of honor – such Jon no doubt was/is would easily accept to cover his own sins by means of hiding behind the girl’s skirt. She was the most experienced and quite unusual personage for a westerosi woman – yet there is nothing in there relations making her a rapist – be that a spiritual one of the Jon’s fragile psych. I believe their affair/ encounter deeply affected Jon Snow. But that was not like a post-rape trauma. And we must be crazy to judge her that way. [if ever] Jon Snow started to kill the boy inside himself and became a man - partly due to all that he learnt by Ygritte. She made him think and realize that things are not only black and white and good and evil for one example.

Somehow in a vague connection but still on topic would be exploration on relations between Stanis and Melisandre. Especially if we accept that shadow babies are created amidst hot sex near the fire place. Of course we do not know what actually Stanis know about all these. But I am inclined to believe he took that choice alone. Otherwise he would be somehow badly used sexually.

On topic: All in all I would say that if GRRM narrating suffers by any flaws those are not connected with the so alleged gender-unbalanced rape.

Finally - one of the most ugly scenes which I personally did not like was Gregor Clegane's performance with the tavern keeper girl. Yet it was part of the world building. At least in my humble opinion.

[Cas Stark]

Also, it isn't explicitely stated that Theon is raped, but he's most definitely sexually abused in mulitple ways, including being forced to perform sex acts on Jeyne Poole, as well as probable castration or some variation of same. And we see the shame that his sexual mutilation has caused him, seems pretty realistic to me.

[Theda Baratheon]

Yes, and I think that it would have been more than looks if he wasn't under Jon's wing. That's what is suggested, anyways.

Yep. that's the reading I got from it too.

[princeimrahil]

Not to bog you down with hours of writing, I'll simply say I agree with this thread's premise. It's not that there isn't sexual violence towards men in this series, nor that there shouldn't be sexual violence towards women in this series. The issue for me is the sheer volume of female sexual abuse Martin chooses to imbue the series with. A little bit, heck even a lot would have made sense .But this much is just absurd. Everywhere you turn there's a 13 year old whore, and he dwells on it so much. It even sometimes gets to the extent of writing sleazy literotica fantasies about it (like Dany's first time with Drogo).

For such a brilliantly balanced and progressive series, it still has some blind spots. Give me one good graphic scene of some Night's Watchman raping another Night's Watchman and then them falling in love like Dany did with Drogo, and I'll be satiated and convinced that GRRM's goal is to show how disturbed and perilous this world is.

Admittedly, women are generally more into rape literature than guys are (50 Shades, anyone?) so this isn't exactly a gendered issue or an issue of George being some misogynist (obviously he's not). The problem is that bombarding us with such a wide variety of rape, ranging in portrayal from obviously bad to middling to downright positive, has the effect of desensitizing and normalizing the rape. I would definitely like to see the reaction from the male public at large (particularly the GoT viewing audience), if instead of women, this story was hinged on a million instances of men being raped. I don't think the reaction would be the same.

I'm reminded of this Martin quote:

“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”

Now, he's not speaking explicitly about rape - he's talking about consensual sex. But I think the general point is something we should consider, especially in light of Ms. Swift's point about "normalizing" rape. Namely, we all seem to be pretty okay with "normalized" violence. When I read this line:

The problem is that bombarding us with such a wide variety of rape, ranging in portrayal from obviously bad to middling to downright positive, has the effect of desensitizing and normalizing the rape.

my initial impulse was to edit it:

The problem is that bombarding us with such a wide variety of rape violence, ranging in portrayal from obviously bad to middling to downright positive, has the effect of desensitizing and normalizing the rape violence.

And let's be honest - Martin is far more graphic about violence in general than he is about sexual violence in particular. I think isolating these two from each other misleads us about their main function in the series, which is to achieve a state of "grittiness."

Now, "gritty" does not mean "realistic" (though it is often mistaken for such). When a work is "gritty" it means that it is brutally graphic, full of suffering/misery, and laden with all kinds of socially abhorrent behavior. A "gritty" work assumes that life is nasty, brutish, and short - that mankind is inherently violent and cruel, and that idealism is really just naivete. Very Hobbesian, really. "Grittiness" ostensibly works to undermine tropes that some find unrealistic - why supervillains monologue in front of heroes instead of just dispatching them brutally, for example - but the end result is often a wallowing in depraved acts that uncritically accepts them and presents them as the norm, when in fact they may only be normative for small, select populations or in extreme corner cases (think of the protagonist in Precious).

