My must read of the day is "Rage of Thrones: On HBO's Misandrist Show," by Sonny Bunch in the Washington Free Beacon:
The age-old debate about whether or not Game of Thrones is misogynistic is in full swing again because of THAT SCENE in this week’s episode. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, it involves a male twin raping a female twin with whom he has fathered several children previously. [...]
Fans of the book are all up in arms about the scene because, in the books, the sex was consensual. Changing the sex to nonconsensual is, many are arguing, totally misogynistic.
I don’t understand this critique.
If anything, it’s misandry. Think about who is more despicable: a woman who willingly gets it on with her sibling next to her dead child or a woman who is victimized next to the kiddie corpse. Which of these two characters is more sympathetic? The woman who has been victimized, obviously: we are made to feel for her, to understand her plight. The male character, meanwhile, has just had his entire redemptive arc thrown out the window.
Sonny Bunch is technically my "superior"—and while some days I think, "Ugh, this guy is the worst," he writes some great stuff. I was particularly intrigued with his take on this episode of "Game of Thrones."
Perhaps part of that is because I just started watching the show and I have actually seen all three episodes of this season, but even if you haven't seen it this is still a thought provoking piece.
When there's intentional, blatant misogyny in fiction it seems to serve the opposite purpose. You don't respect those carrying it out. You despise them and immediately feel sympathetic to the woman who has, as Sonny points out, been victimized.
In literary courses we’re taught that the literal text is not the end all be all. It's up to the reader to determine the "meaning." Most writers are conscious of that and write in a manner that guides the reader to formulate specific interpretations. In today's world, no one expects that the majority of readers (or, in this case, viewers) will witness rape and interpret it as anything respectable. To assume that seeing flagrant and extreme misogyny—in what viewers know is a fictional setting—will produce misogyny, is also to assume that viewers lack the capacity for self-reflection or deductive reasoning.
What you see on the surface is misogyny, but it produces a reaction that changes the meaning of what you've watched. Misogyny is the genesis, but misandry is the final product. Simply calling this scene in Game of Thrones misogynistic is rudimentary analysis—at the very least it seems more likely to result in an aversion to misogyny.