The Lannister Rape

Or... why it's okay because Cersei is a bitch.

The rape of Cersei Lannister, by her brother Jaime, next to their son's bier in episode 3 of Season 4 of Game of Thrones has caused huge reaction amongst audiences, fans and media reporters.  Not least of all because of claims from the production end of things that it wasn't rape, it was merely forced sex.  No, do your own google, it's too depressing for me to list the slew of articles, reactions, interviews and justifications on how it's okay for a man to rape  a mother at the bier of their murdered son.  The justifications are as endless as they are nonsensical.  It was forced sex, not rape.  It was rape, but not as we know it (not real rape). It started as rape but ended up consensual.  (No, seriously)  And the kicker - it was vital to later story/character development.

There are a few things to be said about sexual politics and Game of Thrones, that need to be stated loud and clear in any discussion of the show's representation of sexuality and gender.  But before we get to that, let's deal with the reality of the rape scene being, like, you know, actual rape.

A woman is being touched physically by a man as he tries to kiss her and pull her into his arms..  She pulls away and says "No."  The man continues.

That's sexual assault.

The woman repeatedly says "No" and tries to pull away again.  The man acknowledges that she is saying no, and says "I don't care."

The man rips off her clothing, against her protests, pushes her down onto the floor and inserts his penis into her violently.

That's rape.

Okay.  We clear?  It's rape.  Unlawful sexual assault and penetration of a woman who has not only not given consent, who has actively stated "No."  Rape.  That's what that is, legally, morally, intrinsically.

You'd think it was unavoidable.  You'd think that the writers, director, producers, actors and media specialists around Game of Thrones the television series, would be unable to talk about this scene as anything other than a horrific, brutal rape, both physical and psychological.  She was forced over her dead son's body at one point, for goodness sake!

What they do, however, is discuss it as a difficult scene with a lot going on and some unwholesome aspects in it.

Unwholesome.  Hard to watch.  Difficult.

Violent rape that isn't actually rape.....   *head falls off at double think*.

How they can say that - that it is rape, it isn't rape, it's just forced sex - is based on a tangled skein to myths, lies and avoidances around women and their bodies that infuses our rape acceptance culture.  There are several aspects to it, and it all concentrates on Cersei and her actions and character.  It's all about Cersei and her body.  Which makes it worth having a little look at how women's bodies are represented, and viewed, in Game of Thrones.

Nudity, and sex, on television, particularly in the USA where some audiences appear to think that the Hayes Code showed life as it was, not what it could be and who yearn to bring back it's nostalgic 'innocence' of days nicer and less sordid... well sex and bodies on television is a huge issue.  On one hand audiences love a bit of nudity and sexual foreplay: ratings get higher.  On the other, screams of outrage at the 'unnecessary' flashes of breasts and buttocks as we desport from bed chamber to brothel and back again can cause censorship to come calling.  Audience reach can reduce drastically if you 'go too far'.

As programme makers you have to choose between attracting audience because of the sex and/or naked bits, or repelling audience.  You also have decide how necessary the nudity and the sex is, in terms of narrative.  To make drama with a lot of nudity and sex you have embed it into the narrative really effectively.  You can't have a bit of story, a bit of steamy sex, a bit of story.   If the sex and nudity is there just for itself, well that's porn and much of your market has just closed down.  If it's part of the drama it's about how realistic the world is that you're portraying in terms of those morals.  The sex, or nudity, must drive the narrative forward.   It must be necessary to the plot.  There all the arguments lie: what is, and is not necessary in terms of narrative.  To some people sex and/or nudity is never necessary.  To others it's vital as both sex and nudity are part and parcel of everyday life and sex is certainly a main player in human interaction and social politics.   To those who reject sexualiy and nudity; all reference to it is gratuitous.  It's there solely to titillate the audience.  To those who want realistic portrayals of adult interaction, it's just one more component in the human experience.  A component that can carry narrative easily.

Therefore shows such as Game of Thrones have fine lines to dance upon, on what they can, and can't get away with.  What is, and isn't, story.  Is it important that this scene takes place with this amount of nudity, or sexual content, because it drives us all forward in understanding?  A negotiation you have to have all along the way, between writer and producer, director and actor.  It's a tricky business making the sex and nudity ''valid' to the mainstream audience and yet still hold onto a wider appeal.

