We need to talk about the problematic "Rape makes a woman stronger" trope used in the latest episode of Game of Thrones. (SPOILERS for Season 5)
- Thread starter louisacommie
- Start date
Their Star Wars dialogue is going to be something else.
You want a good tauntaun, but you need the bad wookie.
Lol
But that said, it'll still seem like Shakespeare compared to the PT dialogue ☹️
A) It wasn't specifically about that, it was about a list of things.
B) I've heard women in the real world say the same thing. That their trauma wasn't a good thing, but getting past it made them stronger. Should I let them know they're "problematic"?
Everybody will feel differently, but I think it's unproductive to take one character's opinion (that is not uncommon) to represent anybody's feelings except that character.
B) I've heard women in the real world say the same thing. That their trauma wasn't a good thing, but getting past it made them stronger. Should I let them know they're "problematic"?
Everybody will feel differently, but I think it's unproductive to take one character's opinion (that is not uncommon) to represent anybody's feelings except that character.
That's how I saw it as well, and coming from my experience as a trauma counsellor I have a lot of people use horrible things that happened to them to make themselves feel stronger in the present. Sort of as a way of not letting it dominate and wresting control from some of the pain of those experiences. It isn't them saying it was good that it happened to them, but that it's empowering to think of it as themselves valuing who they are now.
That's how I took it as well. However, it doesn't make the execution acceptable.
Right, this is exactly how I took it as well. But I knew some people would take it as "rape made me stronger".
Intended or not, "broken in" is some seriously loaded language and if they didn't want to signify Sansa's sexual traumas, they should have used literally any other way to describe her life changing events.
If intended, it's terrible working for the callous use of an awful trope.
If accidental, it's terrible working for not realizing the extra connotation of the phase.
If intended, it's terrible working for the callous use of an awful trope.
If accidental, it's terrible working for not realizing the extra connotation of the phase.
It would honestly be better if they just said "rape".
It's impossible to have a serious conversation about rape when you describe it in terms that degrade victims to animals.
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Well, last season we got Bran unironically talking about how pretty she looked on her wedding night, because apparently we really needed to sell that he's "not Bran" anymore, so I ain't all that surprised
Honestly? People need to learn to use the OT. Thats what they are there for. I get why they don't though; its because the minute the episode goes off its full of garbage takes and memes from reddit. But the OT is literally perfect for little miniature discussions like this. We dont need an OT and 20 other threads with qualifiers of "This is only a small spoiler about XXX calm down dudes!". Its annoying as hell.
If we are just going to spam the forum with topic after topic for every little tiny discussion then just do away with the OT's as a whole. At that point they aren't doing anything they are meant for anyway....
But that was the hound saying it, not Sansa right? And I think his insensitivity only showed how tied he is to his own trauma, and it makes him act that way. This is part of why Sansa tried to engage in dialogue with him, I think, because through her experience she has grown stronger and wanted to see if she could somehow impart something of that to him - that's why she reached for his hand and him pulling back can tell us that he is still deeply entrenched in his own trauma. I think this all kind of served to empower Sansa more by showing that she has healed while the Hound is still where he is with his pain.
I think the wording of Sansa's dialogue was fine, even if it sounds insensitive to trauma survivors. Not everyone uses trauma informed language. In my experience, most people I've talked to can be rather blunt about it when speaking of their experiences and it's something that's deeply charged and difficult to bring out in words. I don't think Sansa's words were all that problematic because of that. Its not like she has a regular counsellor that she talks to and I doubt she has even talked to many people about it.
Sometimes you don't need anyone to talk like that unless you have an actual point to make about such people. Otherwise, the show/writers seem to have a problem instead of something to say.
Along with everything else she has been through...or did you not listen/watch the episode?
In all fairness wouldn't that mean GRRM hates them too? GoT was at its most rapey when it was adapting the books more closely. It got decisively less rapey (and less nudity ridden fwiw) when the show went past the books.
I'm not defending this scene in question from the latest episode but do you see my point? I could make a case that when D&D became the lead creators without books to base on they greatly reduced the amount of rape featured in their show and that's just a statistical fact.
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I'm not really sure what you mean. I believe the point was at least in part what I described, that Sansa was showing how resilient and empowered she has become - through her own work at healing, and using part of that to try to connect with a man who she feels empathy towards. That the Hound is still kinda mired in his own pain is why he uses insensitive language and Sansa responded, in a sense, by asserting how his words won't affect her, she understand his lashing out but has moved past being able to be hurt by it.
its really no surprise to me that the loudest people bitching all over both OTs are now posting spoilers in thread titles. anyway.....
the hound is whom brought it up. he's an asshole for doing so but people are focusing on Sansa (as is always the case for some reason!)
how was she supposed to respond? Hey thanks for patronizing me Clegane, and reminding me of my trauma, you're also actually correct I totally would have been better with a person like you! Instead Sansa keeps her cool and her overall message is she got to where she is now all on her own and might not be as strong as she is today otherwise [regarding a list of things].