I think Martin is going for grittiness - you can see it in his violence, in the deeply damaged family relations, in the widespread sex trade, etc. The problem for him, I think, is that fantasy, as a genre, is already pretty ok with a high level of violence. Aragorn chops up orcs left and right; Rand al'Thor turns trollocs into cinders. George needs to add some extra punch to his grittiness, and he finds it in cannibalism, incest, and sexual violence.

I think that is what the author of the linked article might have been looking for, even if she couldn't quite articulate it - and in that capacity, I think there may be a bit of a point.

[Elba the Intoner]

I am in the camp that thinks that there is room for GRRM to do even better but it is not fatally flawed at all. Otherwise what would I be doing on a site such as this discussing every aspect of his story? And rape is an aspect that can't be ignored. As the OP stated, the rape issue is used as a line of demarcation with the real horrifying characters being out and out unfeeling violent rapists like Gregor, Rorge and the some of the other Bloody Mummers. But as Danm999 and others have pointed out, the threat of sexual abuse and actual rape of males is there in the books, just not as overt as it may be for females.

However, looking at this further, there is one character that comes to mind as not being so clear cut and goes through a transformation partly based on his own sexual abuse and this is Theon. One of the reasons I disliked Theon right off the bat was because of how he treated women. His treatment of the Captain's daughter was disgusting and vile and I'd argue what he did to her was rape. It was pretty obvious right then and there that Robb sending Theon as an envoy to Balon was not going to end well for good guy Robb. Also, the way Theon uses Kyra later when he takes Winterfell and it doesn't work out for him as he'd hoped and hurts her while having sex with her is another example of him being sexual abusive. I really didn't think there was any situation that could happen to Theon that I would feel sorry for him at all by that point.

Then of course he is captured by Ramsay and turned into Reek. Others have pointed out that there's definitely been some sexual tinged abuse going on there along with horrific psychological abuse, not even counting the scene of the wedding night with Jeyne/fake Arya. It's subtle and not as obvious as the female rapes but it's there. And, what's happened to my view of Theon? I feel really sorry for him now. I wouldn't wish what he went through on anybody.

[Cas Stark]

How did Theon rape the captain's daughter? She tells him she wants to be his salt wife and she pines for him on the deck of the ship while they are anchored at Pyke. Yes, he treated her like a piece of meat, but that doesn't make it rape.

[Theda Baratheon]

I think Theon's attitude towards women before was pretty vile, yes. but he did not rape that Captains daughter...let's not just chuck around this word with all it's fully loaded meaning at this instance, because I really don't think it's true at all.

[Elba the Intoner]

Well, it was about power for him and his having a need to feel like he is a powerful awesome dude in that scene. He didn't care at all about what she wanted. Is rape always about the use of physical sexual force on someone? I don't think so.

[SeanF]

Now, "gritty" does not mean "realistic" (though it is often mistaken for such). When a work is "gritty" it means that it is brutally graphic, full of suffering/misery, and laden with all kinds of socially abhorrent behavior. A "gritty" work assumes that life is nasty, brutish, and short - that mankind is inherently violent and cruel, and that idealism is really just naivete. Very Hobbesian, really.

IMO, that's not Martin's message. Westeros is not a society in which rape, murder, incest, cannibalism, etc. are the norm. Most of Westeros' inhabitants are as appalled by these things as we are. What he has portrayed is a society in which moral norms have broken down under the stress of civil war.

Nor is his universe entirely bleak. Robb spared Osha's life, and in turn, she rescues Rickon. Ned Stark's benevolent rule of the North means that most of his Bannermen remain committed to his family. Davos risks death to save Edric Storm, and to speak out against the attack on Lord Celtigar's people, but Stannis recongises his moral worth. Brienne retains her compassion and humanity in the face of mockery and abuse, and so on.

If the books were "gritty" in the way you describe, every act of mercy, kindness, and compassion would have disastrous consequences, but that isn't so.

[Theda Baratheon]

Well, it was about power for him and his having a need to feel like he is a powerful awesome dude in that scene. He didn't care at all about what she wanted. Is rape always about the use of physical force on someone? I don't think so.

But she consented.

[Elba the Intoner]

Consented, or gave in?

ETA I don't have the answer myself but I think it's something we are meant to think about in the way it was written is my point here.

[Cas Stark]

Well, it was about power for him and his having a need to feel like he is a powerful awesome dude in that scene. He didn't care at all about what she wanted. Is rape always about the use of physical sexual force on someone? I don't think so.