However, audience reaction and industry mores are not the only problem.  As soon as you turn a camera on any naked woman, you face a huge feminist dilemma.  A dilemma that moving image has tussled with since the very beginning, and which it continues to wrestle with mightily today.  As soon as you turn the audience's gaze upon a woman, you objectify her.

You make her a consumer object.  You do it too men to, clearly, but in a different way.   Men hold the gaze in moving image: men look, women are looked at.  The male audience see themselves as wanting to possess the female form in front of them and women audience are supposed to want to be that female, and to be desired and obtained.  Well, that's the theory and it's a pretty powerful one for most mainstream moving image.  It's how the vast majority of film and televisions programmes are set up. And as programme makers you have decide how you're going to deal with that before you get going.  You have to decide who has the power in your camera, and what you're saying to the audience every time you point that camera.  You have to be self-aware of the pitfalls of that gratuitous sex and nudity.  You have to decide if you are reflecting sexual stereotypes in your drama, or if you're actually re-creating it. 

I'd argue that a great deal of the time, Game of Thrones works hard at reflecting (not creating) misogyny in its narrative and in the cinematography, and it does it well.  In particular, it uses nudity and sexual activity to clearly show how trapped and powerless the women in GoT are. How they are at best, high class breeding stock, and the tragedy of that.  Take Daenerys as a great example of this.  How she is introduced a a well dressed, or undressed mannequin.   How her naked body is mauled and played with by her bully brother.  How powerless she is to fight back, as she has no worth at all apart from her bride price in buying him his throne.  It's a realistic portrayal of a young girl trapped by her bloodline into being the exotic child-bride of the brutish warrior.  Her only worth is in being beautiful and sexual and something that men would fight over.  Something that a man would give a great price for.

Her nudity in early scenes, whilst being a clear titillating element for publicity for the show, also carries narrative.  A great deal of narrative is delivered in the nuances of her features and how others respond to her body, not least of all her brother who clearly feel he 'owns' her.  We see how she feels about being owned, we see her fight back, we see her start to find a voice for herself where she can say 'no'.  

We also see the price she must pay, sexually, for her lack of power and her blood line.  Legally married to Khal Drogo her consent for sex, any sex, in any way, is deemed to have been given, unasked.  This is the reality that all the women in GoT have to live with: that they will be married off to a man whom they have no choice but to have sex with: even if they are detestable.  It drives Cersei in her fury over being handed over to the coarse and uncivilised Baratheon.   Conversely, it's  the founding of the fondness in the relationship between Ned Stark and Catelyn: she was not his love choice, she went to him as it was the right thing for the blood lines, and the families.  And he treated her with respect.  From that respect, grew love.  Being able to grow that respect can only happen if the male in the marriage allows it to: the women are stuck with whatever they're married off too.  Sansa's dread at being in Joffrey's bed is well founded.  Her terror on finding she has started to 'flower' and is now able to be bred on for her children is valid.  

It's a fate that Brienne has utterly rejected and one that Arya will probably never accept.  It's a fate that Olenna has trained Margaery for: to accept the reality but to work hard to minimise the damage to her of being married to the wrong type of male, as she, Olenna, was.  (My money is on Olenna being the one who poisoned Joffrey.  I don't think she could stomach Margaery being in his hands.).  The men might hate being married off to an ugly, or a stupid wench, but they are in charge of the wife, total and complete.  The wife is utterly at the mercy of the man's humanity and compassion.  Or lack of it.

All this is introduced into the narrative of GoT, through Daenerys and Khal Drogo.  The pain and humiliation on Daenerys's face as he has drunken sex with her on their wedding night.  The rape that is not a rape, as she has consented in marrying him.

Remember that comment: it's important.

The great thing about GoT and this narrative outlined and progressed through Daenerys's nakedness is that we actually see her take power and take control with it.  She does not remain the frightened child.  She finds her voice, her own sense of strength in her body, and her lover, and she makes good the bargain of her marriage.  She makes sure she learns how to love a man, and then teaches Khal Drogo to love her that way.  What was consensual, but brutal, becomes, at Daenerys's bidding, gentle and passionate and loving.  They bond and become truly attached to each other, just as Ned and Catelyn did, and countless other married couple have who have approached their arranged marriages with respect and tolerance.  Just as countless other have failed to do when they found themselves married to a partner with no concept of respect, boundaries or gentleness.

And it doesn't harm ratings that this means you then get to see an awful lot of their naked bodies draped around each other lovingly.  

