Female Bodies & Male Entitlement: Sex in the Game of Thrones Universe

I’ve given you a season, Game of Thrones, and I can’t say I’m entirely satisfied. To be honest, I’m actually kinda pissed. Sure you’re fun and sexy and now there are dragons, but I have a really hard time with a lot of the ideas you’re jamming down my throat. Perhaps you do not concern yourself with whether or not I’m satisfied, perhaps that was never your intent. You’ve shown such little regard for me that I’ve begun to wonder exactly why I’m devoting my time to you at all.

My primary beef, GOT, is that despite countless naked females and sex scenes, not once, not one single time, have you shown me a sexual encounter in which a woman has any agency or any pleasure. Our enjoyment, it would appear, does not concern you.

From where I sit at the end of Season 1, there are three very concerning ideas you gleefully present each episode, in one form or another:

1. Female bodies exist for male pleasure. Our bodies exist to please men sexually. That is their purpose, and in this show, also their primary function. Through countless scenes of rape and prostitution, it is quite clear exactly what, and who, the female body is for.
2. In a related vein, it is also abundantly clear who is entitled to female bodies. On Game of Thrones, anyone and everyone is entitled to women’s bodies, provided they have enough power to take them by force, or enough coin to pay for their usage. Certain characters are safe, of course, provided they are the property of powerful males. But the threat is always looming. We’re about as comforted as Ned Stark is when he’s assured “the soldiers will be gentle” with his daughters after his capture.
3. Sex is for men. It is for men’s enjoyment. Sex is not for women. Female bodies are a device through which men are able to achieve enjoyment and satisfaction, but female satisfaction (let alone consent) is entirely irrelevant. In the GOT universe, sex is about men taking what they are “owed”, the spoils of war or their own wives, or simply paying for it the old fashioned way in the ubiquitous “pleasure houses”.

I have yet to see any woman on the show going out and getting hers, simply because she wanted to, and because it would feel good for her.

We’ve even had the pleasure of some graphic girl-on-girl action on GOT. Here still, despite the fact that men are not involved, male pleasure remains the focal point of the encounters.

First, we see our Khalessi learning the tricks of the trade, eager to “please” her new husband. The same husband we watch rape her while she sobs on their wedding night, and again later, while she stares dead-eyed ahead as he pounds away at her from behind.

The second girl-on-girl scene, a rather gratuitous display, features two prostitutes being instructed by their owner in the art of faking pleasure. We watch the girls go at it as he tells them how to fake it well, how to slowly build up to sounding satisfied, to convince men that the girls are truly enjoying it so the customers can walk away happy. Sex is performance theatre for women, it would appear, and even female orgasm exists for the purpose of male pleasure.

I get that Game of Thrones is a fantasy. It’s fantasy, so anything is up for grabs, anything fair game. But I can’t help but wonder why we’re all so willing to buy into this particular fantasy.

It’s a hard show. The culture is cold and brutal, the violence graphic and constant. Obviously this is part of the appeal for many, so perhaps it is simply not the show for me. I can only assume George RR Martin, the old perv, didn’t have me in mind when imagining a future audience for his fantasy land. Game of Thrones flagrantly caters to its male audience, yet it manages to have a massive female following as well.

I wonder if the show will redeem itself in any major way, or if this simply indicative of the shabby treatment women are accustomed to tolerating from popular media? I am genuinely curious, because from where I sit at the end of the first season, I cannot get my head around how this series is so beloved by many of my feminist friends.

I understand that the show is touching on some real phenomena. I get that prostitution is the ‘world’s oldest profession’ and that rape is absolutely rampant in war. I get it. I guess my question is why. Why the need to glorify these things? Why the need to emphasize them to such a degree?

I can’t help but wonder why, as women become more empowered in so many avenues, there is such a proliferation of entertainment bombarding us with these very old ideas about our worth? Shows that seem to glory in reminding us how powerless women truly are, that our bodies are not our own.

I also know that sex sells. I wasn’t born yesterday. It’s not sex itself that I take issue with, or even nudity. It’s the type of sex portrayed by Game of Thrones that I find problematic. The emphasis on who sex serves and who it exploits, clearly demarcated by gender.

I also grow weary of what feels like the cheap usage of female nudity, purely for the purpose of titillating the audience. Almost every actress faced a tough choice when accepting her role on this series. I imagine the mental calculation to have gone something like this: “This show could potentially launch my career, but in order to have this opportunity, I must be willing to show the whole world my tits.” Naturally, none of the male leads were required to make such a compromise.

I know that things are apparently going to get better, and I’ll admit that the final scene of the season piqued my interest. A naked (obvs) Khaleesi, impervious to fire and crawling with little dragon babies? I’ll bite. It seems we’ll see some female redemption stories, which is great, but I’m just not sure that’s good enough for me. After certain episodes, I’m curled up into a little ball on the couch, feeling victimized just watching the treatment of women onscreen.

This is not my first attempt giving Game of Thrones a chance. I watched the first two or three episodes years ago, but they made me so angry I didn’t continue. It made me furious watching the proprietary way Daenerys’ brother undressed and touched her body, hearing his promise “I would let his whole tribe fuck you — all forty thousand men — and their horses too if that’s what it took.”

I recently started the show again, and aside from the above criticisms, I’ve enjoyed it for the most part. After Episode 9 though, I was angry again. The threat of the Kahl dying and Khaleesi losing her protector looms large. I can’t be the only one acutely aware of what this would mean for her, in a tribe of men who already hate her for denying them their “right to mount” a group of women after a recent victory.

Even our dear Khaleesi, who we’ve watched become so strong and powerful, is never truly safe. As a woman, her body is inherently vulnerable, and without the protection of powerful males, anyone can take what they want from her.

It makes me angry that this show is so great in so many ways, but that it insists on rubbing my vulnerability in my face in this way.

The reality of rape is something we women are all too aware of as it is. I, for one, could do without the constant reminders.

Before people go ahead and assume that I’m a prude because I can’t stomach gratuitous female exploitation, let me put those accusations to rest.

I like sex, I like it a lot. In fact, I love it. And I love it because I am finally at a point in my life and my relationship where I am truly getting something out of it. I’m no longer just going through the motions, performing for my partner’s benefit, and oblivious to the inequity of that arrangement, as so many young women are. I believe now that I deserve to be satisfied, just as much as my partner does. That even if it is sometimes more challenging, and even if it takes longer, I am as entitled to pleasure as he is.

Having just read Peggy Orenstein’s fantastic and illuminating Girls & Sex, I realize exactly why this has been such a long road for me. Our culture is rife with dangerous beliefs about sex, women’s bodies, and also male entitlement. These ideas wreak havoc on many women’s ability to enjoy sex, and especially to assert their own wants and needs. It concerns me deeply to see these exact ideas being perpetuated by a series so beloved by men and women alike.

So I guess my question is, do I continue? Is it worth it?

For the women who love this show, and I know you are legion, if I keep watching, will I be satisfied? Will MY needs be met?

Will this show actually redeem itself in a major way, or will it continue to demonstrate as little respect for its female audience as it does for so many of the women onscreen?

I’m too old now to do this thing just because everyone else is doing it, and because my man wants to. I’m no longer willing to invest myself in something if I’m not going to be satisfied.