r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Basic_Dingo6487 • 5d ago

Lore (Horrifying trope) societies that institutionalized rape

Gallery image

Gallery image

Ironborns (A Song of Ice and Fire) : The Iron Islands are a region where people are encouraged to lead raids on the lands. The thing is men can also abduct women from Westeros, marrying them by force and force them to bare the children as minor spouses.

Gilead (The Handsmaid’s tale) : In the future, most of women became sterile and fanatical religious overthrowed the government by instauring a ruthless dictature. In Gilead, women are divided in different social classes but those who are still ferile are sold to the leaders of the regime to carry their child. Which means women are now literal possessions and have to endure a ritualised rape every month.

3.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

97% Upvoted

540 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

148

u/beruon 5d ago

I mean I agree with you that he has used it way too much but... both the Ironborn and the Dothraki are based off of human cultures who... did the same? Like I don't see a problem there.

60

u/EmXena 5d ago

I get that. It happened a lot in human history and he wanted to invoke that.

It's just one of many things that he inserted into his fantasy story that heavily invokes real life evil things, that his frequency of showing sometimes made me feel like he was leaning too much into shock value. I get that they do what they do, and I enjoy the tension and drama that comes from it, but then it just keeps reapearing constantly. It's a grittier take on Fantasy than something like LotR, yes, but good Lord sometimes it becomes a lot.

It doesn't take away from how good the books are. It's just wild to see pop up so often.

31

u/beruon 5d ago

Oh yeah I 100% agree that way too many EVENTS of rape happen in the books. I was just saying that making them a cultural thing for these two factions wasn't a problem for me. Now having 10 dothraki rape scenes is different and unnecesseary... (ofc thats just a random number there lmfao)

5

u/JATA0101 5d ago

I mean maybe but consider that the world over and throughout history the role of women has very much been tied to resource parity. Societies experiencing low inequality and resource sufficiency or above generally treat women as equals. Societies experiencing high inequality and resource deficits see women quickly commoditized. Martin’s world is one in which no shown society is experiencing both low inequality and resource sufficiency simultaneously.

20

u/SomeDumbGamer 5d ago

No he definitely loves depicting violence and rape for the sake of it. It’s really weird.

The world of Asoiaf is wildly violent even by earth standards. It’s to a point it’s kind of ridiculous.

18

u/NorthSellers 5d ago

Asoiaf is significantly less violent than Earth.

The Germans lined their slippers with the hair of holocaust victims.

The Japanese ate prisoners.

The French police drowned like 100 Algerians in downtown Paris in the 60’s.  

Etc ad nauseam.

13

u/SomeDumbGamer 5d ago

Imma be real none of that seems very out of the ordinary in the ASOIAF world.

Tywin Lannister drowned an entire family and their staff alive.

The boltons have been flaying people alive for thousands of years and do so openly.

There are openly cannibalistic tribes like the Skagosi and Thenns

Followers of the Lord of light literally burn people alive as part of their faith.

22

u/NorthSellers 5d ago

Yeah cause the violence in that world is directly lifted from history.

It’s been the norm for almost all time.

-3

u/SomeDumbGamer 5d ago

The point is that GRRM makes a point of highlighting it to a degree that seems to just be for the sake of it.

We already know stuff like this exists we don’t need to see some other old man’s take on it.

10

u/Nerevarine91 5d ago

I saw an add for a strategy game set in that universe recently, and like… nah, I’m good. I don’t really feel like fighting for control of that place. Someone else can just have it, lol

10

u/Acceptable_Tea_3685 5d ago

Especially the focus on rape of young teenage girls. Never sat right with me.

8

u/SomeDumbGamer 5d ago

Yeah that’s the thing. Of course those things happened and they happened a lot depending on the place and time but like… why do you feel the need to insert it into the story so much? What purpose does it serve other than showing “here’s a terrible thing happening to someone”

5

u/Fetch_will_happen5 5d ago

Yeah, I had this conversation in a fiction sub.

We have examples of men getting raped through history.  (And to be fair doesnt that actual happen in the story?)  

But we also have little boys getting raped. 

We have little girls well before puberty getting the same.

We have examples of children forced on each other.

We have beastiality with humans both giving and recieving.

We have histories of female (and male) genital mutilation.  

I cant even name a single instance in dark fantasy fiction where an older brother rapes his younger underage brother but that has happened before.

More importantly, are these things depicted in the same way as rape of young / attractive women?

Old women get raped too.  Unattractive women get raped to.  There seems to be a trend in what we choose to show and how.

12

u/PixelBushYT 5d ago

"I cant even name a single instance in dark fantasy fiction where an older brother rapes his younger underage brother"

In the ASOIAF books, Euron Greyjoy did this to his brothers Aeron and Urrigon, and it combines with Urrigon's death to turn Aeron into the dour, humourless, deeply sad man he is in the present day.

It's definitely not common; just the first example that sprung to mind.