Just like it doesn't harm ratings that one area where GoT also excels, is that it presents both male and female bodies as objects of desire.  There are many many more naked female scenes that male ones, but the male body is presented to the female viewer as a delicious feast of flesh.  Just as most female on female sex in mainstream moving image is constructed as fodder for the male viewer, the male on male sex in GoT is clearly constructed for the delight of the female audience.  You could argue that the male bottoms on clear display always carry with them more power than the female ones, but hey, they are there!  And if equality is equal exploitation, them GoT is happy to play that game.

It even has a male reduced to nothing by sexual savagery, something extremely rare in a world where the 'victim' of the sex attacker is almost always female.  Theon learns the hard way that the powerless world of the captive means being male means nothing if no one knows you're a captive in the first place.  Wives have some protection on their treatment if their fathers and brothers and powerful and give a damn.    Theon is completely lost in anonymous torture: he's just as vulnerable to pain and humiliation as any female.  Of course, reserved for him is the ultimate loss for the man: his penis.  Women can be raped and tormented, but you have to cut off the manhood for the man to be completely reduced and thus condemned to a life as a player of no importance: ask Varys.

Being naked on GoT is just like being naked in real life.  Sometimes it's a statement of humiliation and weakness.  Sometimes it's a statement of control.  The men are often seen naked in moments of power, with their whores, or their new loves.  This is also true of some of the women.  Melisandre's power is expressed through her iron control of her own sexuality.  Daenerys actually comes into her power through her nakedness as a complete over turn of the fragility and weakness of her early scenes with her brother.  Daenerys emerging from the flames naked and clutching her dragons couldn't be more part and parcel of a narrative (walking into flames is going to burn your clothes off unless they're made from Kryptonite) but is also an intrinsic statement about her power.  She had the courage to walk into the flames and came out unscathed.  She can be naked in front of men and not be vulnerable.  She's learned to own her own body.  That you happen to be looking at it isn't the point: what she is is the point: powerful.   She just also happens to be nude.  But in no sense is she naked, vulnerable and exposed.

And, again, it's good for the ratings.  But it is narrative driven.  It is about character and development and moving the story forward.  

Loads of people complain about the sex and nudity on GoT, just as loads of people watch it hoping for a bit more of it.  It's a taboo thing in mainstream media so it is intrinsically intriguing and entertaining when it appears so often.  It does, usually, serve the over all narrative and it does a very good job, as I've stated, on underlining the powerlessness of the women of Game of Thrones.  You can be a good wife, a mother, and supporter and a comforter to your husband and you can wield power with him, or through him, but not in your own right.  Even Daenerys only wields power through her dragons.  Take them away, she's dead of dehydration in the desert.  The women of GoT have limited power in all circumstances, limited reach.  We see them fight in a patriarchal society that consigns them to the secondary roles and we watch how different women from different ranks, class and bloodlines, play out their stories within those limitations.  It is an exceptionally feminist text in many ways and in particular it's graphic portrayal of how powerless so many of them are.  It highlights the lack of roles and opportunities for women and yet we see them fighting back and trying to take charge.

However, the feminist elements in GoT are very much gold star only in how you compare it to the lack of such representation in other types of drama.  There are still problems with the representation of women in GoT, and in particular, the mother.  To be a mother is a powerful thing, look at how Daenerys has the freed slaves chanting for her as 'mother'.  But in the world of GoT, just like in our world, being a mother is also a dangerous and complicated thing, for you have to negotiate your power properly and be A Good Mother as well as A Good Wife.  In particular, how you balance those two roles is vital in how you are then portrayed as a good, or a bad thing.   GoT underlines this with some truly horrific and misogynistic comments on being the wrong type of mother.
 

It first of all sets up the Good Mother, of course.  The Good Wife and Excellent Mother: Catelyn Stark.  The good mother, the help mate, who turns all her intelligence, skill, wisdom and to supporting her wise and measured husband in building up a safe place for her brood.  She mothers her tribe and her people in the way that Ned Stark fathers them.  She leads by his side and is the one he turns to for comfort and a sure touch.

