First of all, Penny, i love you. marry me?
Secondly, these comments make it clear that many people don't understand what sexism is. So far the arguments against the (books&show) being sexist are:
there are strong female characters
that the series show the evils of RAPE (and being evil) thus actually telling people it is bad
That it is capturing the reality of medieval times so and so the RAPE is necessary.

well. lets see how true these statments are
1) Having strong female characters does not mean that a show can not be sexist. Here is why i think it is sexist despite them
a) Except for Arya, the show is full of woman whose plans fail and fail and fail again. They are strong and charismatic, but each seems to have a fatal defect that makes them unable to accomplish their plans. They are almost always thwarted, punished, threatened and/or Raped. They are alomst always portrayed as victims or potential victims.
b) Arya is our hero. Everybody loves her, and hey that is okay. But really, why do we like her so much? Because she is a 9 years old kickass who is getting better and better at swordfigting. She is the tomboy, who we (specially geek woman) feel for. Good good. But if we changed Arya's name to say, Adrian would it change anything in her character? probably not. She is boyish. She is not weak like a ''woman''. The best character in the show is loved precisely because she does not act like a girl. We know it is possible to have kickass girl characters in stories, acting like girls while being hereos, Examples being Buffy(who always had the time to party at bronze while smultaneously saving the world...again) We had Coraline (whom i adore beyond words) Neil Gaimans tough-girl hero. Even Misty of pokemon counts.
c) i hear you shouting : but daenerys! to me, so lets talk about her. The thirteen years old girl who gets off of being raped. (in the books kids) yeah, really? I like her too, i like the dragons and blondeness but...there is something off. Not about who she is but how she is written. How she is portrayed.
d) books entail torture porn. let's not kid ourselves on this, when someone is raping another person and when you hear the rapist's thoughts, it is torture porn. Believe me on that is not done in order to convey the evils of rape. it is there in order to be a page turner.It is there in order to capture attention. It is there so that adolescent boys who did not get their fills of hentai can have more misguided ideas about how sex works. It makes me cringe because i think sexuality as a good positive thing. Also, did you know that when top gun came out, the enlistment rates doubled up? Media sure does effects us. Not so quite bainwashing, but it does. We learn things from it. And with this series, it is not that rape is evil.
e) Capturing the medieval europe. hmmm. yeah, okay. why is it explictly written or shown than? There are other ways to let audiance know rape is happening or has happened. It has been done both in tv and literature creativly and succesfully before. People have pulled it off without coming of as sexist or vulgar.

My last words are to those great girls and woman who like fantasy, just like i do. I repeat penny's words, he t is okay if you (we) like Game of Thrones, but we gotta be honest about what it is. Imagine Buffy at the end of the 6th season guys, yeah when spike...you know before he left for... ( i dont want to spoil things so if you have seen the show you got what i mean) Would it be empowering for her? Would you stand up for it? Do you think you could bear to watch it on tv if they showed (or read)? Answer is no. Because when fantasy is genuine, when it is truthful, when you know what seeing her means, you would not want it promoted.
Anyways, Geek on!

I have seen only the first season but have read all the books. That said, this analysis completely misses the point of both the series and the books.

First, the Starks are not heroes per se. In fact, a lot of bad shit [trying to avoid spoilers] happens to them. Often said bad shit is a direct result of the Stark sense of honor and trying to do the right thing. So being "good" is not good in GoT.

The Lannisters aren't completely evil, either, which is precisely what makes them interesting. I never would have thought that I'd be sympathetic to the incestuous twins Cersei and Jaime, but Jamie's feelings for Cersei are written so genuinely that one almost forgets she is his sister and feels bad for him when they are apart. Tywin Lannister, though often a jerk to Tyrion, is one of the most compentent leaders for Westeros - so even if he's personally cruel to Tyrion and forced Cersei to marry Robert when she didn't want to, he's arguably the best ruler for the people. So the point is really to question the relationship between doing the right thing as a leader and as an individual, as well as to question who is really good or evil or a hero.