The issue is not her response but rather D&D for even thinking its okay to have a condensing yet fan-favorite male character talk to the most hated woman character on the show thats not named Cersei about being "broken in".
the hound is whom brought it up. he's an asshole for doing so but people are focusing on Sansa (as is always the case for some reason!)
how was she supposed to respond? Hey thanks for patronizing me Clegane, and reminding me of my trauma, you're also actually correct I totally would have been better with a person like you! Instead Sansa keeps her cool and her overall message is she got to where she is now all on her own and might not be as strong as she is today otherwise [regarding a list of things].
The issue is not her response but rather D&D for even thinking its okay to have a condensing yet fan-favorite male character talk to the most hated woman character on the show thats not named Cersei about being "broken in".
I think you're a) neglecting that they rewrote Sansa's plot so she was the one affected /on top/ of everything else that happened to her and b) there are other ways to have the same conversation with the hound that don't highlight rape as a moment of her growth. At the same time, nothing really comes of her response and the viewers are left thinking we're meant to take her strength as a sign that she has overcome terrible things like rape and become stronger.
There's a lot this scene does wrong if they wanted to have a productive and meaningful discussion about sexual traumas.
Edit: like Bye above me says, that they have this character bring it up at all is telling, regardless if you can say "it's in character." There are 500 other in-character things he could have said without bring up this trope.
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Was it only about Rape though? I think Sansa referring to the things that have happened to her as a broader narrative of her life throughout the show was her defusing some of the Hound bringing up the more specific event of rape. To me, her language is about her being in control and empowered. I think the viewers can be left thinking that Sansa values herself and feels good about who she is and isn't so much about 'I am stronger because I was raped'. It was a way of showing that a survivor doesn't have to give in to a man like the Hound trying to make the conversation about what he wants it to be.
They should've probably included the half-dozen other experiences she's been through (or even just one!) instead of focusing on the rape (that doesn't happen to her in the books, and that D&D already got roasted for inventing).
They're pretty dumb though, so I wouldn't put it past them. They're the first writers I can think of that have accidentally included a rape in their works.
I understand the point you're making here, but I wanna point out that having reprehensible things come from "bad" characters (and the Hound isn't even really an antagonist anymore) doesn't necessarily exempt criticism from the writers. Ultimately the writers are the ones who are "saying" all of the dialogue. And that dialogue is there to serve some purpose. Having a "bad" character do or say bad things can be used to demonstrate that character's moral standing. "Ah, I see. This person is unsavory." That's all fine.
But here, we've got a character on the "good team" (again, because the Hound isn't really batting for the bad guys anymore since his Arya redemption arc) dropping this pretty tired "how did we want the girl character to develop? We raped her" dialogue, and it's not at all clear to me that D&D have really learned anything from their last few fuck-ups with the subject, based on this exchange here. They still very clearly think they did a smart thing by adding a violent rape into Sansa's backstory to harden her up, even though she'd already seen quite a lot of shit up to that point anyway, and the books had even already gotten her to that state without raping her.
Obviously personal opinions will differ, but I find this exchange draining. I'm sick of this trope in fiction.
What on Earth are you talking about? Sansa being raped by Ramsay isn't in the books (they never even meet), neither is Jaime raping Cersei, and they made Khal Drogo's rape of Daenerys even more rapey in the show too.
And later seasons are still chock full of gratuitous T&A. Most of the T&A scenes in the entire series are scenes that are not in the books either (like Littlefinger's brothel scene in S1, the random tits in Blackwater, the Sand Snakes, Osha getting naked for no reason, etc.).
That title is disingenuous as can be. Sansa is saying that she had lived and leaned thanks to the numerous horrors in her life, and in doing so has opened her perception of the world far from the naive little bird she once was. Twisting those words and condensing them to "I'm stronger because I was raped" is full on projection and disregards context. She didn't come close to singling out that event.
Is the Hound really meant to be the 'bad' character here or as a deeply damaged person who was a victim of trauma as well. Someone who still projects that onto others. I think this scene showed some of the complexities of how people deal with trauma, in that there's often not a right or good way to talk about it. There are trauma informed ways of listening and forming a dialogue like that, but I don't think that kind of language is something that can work when having characters who wouldn't be informed about that language try to relate through trauma. I sort of thought at least part of the purpose of this scene was to show that even if a man like the Hound has his own trauma that he is dealing with, Sansa doesn't have to get pulled into it, she has the power in herself to be okay with who she is despite the Hound's insensitivity. Another damaged man has no power over her. Her using the 'little bird' phrase could be part of her appropriating his language through empowering herself.
