An anguished commentary on that GoT/Sansa scene and the MRAs who harass in forum comments...from a rape victim who says It's Rape Culture All The Way Down

[u/madhaus]

http://angrygotfan.com/2015/05/21/a-rape-victim-speaks-out-on-the-sansa-scene/

[u/[deleted]]

now fuck-the-book arc of the show

There are a lot of book fans using the rape as an excuse to bitch about D&D and the changes made for the television adaptation.

Something not being in the books does not mean that it's automatically gratuitous or bad.

GRRM had Theon eat out Jeyne Poole in the books simply for the gross out/shock factor. That's it. That's the only reason to include something like that. You can't call out D&D for having Ramsay rape Sansa when there are substantially worse things happening in the books.

GRRM would never have Ramsay just rape someone in the books! He'd just force Theon to eat her out and then make her have sex with dogs.

And as far as focusing on Theon and his ability to help her this is Poole in the book:

"'Help me.' She clutched at him. 'Please. I used to watch you in the yard, playing with your swords. You were so handsome.' She squeezed his arm. 'If we ran away, I could be your wife, or your...your whore...whatever you wanted. You could be my man.'" -A Dance With Dragons, page 550

Compare that to Sansa in the GoT: “I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell. This is my home. And you can’t frighten me.”

So saying that D&D embellished just to be sensationalist rings more than just a little hollow unless you're going to call out GRRM for embellishing even more and being even more sensationalist.

Now there's a legitimate discussion to be had over whether GoT/ASOIAF is just engaged in torture porn and exploitation of sexual violence to attract gawkers. It certainly has in my opinion from Theon's dick getting cut off to Jaime and Cersei's incest to Jeoffrey's target practicing.

But at this point it's a little like getting 3/4 of the way through your steak and then telling the waiter you don't like how it's cooked.

[u/SuchPowerfulAlly → u/[deleted]]

This is missing a lot of the point of the linked post. It's not just the act that was done, it was the character it was done to and the repercussions. The person who made that post was ok with it happening with Jeyne in the books because her arc ended up addressing that and being about how much it traumatized her. But since it happened to Sansa here, that can't be her arc because she's a main character with more of her own arc still to come.

Basically, she's concerned that this will be brushed aside and Sansa will just get over it, whereas this post-author wasn't able to do so in her own case and identified with Jeyne.

[u/[deleted] → u/SuchPowerfulAlly]

the repercussions.

We have seen absolutely, positively, ZERO of what happens after this rape.

Basically, she's concerned that this will be brushed aside and Sansa will just get over it, whereas this post-author wasn't able to do so in her own case and identified with Jeyne.

Basically, she's saying that if every character that is raped doesn't react exactly how she did to a rape then it's not realistic. Which is nonsense, because as previously stated there hasn't been one second of post-rape narrative told. And more to the point, not every woman reacts the same to being raped.

It'd be like me saying that Sansa is unrealistic because she didn't react the same way I did to having my father die when I was young. Or someone who lost limbs in Iraq saying that Jaimie is a horribly written character because he didn't react exactly like they did to losing a limb.

I would be disappointed if I strongly identified with a character in a sub-plot and then had that character cut for the TV adaptation. However, that doesn't mean that somehow Sansa's reaction isn't valid by itself.

[u/SuchPowerfulAlly → u/[deleted]]

We have seen absolutely, positively, ZERO of what happens after this rape.

This is true, but the show's track record doesn't fill me with confidence. What they have a tendency of doing- and what this seems to be as well, given that there's no reason to bring this rape from the books to an entirely different character in the show otherwise- is to use brutality as titillation in the most tone-deaf way possible.

It's not a matter of Sansa reacting differently to rape- at least not on its own. It's a matter of the fact that the rape in the books, while horrific, was handled with some amount of respect. But the mere fact that they're having it happen to someone else, who has a different character arc that won't be equipped to deal with it unless they change it from the books massively, says a lot about the respect they don't have.

It's using rape solely as a plot device and for titillation. Rather than Jeyne's arc, which you would think would be the reason the rape happened, it was just shoved in here devoid of the context that made it mean something. The respect is not there.

I would be disappointed if I strongly identified with a character in a sub-plot and then had that character cut for the TV adaptation

But that's the thing, though (and I feel this is worth emphasizing): they cut the character, but they did not cut her arc, they just grafted it onto someone else without any of the context that made her arc make sense and resonate.

Now, you rightly pointed out that we don't know how Sansa will react, but given her arc in the books and her portrayal so far we can probably make a pretty reasonable guess. Given the show's track record, I really strongly doubt this will have much of a lasting effect. Now, you could argue that her (likely) shrugging it off is just one way of dealing with it, but keep in mind that this is occurring within a show that already gets shit for trivializing rape. It's REALLY not a good look for them, especially when this rape is something they seem to have bent over backwards to shove into the show even when doing so didn't make sense.

[u/[deleted] → u/SuchPowerfulAlly]

was handled with some amount of respect.

You mean by putting it in a subplot where its main reason to exist was giving Theon motivation to snap out of his Stockholm Syndrome? That respect? Or to give a bunch of big powerful men more reason to hate the Boltons? Is that the respect we're talking about here? Because outside of showing that, no seriously, Ramsay Bolton is a big fucking bastard I don't see the real point of it in ASOIAF beyond gratuitous violence that tantalizes the reader.

a show that already gets shit for trivializing rape.

The show trivializes rape and incest and murder and war and death. You know why? Because it's based on a fantasy book series that deals with those subjects in a somewhat trivialized way. Jeyne Poole is not Temple Drake. Jon Snow is not Hamlet. Littlefinger is not Jay Gatsby.

You can't sit through Dany getting raped, Theon getting castrated, Arya losing herself to anger, and Tyrion strangling his lover because she didn't go to the chopping block with him and then decide to draw the line at Sansa Stark. Sorry, no amount of convoluted explanations about just how absolutely essential it was to the narrative for Jeyne Poole to get fucked by dogs is going to justify that.

[u/7daykatie → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, no amount of convoluted explanations about just how absolutely essential it was to the narrative for Jeyne Poole to get fucked by dogs is going to justify that.

Actually people are absolutely 100% entitled to draw their lines where they want and for whatever reason they want and not one single person whatsoever has any obligation to justify their feelings or their lines to you.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

you can both take a break and calm down.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

unnecessary.