Moreover, I think it's also important to separate the GoT books from the TV show with respect to issues of race and gender. There are many places where nuance in the books is lost in the show. First, book Danerys isn't raped by Drogo; he doesn't have sex with her after the wedding until she indicates her consent. I grant you that it is coercive by today's standards but less problematic than in the HBO show particularly in the context of societies with arranged marriage. It also seems to me that part of GRRM's point in showing a decidedly sexist society is to reveal the problems caused by sexism. Danerys, despite being deeply concerned about her people, is repeatedly viewed as a sex object. So often she uses this to her rhetorical advantage - "I am only a young girl but" - but inside is frustrated by the lack of respect. Similarly, Cersei's manipulations and obsession with her son Joffrey are because she was never given a chance to learn to rule / rule herself. It is only through Joffrey, after all, that she can claim power in Westeros so naturally she is obsessively fixated on him. Actually, open frustration with Westeros' sexism is running theme with GRRM's female characters, as well as a compelling sense that the country would be a lot better off - at the very least, more peaceful - were they in charge (see Brienne and Asha in addition to Danerys). So if anything, I actually find GoT more progressive than most popular authors, even in mainstream fiction. His first person narrations are at times problematic (I'm not as aware of my breasts as his women tend to be) but it seems clear at least in the books that his point in depicting such a sexist society is to show that it's unfair to women and hurts the nation as a whole.

This would be a great article, but your central thesis falls short. Why? Because it's established in the backstory that Westeros has had honorable; rightful, wise rulers... And yet problems still remain.

Hey, a critique of the GoT show! How timely and original! I'm glad all real news stopped so you could write this wonderful fluff piece! I feel enlightened and less rapey.

' If the creator of a fantasy series can dream up an army of self-resurrecting zombie immortals he can damn well dream up equal marriage rights,' - This is a plausible sounding, yet utterly fatuous statement. The world Mr. Martin has created would not work if it conformed to our civilized norms. Which medieval society does Ms. Penny have in mind as a model for her gender-relations utopia? If you want a portrayal of medieval society in which all the knights are really nice guys who make an effort to respect and understand women, then watch Merlin or A Knight's Tale or something equally anodyne.

The TV producers have certainly sexed the stories up for broadcast (It seems the old mantra: 'if in doubt, add tits' has held true) but that's because they're TV producers. The one spot where I agree with Ms. Penny concerns the racism; the portrayal of the Dothraki lacks the nuance found in the books. Furthermore, the TV series seems to have missed the point that while the people of Westeros viewed the Dothraki as savages, the Dothraki held the same opinion of the Westerons. Surely it would have been possible for the producers to do something with this rather more interesting point about racism instead of just throwing their arms up in the air and saying: 'sod it - dusky foreign savages it is then'.

I think if fantasy depicted the world as we would like it to be it would very soon get very boring, and also the dragons fit much more realistically into Westeros than equal rights would.

You sounds like you have definitely not read the books, as your depiction of the 'goodies' and the 'baddies' utterly fails to spot the main point of the books, that makes your accusation of them having no subtlety frankly laughable. One of the main themes of the series is showing what was thought to be strong and beautiful wicked and weak, and vice versa. The reader knows that Tyrion is a hero, but Westeros thinks him an ugly murderer; Arya and Daenerys become incredibly strong characters. And the reader's own first impressions are overturned when the Bran-pushing incestuous Jaime Lannister becomes a point of view character and we start to sympathise with him.

I disagree with almost everything you say in this article. Rape is never positively portrayed, and while I occasionally suspect that I am reading Martin's fantasy in a disturbingly personal sense (hence the proliferation of prostitutes), I don't expect a fantasy world to have modern sensibilities, and may well be disappointed if it did. , .

This article is absolutely ridiculous. It is incredibly obvious that you haven't even watched the show and that you're jumping on a bandwagon just to attract attention. Well congratulations, you succeeded.