In terms of the writing saying something beyond the characters, I think that it at least raises questions of how these things should be talked about and that the ones who should be empowered through that discourse are those that aren't using their pain to lash out through the language they use, as with the Hound.
Its not comfortable to listen to that dialogue scene. But isn't the dialogue "true" to the character of the Hound? He isn't a good man, he may have improved over the last few seasons to be "less evil" but we all acknowledge that evil men view rape as not "something wrong" in their own viewpoint, right? So for him to casually say those things to her seems more authentic and real then him saying something like "Its horrible how Ramsey raped you, do you want to talk about how it affected you?".
Then from her perspective, it seems more in line with her current character to never show any weakness to anyone who could be an enemy, learning from Littlefingers little "assume the worst of everyone, the worst thing they can do, and you will never be surprised". So she has to say things that minimize it, always emphasize how much stronger and better protected she is now, and make it clear she is a very different person now than before.
Not sure what people expect? Sure, you could reasonably say you expect the show to never deal with rape (but is murder ok?), and you have every right to stop watching the show because of it. My wife doesn't watch, after season 1, because she didn't like the way women were treated on the show. But I think to say that characters should talk and act in a way that is not true to their nature would make for a weird show.
Then from her perspective, it seems more in line with her current character to never show any weakness to anyone who could be an enemy, learning from Littlefingers little "assume the worst of everyone, the worst thing they can do, and you will never be surprised". So she has to say things that minimize it, always emphasize how much stronger and better protected she is now, and make it clear she is a very different person now than before.
Not sure what people expect? Sure, you could reasonably say you expect the show to never deal with rape (but is murder ok?), and you have every right to stop watching the show because of it. My wife doesn't watch, after season 1, because she didn't like the way women were treated on the show. But I think to say that characters should talk and act in a way that is not true to their nature would make for a weird show.
This is probably how the majority of people took it.
The writing in the show is shit now, but this seems like a huge misreading.
Brienne bursting into tears after Jamies "i'm not a good man" generic morally grey hero speech was much worse
Yeah but rape in the books is way worse so I 1/2 see where he's coming from
Yeah, I don't know what that person is on about. I have my issues with the books, but just a raw count of "rapes per book/season" isn't the point. The purpose of rape to D&D is to toughen up women. That's just gross.
So no, I don't think he's meant to be the "bad" character, for a few reasons.
1) He's had his redemption arcs, and while he may show some gruff dialogue in scenes, he's pretty firmly moved into the "good guy" camp. So he can't truly ever represent a "bad" guy well.
2) His side of this scene is sad but approving. I don't think this scene reads very far off from "two characters who have changed (but are now on the same team) have a blunt conversation." So in that sense, it's not really coming through to me that we're supposed to find the Hound "bad" here.
And that's largely my criticism. Two male showrunners invented a rape to toughen up a woman and get her to a state that she was already at without being raped, and they had this scene in there where they have the woman demonstrate said toughening-up by discussing how being "broken in" was something that toughened her up. I agree that we the viewer are meant to go "wow, look at how she's developed in spite of being "broken in," what a fighter" and that's entirely the broader problem when any form of media (almost always male-written) decides to go for the Rape as Drama, Rape as Backstory, etc... tropes.
This isn't the criticism. Lots of media deal with sexual assault. But the particular trope as I described above has (rightly) come under fire in the last few years because it's harmful and degrading.
So we're just openly putting references to just-aired shows in titles now? Can we at least give it a day...
Yeah, but aren't there literally women every day saying that their trauma in the past has made them stronger now???? I get it's a bad trope, but I'm confused at what's so abhorrent about it.
When you miss the forest for the trees. Why people always misinterpret things in the worst way?
I mean, the conversation literally starts with a drastically more crude version of "heard ya got raped yo" and ends with "yeah but it's all good cuz i'm better now". Come the fuck on.
And I'm not even gonna touch your point B. Cripes.
If you take in the context of the character "Sansa", who start out as this naive "dreamy" daughter to a Lord, who wants to be Queen and married to Joffrey.
With this world view, her innocence was destroyed by horrible men (and women) that raped and abused her, this made her less naive, more cynical and distrustful of the world she lives in, which will help her being kept alive (I assume this is how she thinks).
EDIT: Of course, they could have skipped it altogether since what I write above is something a 5 year old could read between the lines.
With this world view, her innocence was destroyed by horrible men (and women) that raped and abused her, this made her less naive, more cynical and distrustful of the world she lives in, which will help her being kept alive (I assume this is how she thinks).
EDIT: Of course, they could have skipped it altogether since what I write above is something a 5 year old could read between the lines.
The two most infamous rape scenes in Game of Thrones were show-only inventions.
- Sansa being raped by Ramsay never happened (to be fair, another girl got raped by Ramsay, but still)
- The scene where Jaime rapes Cersei post-Joffrey burial was consensual in the books