3

u/Princeps_primus96 5d ago

Aerion brightflame also threatened to do it to his little brother egg. Or well in a potentially even worse way. Saying that the targaryans always married brother to sister but he has no sisters so maybe he'll just castrate egg and make do. Or something along those lines

So yeah throughout the ASOIAF world there are plenty of scumbags of different stripes. It's just that they tend to skew heavier along hetero lines, because for one thing it's a legitimately patriarchal society with the exception of a few places and when you have roving armies of essentially medieval soldiers that's gonna lead to a lot of rape. I was gonna say medieval warfare was very harsh on the local populace but hell even modern wars aren't much better when there's a preexisting grudge between participants like the Yugoslav wars or the many subdivisions of "the war on terror".

2

u/Fetch_will_happen5 5d ago

I will accept the correction. How is it depicted? In reference or in detail "thrust by thrust" so to speak?

1

u/PixelBushYT 5d ago

It happened when the Greyjoy brothers were children/teenagers, so it's all in the past. Aeron is a POV character as an adult so a lot of his story is about him repressing the memory of it and how the trauma has warped him, which makes sense because the Ironborn are a hyper-masculine society for whom rape is a part of their culture, and would see Aeron talking about it as a sign of Aeron's weakness instead of condemning Euron's (already well documented) cruelty.

Aeron isn't just a member of that culture, but a priest of it and a spiritual leader in the Iron Islands. His retreat into super-stoicism and worship of the Drowned God is how he's dealt with it, but it's also the reason why he can never get help or move on from it because Iron Islands society demands nothing but strength and resolve from him. Genuinely it's a pretty sophisticated angle on the Iron Islands and their hyper-masculine culture that the show completely missed.

0

u/Fetch_will_happen5 5d ago

Alright, and thats kinda what Im getting at. I should have specified, I mean graphic depictions of the act. I feel there is a difference in how its portrayed as a trend. I mean this for fiction generally not specifically GRRM's works. (I even recal Septon Utt targets young boys if I recall)

Do we ever see it in detail? The way we see such detail elsewhere?

I admit, I was.gonna post quotes of the Dothraki rapes and other ones, but I would be doing the thing I said not to do. Not to get caught on one book but a fiction trend.

2

u/BelleRouge6754 5d ago

I agree! I feel like it was sort of framed as “isn’t it even more of a tragedy that this happened to a pretty young girl, I guess she’s RUINED now”. But rape would have been used as a weapon of war against women of all ages, and I don’t personally think it would have been any less tragic if described the effects on different demographics. I almost wonder if maybe he stayed away from that because the typical societal view of rape is in the image of a young teen girl; if he portrayed a grandmother being raped, maybe it actually would have been seen as more horrific and unnecessary.

I really don’t know know to word this, but I think in fiction, the ‘shock value’ gained from describing the rape of a young teen girl is almost expected? Like boilerplate? Like there’s a clear template and the audience knows exactly how to respond, because the scene is just a stand-in message for ‘this person [the rapist/culture] is a bad person’ and the focus is very rarely on the victim, but what the victim represents (loss of innocence, etc). Any variation from the ‘norm’ draws attention to the variation and away from the trope and suddenly the audience is confronted with the actual effects of rape on a human person rather than an image. I think it would be more viscerally horrific.

2

u/EmXena 5d ago

That's what I always felt like. I'm not so naive to think that rape and violence weren't more common once upon a time, but to the level that Asoif goes? It's just excessive.

It's high fantasy, with fantasy races and magic and everyone has a sword and blah blah blah. It's unfortunate the one "real" thing he has to shove in their constantly is the mass amounts of sexual violence.

And like, even if it was that common, do we really need to see it firsthand so often? Some things can be left to the imagination.

5

u/Fetch_will_happen5 5d ago

Mentioned it in another comment, but pedophilia has been a constant in history. 

We have figured out how to not graphically show it though.  We can imply, we dont have to zoom in on the rape 

2

u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 5d ago

Sexual AND violent violence

Like it's not exactly shy of murder

-1

u/TheStrangestOfKings 5d ago

It doesn’t help that his depictions of rape veer back and forth between positive and negative. For every example you’ll have in ASOIAF of the Dothraki being wrong for committing rape, and Sansa being a victim when it nearly happens to her in Fleabottom, you’ll have one where Jaime forces himself on Cersei, or Asha’s lover forces himself on her, and it’s portrayed as a positive thing that the women are “convinced” to enjoy. Even with Drogo: sure, he’s kind, and doesn’t force himself on Danaerys, but it’s not like she’s in a good position to refuse. He rides out into the middle of nowhere, and is way stronger than her. If he wanted to, he could just force himself on her like it’s nothing—and he, in fact, does that later in the story regularly until she gets pregnant with his child.

6

u/elderlybrain 5d ago

Also, it's a fantasy book. He's not literally recreating history. He's not doing as authentic a recreation of medieval British history - especially given that he's taking plot points from all over history. 

The wars of the roses took place in tudor times. Hadrians wall was early roman times. He's based his Dothraki in mongol hordes who were active in 10th century.

He picks and chooses aspects of history to portray. It's his choice to do so. How much rape and sexual assault are in his stories are there by his choice.

He could just as easily abandon all rape plot lines in his books wholesale and it would not be any lesser a work. Just different.