Mind you, he doesn't turn to her much for advice.  He turns to her to support him in his decisions.  A lot of what Catelyn says to Ned, and her family, about fears for the future and how they progress in the problems brought to their home by Robert Baratheon riding in one afternoon... well, they're ignored.  Her wisdom in seen in how she supports her husband, and her sons.  And this is where Catelyn displays out the issues of being a powerful woman in the GoT narrative: how you negotiate the competing priorities:  husband first, then children?  Or the other way around?  Catelyn walks the pathway with delicate care and is seen as the right type of mother and wife.   Husband first, politically, with love, just enough love, but not too much, to the children.  Catelyn is a loving mother, dedicated to all her children but she does not commit the worst sin a woman in GoT can commit: she does not love her children too much. Life is hard and to be a good mother you must let some of that hardness rub off onto your children.  She sends Sansa and Arya off to King's Landing as it's the correct thing politically.  She doesn't rage and storm at Ned to stop the marriage.  She knows there isn't a power in the land to stop it, and so she can just work on making it happen smoothly.  She leaves Bran and Rickon alone in Winterfell when she needs to the be the courier that takes the plight out to the wider political theatre.  She chooses politics and keeping power in line, and in succession, rather than her maternal feeling.  However, she always does so in a subordinate way to both Ned, and then Robb.  Yes, the mother in her lets loose Jaime Lannister, but the politician in her keeps her one step back one to the side of Robb when he is at the battle table.  She can never be seen to be too powerful a voice in the House of Stark.  Her role is help mate, not running mate.  She cannot, at all costs, be seen as the power behind Robb's throne.  She must not be the mother in charge of her son's decision's.  She works hard to stand back and let him be his 'own' person, negating the power she has over him a mother.  This garners her tremendous audience respect.  She's A Good Wife, A Good Mother, and not a problem.

Compare this with Cersei.  Cersei isn't a Good Mother, or a Good Wife.  Cersei plots and undermines and goes behind Robert Baratheon's back.  She is a problem to him, a thorn in his side.  She is a terrible mother.  She is everything bad about being a woman, and a mother.  She whores with her own brother, she indulges her child in everything and she wants power for herself.  For herself?  Fie?  Fiend woman.  She opposes Baratheon and wishes to be the Power Behind the Throne: ruling through her son.  

She even fails at that.  Despite the fact that she's protected Joffrey from the consequences of his appalling behaviour, presumably throughout his entire childhood, in the way she protects him against the slight that he was hit by the butcher's boy... despite all this, or no doubt because of it, Joffrey isn't under her control.  By over indulging Joffrey, Cersei commits the worse mother-sin: she raises a spoilt male child who isn't capable of ruling.  She spoils him with too much love and indulgence, the greatest fear man has about the really annoying fact that you have to let your women raise your sons, at least for a bit.

The myth of the over protective mother destroying the child is a powerful one that infects just about every aspect of current parenting controversies.  It's a myth that GoT embraces wholeheartedly, despite attempting to portray women more positively than most dramas.  When Catelyn turns to her sister Lysa for help, her sister's complete mental breakdown and utter degradation in terms of being the power of her own household is destroyed by one vile, inhuman act.  Lysa breastfeeds her son on the throne of her house.  Breastfeeds her old enough to ask for it son.

No quicker sketch could be made of an unbalanced woman, a woman unable to take part in grown up man politics, than that of Lysa and her son.  Given current hysteria over females breastfeeding past the time that's 'proper', it was a cheap shot on behalf of GoT.  Quick, easy, dispensed with.  Only a loony would argue that she was not completely lost, and that the cause of her madness was that she was over mothering, over loving, and thus destroying her son's ability to lead.  Catelyn turns her face away in disgust and despair.  It's no good, no reasoning with someone that unbalanced.  Of course, she's unbalanced as her husband is dead and without him at the helm, she's cast adrift unable to cope.  Lost without her Lord, unable to be his help mate and not up to being in charge as a mere woman, she's surrendered herself to the worse attributes of motherly love.  Her son in thus unmanned rather than faster than Theon.

Of course, Cersei and Lysa aren't the only mad mothers.  The theme of unnatural, too loving and thus dangerous and deadly viper in the midst mother is played out again and again.  From Selsye keeping her dead male babies in jars as she locks up her not pretty enough daughter, to Melisandre's unholy birth of a demon, motherhood is suspect and strange.  Women who are mothers have to prove they are the correct type of mother, able to detach from their love of their children to follow the lead of the patriarchs in charge of their world.  If you can't do that, you're a bad mother and a dangerous woman and you will destroy your sons.

