For three years now I have been watching Ramsey Bolton torture Theon Greyjoy in ways that might make Dick Cheney blush, including cutting off his penis, pretending to eat it, and then sending it to his family. I’ve seen Ramsey flay people alive on several occasions. I’ve seen him feed a woman to his dogs. I’ve seen him engage in creepy sadomasochistic sex with his lover.
The character is about as skin-crawlingly awful as any I’ve ever seen in a recurring television show, and I was appalled to learn that he was to be wed to Sansa Stark. He’s a sadist, and Sansa Stark has suffered more than enough. I wasn’t the least surprised when Ramsey decided to force Theon Greyjoy to watch as they consummated the marriage, nor that he chose rape for their first sexual encounter.
I didn’t enjoy watching the rape scene, and I’m even less thrilled about it now that I’ve learned that this rape didn’t even occur in the book. But, as offensive as rape is, I have a hard time taking Sen. Claire McCaskill’s outrage seriously. Game of Thrones is replete with revolting violence, cruelty, and severe immorality of every type, including sexual immorality, mental cruelty, and physical brutality. It’s an essentially medieval culture where women are bargaining chips in a contest of shifting family alliances. When you can be married against your consent to someone you don’t even know, our modern concept of rape needs to be modified a bit. In this particular case, there really isn’t any kind of sex Sansa could have with Ramsey that would be consensual by our standards. She loathes him and wants him dead. He could try being gentle, ingratiating, and tender and she’d still feel completely violated. She lives in a world in which women don’t get to choose their sexual partners, let alone when they want to have sex. All sex between Ramsey and Sansa will be rape, and that is basically true for many of the relationships in the show. Ramsey is himself a product of rape.
Later on, Ramsay asks his father about his mother. Roose tells him about how he killed a miller and raped his wife because they got married without his consent, and sometime later, the miller’s wife came to the Dreadfort and left the infant Ramsay with him. Roose had been prepared to throw Ramsay into the sea to drown, but stayed himself because he knew, deep down, that Ramsay was his son.
So, with all the carnage and cruelty and unforgivable behavior that is a routine part of Game of Thrones, the rape of Sansa Stark by her husband on their wedding night doesn’t stand out as particularly gratuitous or even disturbing. If it affected you strongly, it was probably less about seeing something horrible on the screen than about you caring for the character of Sansa Stark.
It’s true that some people might find it troubling because they’ve actually experienced something similar, whereas they have never seen a whole castle full of disarmed men flayed alive. But people may have been victims of incest, too, or they may have had a loved one abducted or disappear. Game of Thrones is clearly fantasy, but a lot of the bad behavior the show depicts is familiar to at least some unfortunate people.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t be watching the show if you have a problem seeing women be mistreated or gays persecuted or people disemboweled, fed to dragons, burned at the stake, beheaded, or just disfigured. What goes on in Game of Thrones goes on in a different moral universe, and it has nothing to do with our contemporary problems with violent biker gangs or sexual assault in the military.
Here’s some sample dialogue between the drunk dwarf Tyrion and the ambitious eunuch Varys.
Tyrion Lannister: The road to Volantis? You said we are going to Meereen.
What’s in Volantis?
Varys: The road to Meereen.
Tyrion Lannister: And what do you hope to find at the end on the road to Meereen?
Varys: I told you. A ruler.
Tyrion Lannister: But you’ve already got a ruler. Everywhere has already got a ruler.
Every pile of shit on the side of every road has someone’s banner hanging from it.
Varys: You were quite good, do you know? At ruling. During your brief tenure as Hand.
Tyrion Lannister: I didn’t rule, I was a servant.
Varys: Still, a man of talent.
Tyrion Lannister: (considers this) Managed to kill a lot of people…
Varys: Yes, but you showed great promise in other areas as well.
That’s a different moral universe. Varys isn’t speaking entirely non-seriously here. He gives Tyrion credit for being capable of great violence, as this is at least somewhat desirable in a leader. You could call it a prerequisite for the job. Still, what Varys admires is Tyrion’s relative restraint and intelligence. Needless to say, in our present society, having killed a lot of people isn’t something we see as an essential and somewhat admirable quality in someone we want to lead us.
So, Sen. Claire McCaskill can sign off of watching Game of Thrones for a long list of reasons, including just her personal taste. But to single out one rape scene as being singularly offensive and over the top?
I think she’s trying to make herself look virtuous when she’s really just posing.