People consent to sex for all kinds of various reasons. There are all kinds of power mis-matches in relationships, one person is in love, the other person isn't...one person has one set of expectations, the other a different set.

There is no way I can see to read the passage where the captain's daughter is not actively consenting to sex. And, to cap it off, she continues to reach out to him after he's off the ship.

[mormont]

The final passage of the chapter is:

"It was not until they were halfway across the Milkwater that Jon felt enough to say, "I never asked you to lie for me."

"I never did", she said. "I left out part, is all."

"You said -"

"- that we fuck beneath our cloak many a night. I never said when we started, though." The smile she gave him was almost shy. "FInd another place for Ghost to sleep tonight, Jon Snow. It's like Mance said. Deeds is truer than words".

Jon has just been threatened with death, and Ygitte is stating to him that tonight they will fuck to prove what she said to Mance. Its disingenous to say that Jon had a 'choice' to convince Mance in other ways.

It absolutely isn't, I'm afraid. Jon could have called Ygritte's bluff: would she have betrayed him to Mance? He could have asked her to pretend. He could even have rejected her and claimed that they had been sleeping together as she said, but now he had tired of her. All of these were riskier options, but they were options. It's simply not the case that Jon had no choice at all: and even if it were true, it's not the case that this means Ygritte was forcing and therefore raping him. Ygritte is not displeased by the turn of events, but nevertheless it's that turn of events that's to blame.

There's never a point of consent in this case.

There certainly is. What there isn't, is a refusal.

What does it matter if Ygritte doesn't know that Jon is held back because of his oath? Since when is a rapist excused because they are unaware of the reasons behind their victims refusal.

But there is no refusal. Jon has not engaged in any sexual behaviour with Ygritte up to this point, that's true, but he hasn't explicitly refused her either: at least not so far as I recall. The situation is more complex than you want to acknowledge. To date, all that's happened is that Ygritte has been flirting with Jon and he's not taken her up on it, despite being attracted to her. That she continues to pursue him despite evidence of reluctance is perhaps problematic behaviour, but equally we can assume (since Jon is in fact attracted to her, and when we look at his conversation with Tormund, for example) that she's getting mixed messages from him. This is firmly in teen-with-romance-problems territory, not creepy-rapist-stalking.

Her knowledge of his determination to stick to his oath matters, because it is the factor that explains those mixed messages. Without that knowledge, her intervention with Mance takes on a completely different character: it's still sexually aggressive, but in a taking-the-initiative way, not a forcible way. (And I reiterate, her primary motivation is to save his life!)

It is also clear that Jon has feelings for her, and that he later enjoys the relationship, but his own decision is that other aspects of his personality are more important than his sexual urges. He does not consent to the sex, and he does suffer an internal stuggle and humiliation beause of it, even as he gains emotional affection.

I think this is a real stretch. Jon clearly does consent to the sex, every time we see them have sex - he even takes the initiative sometimes. He suffers internal struggle over it, but emphatically not humiliation, internal or otherwise. The only argument about non-consent is about Jon's initial reluctance to embark on the relationship in the first place out of a sense of duty: surely not every sexual act that occurs in a relationship that one party initially had reservations can be defined as rape because of that initial reluctance.

Non-consensual sex is rape, and it bothers me that you're not willing to name it for what it is.

I am perfectly willing to name non-consensual sex as rape. I'm not willing to name this situation as non-consensual sex, though. This is not making excuses: it's a holistic view of the actual facts. Jon is reluctant to forswear his oaths, but that's not the same as 'Jon was raped'.

Look at it this way: when Jon killed Qhorin Halfhand, he broke an oath, by killing a brother. He was reluctant to do that, too. Qhorin forced him to do it. Life is complicated like that. I think that if Ygritte had manoeuvered Jon into that conversation with Mance, or had known about his oath, or had known for a fact that Jon didn't find her attractive, or had done a half-dozen other things she didn't do, I'd be more inclined to see the situation as non-consensual, and I'm not suggesting it's entirely unproblematic, but it's more complex than you're allowing.

[Arkantos]

God I hate 'critics', they usually over react for views.

She stopped reading during the second book due to too much rape? Out of thousands of pages there's less than 20 with rape in, cmon man, also acting as though male rape isn't a thing... Really?

Anyway, I think the sex in general is fatuous, never mind the rape, but things like what Gregor did to the tavern girl were important, that was the motivation for Arya getting Chiswyck killed.

[Cas Stark]

Consented, or gave in?

ETA I don't have the answer myself but I think it's something we are meant to think about in the way it was written is my point here.

