Gender and sexuality

Work in Progress -- The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:33, July 10, 2015 (UTC)

Like the Heraldry page, this article is written from an out-of-universe perspective, first providing context for what the topic was like in the real-life Middle Ages, and then explaining how Game of Thrones handles it.

Gender and Sexuality in the real-life Middle-Ages

Overview

"Sexuality" is a social construct, variable across time and space. While animals engage in sex acts, they attribute no meaning to their behaviors, as they are not capable of intelligent thought - only humans are. "Sexuality" is therefore not the sex act but the meaning and mental framework through which it and and patterns of gender behavior are contextualized and understood. In Victorian England, it would be scandalous for a woman to show her ankles; in the 21st century, women in bikinis appear on the covers of major fashion magazines. In 1950's Hollywood it would be scandalous for a male actor to reveal that he had sex with another man, while in Ancient Greece, sex between men was considered not only acceptable but normal. In the United States or England in the 21st century, polygamy is scandalous - yet in many other contemporary parts of the world it is not, and in the past, many Judeo-Christian biblical figures had polygamous marriages. In certain cultures at different times and places, it was seen as shockingly effeminate for a man to wear his hair long down to his shoulders, while in others, long hair was seen as a sign of virility and masculinity.

In short, patterns of sexuality are not universal and objective constants, but changed over time, and varied from one location and culture to another. Michel Foucault famously argued about the subjective, not objective, nature of social conventions, particularly with regard to sexuality.

Medieval people did not conceptualize the world the way that modern people do. They did not have an abstract concept of "the nation-state" or of a divide between "Public" and "Private" cultural spheres. This does not mean that modern society is some sort of culmination that previous social models were evolving towards. Modern social values and behavior patterns are not more "advanced", but simply different. Fundamentally, it is wrong to assume that medieval concepts of gender and sexuality were exactly the same as modern models.

"Sexuality": Biological Sex, Gender, and Orientation

In the context of academic Gender Studies, the term "Sexuality" encompasses "Sexual Identity" but is an even broader term, referring to the entire realm of human erotic experience and behaviors. This can be further subdivided into three aspects: Sex, Gender, and Orientation:

• Sex - means physical/biological sex at birth, male or female.
• Gender - refers to patterns of behavior or identity, such as "masculine" or "feminine" (not necessarily involved with the sex act at all, but day-to-day personality and identity).
• Orientation - refers to what type of people a person is attracted to sexually: male bodies, female bodies, both, etc.

If a physically male person prefers to have sex with other physically male persons, this is not his "Sexuality" (or "Sexual Identity") - this is his "Orientation", one specific aspect of Sexual Identity. His "Sexuality" encompasses all three aspects, the third one being gender behavior, i.e. masculine or feminine. In early 21st century parlance, one might be a "cis-gendered homosexual male" – meaning biological male who is only sexually attracted to male bodies, yet whose gender behavior pattern is masculine, not effeminate ("Cis" means exhibiting gender behavior typically associated with your biological sex – masculine males, feminine females – while "Trans" means gender behavior commonly associated with the opposite sex, i.e. a male who behaves effeminately). Moreover, the exact definition of what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" gender behavior is highly subjective and culture-specific. While in the mid-20th century United States it would be seen as effeminate for a male to wear a skirt, a Scottish Highlands warrior would not consider wearing a "skirt" (kilt) to be effeminate.

In contemporary usage, these three aspects can mix and match in a dozen combinations, plus moves away from a strict gender binary to treat sexual identity and gender behavior as fluid, on a sliding scale.

In contrast, in the Middle Ages, there was a strict gender binary between "male" and "female", and the aspects of "gender" and "orientation" were seen as inherently linked to and emanating from their biological sex, without variation. In their social conception, biological males inherently behaved masculinely, and biological females inherently behaved femininely. They had no concept of a "cis-gendered homosexual male", a homosexual male who behaved very masculinely. This is not to say that they would be "offended" by such a man, but rather that they would find it conceptually difficult to understand. If a knight was highly skilled at masculine behavior such as warfare and martial prowess (i.e. Loras Tyrell), many would dismiss the suggestion that he privately enjoyed having sex with men – following the familiar stereotype that "he is too butch to be interested in other men", etc.

Even the basis for "Orientation" is subjective, because not every culture shares the same categorization scheme. That does not mean that such societies are what would be called bisexual or pansexual: they had "Orientation" but it used different categories as a basis.

Thus while there were certainly "men who had sex with men" in the Middle Ages, it would be inaccurate to even call them "homosexual", because "homosexuality" is a specific social concept. For that matter, "men who had sex with women" in the Middle Ages cannot accurately be called "heterosexual". The homosexual/heterosexual categorization scheme of contemporary cultures did not exist in their culture. Men who had sex with other men in the Middle Ages did not conceptualize what they were doing the same way that contemporary men who have sex with other men do.

"...'Homosexuality' [as a concept] is not a thing that one can find in all cultures...to label anyone in the past who had sex with someone of the same sex as 'a homosexual' would be to impose a modern category. The same argument also applies to other categories of sexual behavior: heterosexuality, bisexuality, prostitution, or any other; the acts may be the same, but each society will determine what the meaning of those acts is and whether they create identities."

Patterns of Sexuality in Medieval Western Europe

It is difficult to talk about "Sexuality in the Middle Ages", because Sexuality is a subjective social construct variable across time and space: concepts of Sexuality in the thirteenth century were different in northern France compared to southern Italy, and concepts of Sexuality in England alone changed between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Several generalizations, however, can be made about broad sub-regions of Medieval Europe:

Factors contributing to patterns of sexuality in Medieval Western Europe:

• 1 - Religion was a very important social force and institution, and the Catholic Church in Western Europe had a celibate clergy, of male monks and female nuns.
• 2 - The Catholic Church was dominated by an all-male priesthood.

