By all means, let’s have more of this.

One writer, Melanie McFarland, asked whether the channel would consider adding more rapes of men in order to balance out the violence. Bloys responded by saying, “I take your point—so far there aren’t any male rapes…. [I]s it something we think about, yeah.” Bloys continued by saying “I think the criticism is valid, you know…So I think it’s something that people take into account.

Rape equality, now here’s a new concept. I guess it’s only fair that women should join the ranks of rapists too. Talk about cutting edge television. But that’s obviously not what McFarland had in mind. The problem one always runs into with this word “equality” is how to adjudicate a balance to say nothing of who gets to make the final decision. Does McFarland want a platonic 50/50 in this case? But that would be absurd since male-on-female rape is more common wherever you go. Still, we are operating in R. R. Martin’s fantasy world with no statistics (as if stats in this world aren’t tricky enough to come by when it comes to rape) so what does “equality” even mean? That’s assuming, of course, that equality has something to do with statistics, but I suspect the definition for McFarland is far more vague and intangible. It’s almost like he’s asking for the writers to toss him a bone(r) (just one male rape, please) as a sign of the writers’ fidelity to present SJW concerns. Why the grotesque, over-the-top, and season long (season long!) torture and final emasculation of Theon Greyjoy didn’t satisfy McFarland is beyond me.

Further, McFarland is not making an art critique but a political one, which makes this a prime case of presentism forcing itself on a script. For SJWs a story cannot be simply a story about people. The writer must project present day dilemmas onto art to “start a conversation” or “build awareness.” The story must support the cause in the here and now. Staring at themselves in the mirror, the SJWs are infuriated when anything blocks their view of themselves and their own preconceived ideas about how the world works. Based on Bloys mealy-mouthed response, we may very well get a token male rape next season. Ironically, this itself rapes a script that started off so brilliantly ignoring present day conceits. It’s as if the first season declared unabashedly, “This is our world and we do things differently here. Reality is more multifaceted than your myopic 21st century.” Part of GoT’s tumble in the past few seasons is the fact that they’ve strayed from this refreshingly, non-present-minded approach to storytelling.

But even if we accept the portrayal of male-on-male rape in this medievalesque land, we must remember that male-on-female rape carries far greater political significance in such a world. There’s a good deal of sex in the show, but the rape is a form of political as much as sexual subjugation. This is a world in which swapping bodily fluids is not just a matter of pleasure or pain, but dynasty-making, destroying, and muddling. The world revolves not around individuals and their particulars wants, but around the great houses. At times individuals act out, but the show rarely allows them to escape the crushing and paradoxically liberating burden of family loyalty. This in turn makes male-on-male rape almost completely irrelevant. Male-on-female rape creates bastards, and bastards can become problematic for protecting family lines and political legitimacy. If a dude rapes another dude in GoT, other than a sore ass, embarrassment, and a desire for revenge, the consequences are more or less negligible. Far from making GoT better, McFarland’s suggestion would create an irrelevant tangent. 

To project 21st century conceptions of rape, then, is myopic and narrow-minded. Locked in their own time, SJWs can’t imagine another reality even when confronted with a compelling and different world in which rape is obviously operating at a different level. So much for multiculturalism and transpresentism. 

Oddly enough, it’s occurred to me that SJWs are as bad as evangelical Christians when it comes to art criticism. If you’ve ever read Christian media sites like pluggedinonline you will find that their reviews grapple with the story only partially, preferring to split the assessment into “positive” and “negative” elements and making a final “art criticism” based on the balance of those facets while at the same time making doleful comments: “If only they had pulled out this unsavory part and pushed this element more, it would have been fantastic.” If that isn’t script rape, I don’t know what is.