According to GRRM

[james_davis_nicoll]

To leave out the gratuitous rapes in Game of Thrones would be to undermine the essential realism of that zombie and dragon-filled world.

Comments

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

What about castration? surely getting your member snipped is both gender-related and traumatic enough to serve as a substitute? We have Theon's torture, and the unsullied (including a specific torture scene before they are freed), and Varys' tale of how he was castrated.

[lynn9mckenzie.livejournal.com]

Have they addressed that on the TV show? If so, I stand semi-corrected, but I highly doubt it.

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

Yes, all of these are shown in the TV show. Theon's torture is actually shown in more detail than in the books. Martin is an equal-opportunity abuser (The TV show, less so).

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Well no, because there's no male rape - bear in mind that in manga like Berzerk the main male character has rape in his backstory as does his male nemesis, and the nature and context of their rapes is actually used very cleverly to emphasise elements of their characters and are important to the arcs of their character development as the series progresses, so that if you removed those rapes from the story large chunks of the motivations and actions of various characters don't make any sense (and not in a "this is why this person seeks revenge" way).

And this is in Berzerk, which is almost THE archetypical hyper-shonen manga from the 1990s starring a guy one-handing a sword bigger than himself (and his comic-relief pixie companion) fighting demons.