Game of Thrones is a fantasy with TONS of strong women - if you had watched the show then you would know this. Brienne, one of the newest characters, is a female warrior who slayed three men that had killed a pair of prostitutes. Arya, a young female character, is en route to becoming a deadly assassin. Cersei, the Queen Regent, is an incredibly strong female character, as is Catelyn Stark. And Dany, well she's probably the strongest of them all, the mother of Dragons. I mean really, you should research what you're writing about before you sit down and type this rubbish out.

Yes, there are scenes of rape but they aren't just exclusive to females. At several points during the shows two seasons, there have been scenes in which males have threatened other males with rape. Game of Thrones depicts the dark battles for power in a time somewhat reminiscent of Medieval ages. Also, it's a TV show, if you don't like it, you can write your own one.

On behalf of women everywhere who love and enjoy Game of Thrones, please go away. You're giving us a bad name.

Some of the blame for this has to rest with the unimaginative writer, Martin. Since when did 'fantasy' exclusively mean a tale set in a feudal context? If that's the only fantasy that fantasy writers can come up with, it's a shame they became writers.

No way was the blonde dragon princesss supposed to be 13 when she married. She was naked most scenes in series one and I very much doubt even the prostitute rape filled world of GOT could show a naked 13 year old girl . She was a grown women ffs.

Are you sure you actually watch the show or just trying to write an article on something as it is very popular and will therefore get a lot of feedback?

No way was the blonde dragon princesss supposed to be 13 when she married. She was naked most scenes in series one and I very much doubt even the prostitute rape filled world of GOT could show a naked 13 year old girl . She was a grown women ffs.

Are you sure you actually watch the show or just trying to write an article on something as it is very popular and will therefore get a lot of feedback?

As to the accusations of sexism: in these situations, whether or not a story is sexist isn't only dependent on what kind of gender relations it portrays its society as having; it's how that kind of state is portrayed that counts. Martin and HBO both make it clear that a sexist society such as that of Westeros is a bad thing. There are plenty of great female characters: Aria, Danaerys, Cersei, Catelyn, Brienne the Blue, and more. These characters aren't all likable, but neither are the male characters. What matters is that these characters are three-dimensional and exist as intelligent beings as opposed to sex objects.

If Martin were a sexist, there wouldn't be an Aria, taking care of herself (and her male companions) on the run and training to be an assassin, nor a Brienne, who fights and defeats any man that comes her way. Cersei, perhaps, is the best example of Martin's belief that sexual politics in Westeros is not ideal, because in her POVs we see how the sexist standards of her society warped her into the villain she is, when she could have been a great, capable ruler. She is adept at the "Game of Thrones," but the fact that, as a woman, she is ultimately dependent on men to make her choices is her downfall.

There are prostitutes in this world, yes, and women are raped and treated abominably, yes, but it serves a purpose, and the message meant by the treatment of women in Westeros is that women are equal to men, and that sexism is wrong.

Its a bit rich complaining the fantasy world in GoT is to pessimistic, evil, racist, not-PC, whatever. Real history wasn't any better and most of the present day world isn't either. It is just more comfortable to pretend that we have evolved past the point of what is presented in GoT as everyday shit life. Well, we haven't and as far as accuracy goes you cant really get more accurate about social dynamics than GoT. Caught between wolves and lions indeed.

I have always thought it pretty asinine to say that if a series has fantastic elements, it should choose to sweep under the rug real-world problems. Yes, Game of Thrones has dragons. If you've read the books, which you seem to have, you will also know that even that fantastical element in subverted into something rather dark. This is a story about a world gone mad. Bake gender equality into such a depiction and it becomes so wildly implausible as to ruin the story. The story supports feminism by adding loads of strong women. I'd rather have that than pretending medieval society is a nice place to live.

Also, couldn't disagree more with the one-sidedness of the characters. Yes, the Starks are the most sympathetic. But Cersei and Jaime are one-sided evil? Please. And that's not even getting to people like Theon who are grey in every sense.

Danerys's storyline is problematic, but... please, show me even a handful of epic stories about white people living among other cultures that are not accused of racism. The protagonist of a story is always elevated above the people around them, white people write about white people, and sometimes they like their protagonists to be in a foreign nation. Shrug.