Cersei is labelled as such from the very beginning.  The shrew that Baratheon married.  The over indulgent mother, the shouting wife who demands, not the help mate who assists.  Cersei wants power for herself.  She wants to be in charge.  Doesn't she realise she's a woman?  can't she get it through her thick head that helping the men in charge is the way forward?

Part of why no one has sympathy with Cersei being raped by Jaime, is that she's such an annoying woman.  She has no idea of her place in the structure around her and doesn't use her skills to get along with the demands of how she should act, as laid out by Catelyn.  But this shallow view denies a great deal about Cersei, and her life, and her narrative.  Cersei is a product of her upbringing.  Cersei has always know she was breeding stock.  A twin, who watched her brother raised to be the best and the most in charge of everything, and who was sidelined to be the bargain piece.  In spite of the fact that her intelligence and political strategy gifts were far greater than that of her brother.  A woman whose beloved mother died giving birth to a deformed monster.  But the monster was male, and lived, and was still higher up in the pecking order than her.  Tyrion may have been in charge of the Casterly Rock sewers, but Cersei was in charge of nothing.  Cersei was sold off to Baratheon regardless of her views on the matter.  Cersei was sent to be raped by Robert, in that 'she's married me therefore it's consensual' manner of all the brides.  There was no chance at all that Baratheon was going to be a kind and gentle lover who would wait until she'd come round to the idea of the marriage before consummating it.

What idiot would do that, after all?

And she throws her love into her son, not her husband, raising a monster!  Typical woman.  Or did she?  Is Joffrey the makings of Cersei?  Evidence is very strong that Cersei has had little to do with Joffrey's madness.  Lannister has bred with Lannister for generations, to protect the blood line.  That's made clear by Cersei.  She and Jaime continue a tradition.  A tradition of inbreeding that could what.. result in madness in some and physical deformity in others?  Fie.

I can well imagine the pain Tywin Lannister felt on the night he wanted to drown the deformed child whose body had ripped his wife open.  All... all is for the Lannister line.  People die.  Loves die.  Generations move on, but the line continues.  He held in his hands a child of  Lannister.  To kill Tyrion was to defy his defining creed: the bloodline is all.  To decide that the twisted flesh born of Lannister blood should die, was to deny the power of that bloodline.  Deciding a crippled child of Lannister was not strong enough to survive was to betray the entire point: the blood continues on.  Even twisted and malformed a Lannister son was worth more than any other able bodied man.  The bloodline is all.

Nothing will stand in the way of that at Casterly Rock.  No daughter will choose her own path, no son his own.  All will be done to continue the Lannister line above all else, and to take it to the Iron Throne.  The Lannister family collective, not the individuals, will rule.  Cersei will marry Baratheon.  Her male child will sit on the Iron Throne.  Her female children will be bride price in their own turn.  And therefore those children will be Lannister, not Baratheon.

We have no idea when sister and brother began to have sex together.  It's likely Cersei was virgin until she married Baratheon.  But we do know that the sex was about producing a Lannister child for the Throne.  A full blooded Lannister child.  And we have no idea when and where the romance and passion between Cersei and Jaime began.  Whether it was a Flowers in the Attic response to a terrible, harsh and unloving childhood, or simply a plan of Tywin's that was taught at the cradle.  We look at Cersei's relationship with her brother and we refuse to see how it might have started.  What choice Cersei had, either emotionally or physically.  The fact that she actively enjoys Jaime gets in the way of any thought of her being trapped into the relationship by circumstance.  We look to the pleasure she gets from him as the defining moment, not how her world was so constructed that her only choice for any happiness was her own brother.  We don't like that it might not be a 'choice', that decision, so we decide to look away.

Just as the majority of production people in this episode refuse to see her lack of choice over the rape in the episode.

Just like we refuse to see whatever choices Cersei had in the upbringing of Joffrey.  Cersei has three children.  The other two are perfectly normal children.  She loves them, and protects them and is A Good Mother to them.  As Joffrey is her power, one can see the young mother that was Cersei noticing her beloved son's madness and doing everything in her power to keep him safe and still the heir.  Cersei herself could be discarded as many a wife before her if she didn't keep her children close to her.  There is no evidence Cersei was anything other than a normal loving Mum to Myrcella and Tommen.  We know she was distraught when Myrcella was taken from her and sent off for marriage.  If Cersei was grooming Joffrey to be her puppet king, why then are the other two children so untouched by her machinations?  Children die young quite often in this world, why has she not groomed and over prepared the other two the way she did Joffrey? 