We're meant to see that Theon Greyjoy is an entitled jerk who uses people, especially women, for his own pleasure, and gives no thought to their desires or feelings, in fact, he sees the woman's feelings as an inconvenience. He tells her directly she should be thrilled if he's gotten her pregnant, with no thought at all of what kind of repercussions there will be for her, only 'hey, be happy, you might be carrying my bastard'.

He treats women terribly throughout the series. He uses them for sex. But he doesn't rape them and that is a very, very big distinction.

[Lyanna Stark]

Not to bog you down with hours of writing, I'll simply say I agree with this thread's premise. It's not that there isn't sexual violence towards men in this series, nor that there shouldn't be sexual violence towards women in this series. The issue for me is the sheer volume of female sexual abuse Martin chooses to imbue the series with. A little bit, heck even a lot would have made sense .But this much is just absurd. Everywhere you turn there's a 13 year old whore, and he dwells on it so much. It even sometimes gets to the extent of writing sleazy literotica fantasies about it (like Dany's first time with Drogo).

I guess it depends if you think it's there to titillate, or to describe something different. Arya's journey through the Riverlands in ACOK is about how the people and the land are absolutely brutalised. The rapes, the murders and the mutilations there are no laughing matter. They are supposed to be haunting, disturbing and terrible. And they are.

So I guess it depends on what level of "gruesome" you find acceptable. I dare say there are plenty of RL example of the same type of gruesome that goes on in the Riverlands. As Lummel stated above as well, this is described as a complete breakdown of order and civilisation. It's not a positive thing, it's not there to titillate. It's not there as a background tapestry either (see Arya's very personal revenge on Chiswyck). Nor is it used as a cheap plot device.

Dany is interesting since she really did not like her marriage at all at first. She may have consented to Drogo on the first night but go reread the sections about the subsequent ones where Dany is considering suicide. While she managed to turn her marriage around, I am not certain we are meant to find it 100% morally appealing. Dany herself certainly is ok with describing the drawbacks (she characterises the marriage as her being sold, like a piece of meat, or a slave).

[Lyanna Stark]

Think of it in another way - what if the gender roles were reversed. Jon is a female prisoner and Ygritte her male guard, and when the prison warden is angry with the female prisoner, the guard 'defends' her by saying she is his lover, and then forces himself on her in the night so that they can 'prove' the point. Would we not be outraged?

If the roles were reveresed, you'd have a women who'd be attracted to said male guard, but who had taken a vow not to sleep with anyone due to having joined a certain organisation. Jon's issue is not really that he does not, as such, wish to sleep with Ygritte. His issue is that he would then be betraying his vows. His *vows* are the main issue, same as we see with Sam and Gilly later on. (Sam is also under some coercion in that case, actually.)

That lines up more along the lines of comitting adultely. Jon does not lie back and think of England at all, his issue was his vows and breaking them.

But sure, as mormont is pointing out, it's a morally complex situation which isn't clear cut. I've seen arguments that Jon only slept with Ygritte because he feared he would be killed outright if he did not. If this is the prevailing interpretation, then a better case for rape can be made. I did not get the impression that the text supports this interpretation though.

Re Satin: I got the same impression that some other people got to, that Satin was in fact protected by being Jon's steward and that otherwise, he would have been at risk for being raped. So not sure the Nights Watch are described as all that "pure". It could probably have been done better, but they still don't come off as squeaky clean.

[Dreadwolf]

Well, it was about power for him and his having a need to feel like he is a powerful awesome dude in that scene. He didn't care at all about what she wanted. Is rape always about the use of physical sexual force on someone? I don't think so.

I would say he seduced her. /be that by the power of his Lordliness or his handsomeness/. Which is ofcourse bad but not so evil as the rape is.

[Elba the Intoner]

We're meant to see that Theon Greyjoy is an entitled jerk who uses people, especially women, for his own pleasure, and gives no thought to their desires or feelings, in fact, he sees the woman's feelings as an inconvenience. He tells her directly she should be thrilled if he's gotten her pregnant, with no thought at all of what kind of repercussions there will be for her, only 'hey, be happy, you might be carrying my bastard'.

He treats women terribly throughout the series. He uses them for sex. But he doesn't rape them and that is a very, very big distinction.

OK, it is a distinction but I guess where I'd disagree is that I don't think it's a "very very big distinction." I admit it's not the level of what Gregor does to the tavern girl at all and I did say in my original post that I'd "argue" it was rape, meaning it's debatable. But it's despicable and we are meant to consider what this means about his character.