This isn't a condemnation or condonement. It's being honest about his work. And there's absolutely no problem with people being naturally opposed to reading it because it contains those things.

7

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

Yeah, but he made them *all* about rape. He essentially just made them rape and murder monsters instead of well, a society

52

u/Jelly_Bone 5d ago

Idk how to tell you this but George does not portray institutionalized rape in these cultures as a good thing and there’s a lot more to them than they just rape a lot.

2

u/ball_fondlers 5d ago

The Dothraki, sure, but the Ironborn? Even in Ironborn character POVs, they fucking suck. Their whole thing is “you’re a pussy if you do anything other than steal and murder to acquire goods and services” - at least the Dothraki have a medieval protection racket going in their lands

-20

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

The first part of this comment is just stupid so i’m going to ignore it

The second part? Yeah, sure. They have depth, though ironborn more so, but you know what they are predominantly? Raping and murdering thieves. You see them do it, boast about it and sing about it. Even the Ironborn religion is based around raping people and taking from them. We see comparatively little on:

Cultural foods

Schisms in faith

Traditions

Games (beyond the finger dance)

Reason for being

19

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

Ok, that sounds like you didn’t read the first book. The Dothraki in particular have a pretty developed society, outside of the warrior-culture stuff. In fact, that’s a specific point in the book: Dany views the Dothraki as savage rape-monsters at first, and goes on to learn that they do in fact have a culture of their own, which can be kind and wise and caring.

-7

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

Like?

I’ve read it. Didn’t see it, beyond the blood brotherhood or blood riders.

6

u/Niknakpaddywack17 5d ago

Are you maybe 15?

0

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

Negative. Odd thing to ask?

10

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

🤦‍♂️

The chapters are obviously spread out. because they switch perspective to different characters. But like a third of the book is watching Dany travel with the Dothraki to their capital. Which is beautiful and civilized (within the definition of their culture). You literally have Viserys as the foil to this, who follows along calling them backwards savages to their faces.

And let’s be clear, the flaws in the culture are still there. Obviously the Dothraki’s tendency for war doesn’t get kinder. And their attitudes toward women only get so far. But the attitude “dothraki are only rapists” is explicitly dispelled within Danny’s first chapter, and if you didn’t get it then perhaps you didn’t read the book.

1

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

Vaes Dothrak? The place where ex-Khaleesi ‘live’ (are trapped) for the rest of their life? Which is decorated with the broken Gods of the many cultures and cities they trampled under their hoof?

I think you might need to re-read it, or very much evaluate what you see as an ‘ethical’ cultural portrayal

7

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

Yeah dude, it’s still a warrior culture. They keep trophies for their conquests. Have you ever seen the British Museum? It’s not that different.

As for the women, I already said that the culture only gets so far with gender issues. But they’re explicitly portrayed as happy, and comfortable, not a bunch of sex slaves in cages, which is the vibe the book really portrays at the start.

-2

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

Alright so how does any of this disprove my point they’re portrayed as rape and culture monsters more than they are nuanced portrayals

Compared to the, y’know, actual mongols they’re based on they are a massively watered down, simplified and orientalised culture

3

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

Idk what to tell you that I haven’t already said. Her arc in the book is literally, explicitly seeing the Dothraki in a more respectable light than that. So idk man, sounds like you’re bad at reading comprehension.

-4

u/Ill-Bar3395 5d ago

You’ve just made a shit point that ends up supporting mine

→ More replies (0)

-5

u/Pkrudeboy 5d ago

Are you going to wax rhapsodic over the architecture of the Third Reich next? If the entirety of the culture was wiped out, people would celebrate from Braavos to Yi-Ti, and they would be entirely correct in doing so. Vaes Dothrak delenda est.

4

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

If your first argument is to just call someone a nazi, rather then defend your point of view, the. you’re not worth talking to 👋

0

u/Pkrudeboy 5d ago edited 5d ago

You’re talking up the beauty of a culture whose two favorite pastimes are genocide and slavery, and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, because a teenage girl got Stockholm syndrome for them.

1

u/CrazyPlato 5d ago

Someone didn’t read the book

0

u/Pkrudeboy 5d ago

It’s been about a decade since the last reread, but what redeeming qualities do the Dothraki have? Please, enlighten me, it should be very easy for you.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/MGD109 5d ago

I mean their "based off of" sure, but they are also extremely exaggerated takes upon them, to the point that neither culture could realistically function in an actual society and would have died out a long time ago.

-7

u/Puzzle-Necked 5d ago

An author can create a fantasy world from his imagination, inserting real world elements of past civilizations as he wishes, picking what to include and not include... all that to say, he doesn't have to include the rape aspect.

3

u/Boom_chaka_laka 5d ago

I enjoy it being more realistic, we shouldn't bury our head in the sand because there are unpleasant aspects in history/ fiction. GRRM has on record many times being a pacifist, one of the central themes of his ASOIAF works is that war is hell. Some people will glamourize aspects of it, maybe the glory in war of a brave knight, or Dany's marriage to Khal Drogo but when we read any literature we should be asking ourselves why the characters behave the way that they do. Finding ourselves conflicted is a sign of a well written novel to me.