Or is it simply that Joffrey is, always was, mad?  He was born that way.  And with his genetic profile, you can quite see that this may have little to do with Cersei and her mothering.  Cersei may have felt powerless to do anything about Joffrey other than try and protect him at all costs.  Try to make sure he made it adulthood.  She loved him, adored him, but as she ruefully tells Tywin when he castigates her for not having enough control over Joffrey, 'You try and control Joffrey."  Joffrey is simply not up for control.

It's my opinion that Cersei's need to keep herself safe in the Lannister bloodline is so strong, and her hatred of Baratheon so overwhelming, that she killed her first born - the child of Baratheon.  It's written in the subtext of the conversation she had with Catelyn over the broken body of Bran.  That indoctrination on the need to protect and provide a Lannister line is all from Tywin.  Cersei's only hope of having any say in her life is to either remain Queen, or Queen Mother.  She would die rather than see a Baratheon child on that throne, but she would do anything to have Jaime's child on it.  (And a fine revenge on Robert that is.)

Everything she has is invested in maintaining herself in the lives of her male children.  In being Joffrey's protector above all, she protected herself and the other two.  Being the power behind his throne was also safety for her, in a world where she could be bargained out again in marriage to another political allegiance.  (As Tywin then arranged.)  She needed to keep control of Joffrey in order to stay safe herself.  I can't help thinking it was Joffrey's madness that kept the mother dancing, not the other way around.  Especially as Tommen was led away from her so deftly and easily by Tywin.  Right now, Cersei is pretty powerless.  Tywin has taken control of the new heir to the Iron Throne and she's destined for another marriage far away from court.  She's not in a good position.

And she's lost her beloved son.  Murdered in front of her.  It's strange how little sympathy she's getting for that.  That she could be raped in front of her murdered son's body and it still not be A Bad Thing.  Just a bit bleak, a bit bad luck, and let's move on.  Forced sex.

Well, you know, it's not that strange at all.  Not if you look at rape acceptance culture, and Cersei, and her narrative history.  Cersei breaks lots of rules and that means she can be broken back with impunity. 

She's a sexual pervert.  She has consensual sex with her brother.  Two elements here contribute to him then being able to rape her at will.  One, rape culture accepts that if a woman has 'not normal' sexual impulses, then she loses some of her 'innocence'.  If she hasn't got any innocence, she can't be defiled.  By bedding Jaime, Cersei gives up some of her protection on how choosy she gets on who is in her bed, and her body.  (Just as the prostitute can't be raped, only not be paid for services, so the incestous woman can't complain that the sordid sex she has in circumstance A is okay but the same sex in circumstance B is rape.)

She's already broken taboos and been a bad girl.  How can she then complain if she's then treated badly?

This is compounded by the fact that it's Jaimie who rapes her.  She's consented to sex with him before, even 'tho it's forbidden.  (May even be illegal, it is in the here and now).  This is directly linked to the fact that you can't be raped by your own husband (or someone who you have previously consented too.)  She doesn't get to say 'No' to Jaime as he has prior rights.  And those rights are shady and unwholesome, so no bother if he decides to force the issue.  What did she expect?

She's also been very unfair to him, and refused him when he's in need.  Jaime has been unmanned in the narrative over the past few months.  Locked up, hounded, his hand lobbed off.  He's lost his status as the champion fighter and had to look at his own life in a way that the arrogant Jaime of old would have considered weakness.  His character has under gone a bit of a redemptive overhaul.  In particular, his killing of the previous King turns out to have been an epic act of courage, not a stab in the back thing.  Jaime is in a bit of a flux and quandry.  He's hurting, and he needs loves and understanding.  Whilst Brienne sits back unable to make the slightest move to be that person, Jaime seeks out Cersei for comfort and love.  He rushes to her to be what he has always been for her, The White Knight on the Charger.

She says 'no'.  She rejects him.  She carefully stays physically away from him.  He does not get the hero's return.  He is smarting and he is very annoyed with her.  He needs to prove his power over her, dammit, and prove it he will.  

Sickeningly, a lot of the production crew seem to think it's a perfectly reasonable thing for him to do.  Jaime needs to show he's in control.  he's in control of his destiny, of his body, his sister and his place in the Lannister line.  That he's not a looked over has been.  That he still matters.  He needs to prove he's in control, on top, still king of the hill.  He's lost his hand, his status and watched his son die when it was his duty to protect him.  He has to prove his worth again.  So he rapes his uppity lover who had the nerve to suddenly decide she had the power to say 'no'.

Nice.

Ooops, sorry, so he forces his sister to have sex with him.  It's not rape.  Isn't it?  Okay, let's try it this way.  Let's rerun that scene with someone he hasn't had naughty sex with before, and see if it's rape.

Let's try it with Brienne.  Put Brienne in Cersei's place, rerun the entire scene.  Is it rape?  You bet your bottom dollar it is.  Now then, we do have a 'problem' in it being rape with Brienne.  After all, she does love him, and she's a big lass, it is conceivable she could have fought him off a bit more.  And then there's the kicker - according the the production crew Cersei enjoyed the rape once it got going a bit.  Cersei convulsed and orgasmed, in other words.  Cersei's body did what bodies do when the right buttons are pressed: it reacted.  No way that would have happened with Brienne, right?  You can't be raped and orgasm, right?

Wrong.  Orgasm is a physical set of responses to physical stimuli.  You run a mile, you get out of breath.  You stand under a freezing cold shower, your nipples harden.  If you're female, and you're being raped in a way that's stimulating your body, you can orgasm.  It's not pleasure, it's not enjoyment, it's not taking part.  It's the same reaction to being cut with a knife: you bleed.  Bodies respond to rape.  It's the taboo of all taboos to discuss, as it raises spectres of enjoying the rape.  The silence also creates a really horrible sub-culture in rape, particulalry amongst peadophiles: if you make your victim orgasm they are less likely to report you.  This is especially true of children.  Grooming boards will actually have discussions amongst the abusers about how to make the child orgasm, and how this will aid both secrecy and control of the child in the future.

And this doesn't mean the child enjoyed it.  Certainly, some peadophiles do groom to ensure that the child is enjoying it, but that's no less a desecration than a rape where the child has not had that response.  And familiar rapists, partners, husbands, can play the mind rape game, where they deliberately make their victim orgasm.  A mind fuck as well as a body one.  Orgasm during rape is another part of the arsenal of weapons being used against the woman.  Many rapists deliberately use it to add humiliation to their victims.

A humiliation so intense that discussing orgasm through rape is one of the last taboos about rape.  The Thing You Do Not Speak Of.  But it's a purely physiological response.   If you slice a razor across the skin you will bleed.  It's an autonomic response.  You haven't chosen to bleed.  You aren't enjoying it.  But that's what happens when a knife parts skin.  Well, orgasm is something that happens when enough nerve endings are triggered.  It isn't consensual.  And it certainly isn't proof of enjoyment.  (Ask the sufferers of persistent arousal syndrome: they describe it as agony.)

That the producers were so keen to point out that Cersei 'enjoyed' the rape, that they cut to her hand clutching the cloth of the bier as he body convulses.

And this one, that she enjoyed the rape, is one of the biggest myths of all about rape in our current culture.  The therapeutic power of rape.  From the moment that Rhett Butler took a struggling Scarlet O'Hara up the stairs to their bedroom, when the opening scene the next day is the huge happy smile of her face... to the rape of the comatose daughter in Brimstone and Treacle bringing about a cure for her condition.... our culture is infused with the idea that sometimes, just sometimes, a woman needs a damn good penile hammering in order for her to be truly be happy as a woman.  Just as old fashioned French films always had to have the hero slap the heroine near the end to 'prove' her loved her, fictional rape amongst previously consensual partners has always involved a bit of a belief in the pre-emptive, restorative power of a good seeing too.  Put her in her place and put a smile on her face.  Restore the natural order of things.  Put the man on top and let her see the error of her ways in saying 'no.

Well, I guess that's how Game of Thrones executives, producers, directors and actors are seeing it.  Cersei deserved a come uppance.  She has had 'bad' sex before'.  She is unnatural when it comes to sex.  And Jaime needed to show her a thing or too about control  But it's okay... she orgasmed, so that's fine.

Really?  Well then, let's look at something else then.  Or rather, someone else.  Let's look to Tyrion and Sansa.  Let's replay the bier scene not with Jaime and Cersei, but place it after the wedding of Sansa and Tyrion.  A wedding where Sansa has consented to marry.  Let's have Tyrion come in, push her over.  Let's have Sansa say 'no'.  Let's have Tyrion say 'I don't care' and push her to the ground and push his penis into her.  Let's see Sansa's hand clutch a cloth as her body convulses.

Is that rape?  Huh?  Come on, is it?  What, I hear you cry, yes, of course it's rape?  How?  he has a legal right too, she said yes at the altar after all.  How can it be rape?

Well one way it can be rape, of course, is that Tyrion has clearly stated that to force his body onto his fourteen year old bride would be rape.  Something he refuses to do.  Something that stands in Game of Thrones for what a true hero Tyrion is.  The best of all the Lannisters.  A moral man of impeccable honour.  

A man who asks for permission.  A man who will only act if he is actively given consent.  A man who is seen as something very special and wonderful in the casual misogyny of the world of Game of Thrones.

But make no mistake about it.  Tyrion's virtue in the eyes of the audience hasn't only got to do with Tyrion.  It's also got a lot to do with Sansa, and who she is.  Sansa is a victim.  Through and through she is a weak child unable to defend herself.  We like her to be a victim.  We like her to be guileless and unable to cope with the politics of the court.  We like her childlike wonder and inability to fight back.  We like that she constantly needs rescued.  We hope she'll find her knight to rescue her and take her off to the castle where she'll have happy rainbow days and lots of smiling happy children.  We'll despise anyone who hurts her.  Ahh bless.  The sweet princess.

Sansa is the princess stuck up in the tower with the long hair.  She's asleep on the bed after having pricked her thumb.  She's the one scrubbing the floors whilst the ugly sisters screech.  She's beauty captured by the beast.

If Sansa was less of a victim, she'd have less audience sympathy.  Cersei is just as much as trapped and bullied by her life as Sansa is.  But Cersei fights back.  She fights back 'tho, like a woman, not a man.  She doesn't do an Arya, or a Brienne, an Ygritte, and run off to learn to sword fight and do everything that defies her femaleness.  She doesn't walk the paths of male power.  She uses what female power she has, in her female world, and rules through that.  And that's unforgivable.  She pushes and schemes and designs and tries to make it work for her, on her terms.  

And that makes her unsympathetic.  Who cares if she was raped?  Don't matter.  She's a bad lot and deserves what she gets.  Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the rape is never mentioned again.  It just didn't happen.  The only reason I can see for it being there at all in terms of narrative, is for Cersei to develop an inconvenient pregnancy.  (I've not read the books but friends who have advise me that there are no inconvenient births in the books due to something called Moon Tea.)  In the books Cersei and Jaime had consensual sex at this juncture: why would the producers turn it into a rape unless there was a dramatic reason such as a pregnancy?

Oh, I mean a reason other than showing a damn uppity woman that she's not in charge.  After all, it's not rape, it was only Cersei after all.

I said at the beginning that Game of Thrones had been really good at reflecting on misogyny.  It has shown women at threat of rape, and in peril of rape, in a world where they had little to no say in their own destinies.  It reflected that women can be used as sexual pawns, playthings and chattels.  It illustrates the problems that women face in feudal, patriarchal cultures.  And that's a really good thing for a tv programme to do.  Rape does happen.  Women in the world of Game of Thrones are in danger of being brutalised.  Just as women in this world are: go to camps in Syria.  Travel to Rwanda.  Talk to the refugee women in detention.  Ask your next door neighbour.  Showing casual misogyny, reflecting it, highlighting it and bring it to the viewer... that's a good thing.  Game of Thrones has done that well.

However, in Cersei's rape Game of Thrones jumped the fence.  It stopped reflecting misogyny and actually created it.  It took part.  It became the problem.  And every time anyone connected with the programme denies that it was rape, makes an excuse for Jaime's actions, screams that Cersei enjoyed it and that it was all fine... they are simply recreating the misogyny around us that they are claiming to be against.

There are powerful and positive female role models in Game of Thrones.  But the culture of being afraid of women with power, particularly mothers with power, is deep seated.  It remains to be seen if they can get out of that and actually bring us women who are truly in charge.  Power isn't putting a sword in a woman's hands, neither is it putting a dragon on her shoulder.  Power is control of her own destiny, on her terms.  It's be nice to think we may see something like that in the future.

All we're left with, however, is Jaime.  Jaime Lannister and his redemptive path, utterly shattered.  No matter how they spin it, no matter what they do in the future, many of us, men and women alike, will only see one thing.

Jaime Lannister, raper.

(Game of Thrones is copyright HBO and discussion of it and use of images here is for review purposes only)