Resulting major patterns of sexual behavior and conceptualization:

• 1 - Due to having a celibate clergy (unlike neighboring Muslim or Jewish communities), medieval Western Europe did not conceptualize sexuality as a dichotomy between "heterosexual" and "homosexual", but between "procreative" and "non-procreative" sex. The only time people were supposed to have sex was specifically to produce children within marriage, a necessary evil. At the same time, while there were men who at times enjoyed having sex with other men, they did not conceptualize of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person. Homosexuality was not an identity, but a sex act. A wife performing oral sex on her husband, or a man performing oral sex on another man, were both seen as more or less equally bad because, to the celibate clergy, neither act would result in children, which was the only permissible form of sex.
  • There is a widespread misconception that homosexuals were harshly persecuted in the Middle Ages. First, "homosexuals" were not conceived of as a distinct kind of person, but an act that someone could commit. Second, that act wasn't punished particularly severely - it was a venal sin of the flesh, loosely on par with adultery, fathering bastard children, etc. (and a man having anal sex with a woman was equally chastised). Just like adultery, being caught performing a homosexual sex act was not punishable by death, prison sentence, or even fines. There were not outright "laws" against it, as in secular laws - but at the same time, it was not something casually accepted either. It was seen as socially disgraceful, like adultery, and people did still try to hide it (a loose comparison would be to an actor being outed as a homosexual in 1950's Hollywood: no "laws" were being broken but it would disgrace and effectively end his career).
• 2 - Due to being dominated by an all-male priesthood, all social writing and circulated knowledge about sexuality was written from a male perspective (as it had largely been extending back into Greco-Roman times). As a result, "sex" was conceptualized as something a man did to a woman - and the woman enjoyed it, but they were not seen as performing the same action. Men "screwed", women "got screwed", but to say "a woman screwed a man" would seem a contradiction in terms to them.
  • As a result, "sex" was strictly conceptualized as "a man penetrating someone else with a penis". If a man penetrated a woman vaginally, they were having sex. If a man penetrated another man anally, they were having sex. If a man performed cunnilingus on a woman, because no penis was directly involved, they were not conceptualized as having "sex". Their entire conception of sex was male-dominated and thus very phallo-centric.
• 3 - In part stemming from the second point, because the very definition of sex was so inherently linked to biology - who had the penis and did the penetrating did one action, the one being penetrated did another - that sexuality was conceptualized of as a very strict gender binary, with "sex, gender, and orientation" not variable but inherently linked. A person of biologically male sex was believed to automatically express active masculine gender behavior, and to have an innate orientation/attraction to women. A person of biologically female sex was believed to automatically express passive female gender behavior, and to have an innate desire to be penetrated by a man.
• 4 - While having an all-male priesthood like Islam or Judaism, Christianity was unlike these neighboring religions in that it had a celibate clergy - not the priesthood, but male monks and female nuns. Judaism and Islam had no equivalent to nuns. The existence of a celibate female clergy encouraged families to wait for better prospective suitors for one of their daughters, because if they ended up waiting too long and she became too old to bear children, they could send their daughter to a convent to become a nun. In contrast, the neighboring Islamic world did not have celibate clergy, and thus once a woman became too old to bear children, and was unable to marry, there were no viable social options for her. Therefore, families in the Islamic world had greater motivation to marry off their daughters sooner instead of later.
  • This actually had far-reaching effects on the entire social model, because it meant Christian women tended to marry much later in life, to husbands who were closer to their own age. Women who married as soon as they could reproduce (i.e. 14 to 15 years old) moved immediately from being a child living under their father as head of the household, to living under their husband as head of the household, socially dominated like a child. If women were married off in their mid-teens, the best suitors were often more financially stable men a decade or more older than them, reinforcing this age and power dichotomy. In contrast, women who married in their late 20's spent far more years living independently, and gaining their own sense of personhood distinct from their husbands. This also meant that they were closer to the same age as economically established men who made good marriage prospects (it was not even uncommon for a woman in her late 20's to marry a man a year or two younger than her). Thus while sex was still seen as something a man did to a woman, the pattern of sexual relationships was actually much more mutualistic. Women also owned land and wielded political power in medieval Western Europe much more than in the Muslim world, in turn affecting gender conceptions.

There were several practical results from this:

• 1 - Medieval people did not define their sexual "orientation" based on object choice the way modern Western society does, i.e. with a man being a "heterosexual" if he is attracted to women. Medieval sexual "orientation" (for lack of a better word), was based on the role you play in the sex act. Men who preferred to be the penetrator were seen as "normal", women who enjoyed being penetrated were "normal".
  • The practical difference is that if a man penetrated another man anally, it wasn't seen as that much more out of the ordinary than if he chose to penetrate a woman anally - what mattered was that he was the one doing the penetrating. A man who enjoyed and preferred to play the passive role in sex, and to be anally penetrated by another man's penis, was seen as abnormal.
• 2 - While medieval people did conceptualize of sex by the role played instead of object choice, they really did not conceptualize that there was a distinct category of male that preferred to have sex with other men. Such a division between "heterosexuals" and "homosexuals" would have made about as much sense to them as making a differentiation just as strict between "men who enjoy getting fellatio from a woman, and men who prefer vaginal penetration". The real "sexual identity" dichotomy was between the celibate clergy and non-celibate lay people, and in turn, for the non-celibate the only "acceptable" sex was vaginal penetration explicitly for procreation. Indeed, a woman on top vaginal penetration position (cowgirl position) was also described as "sodomy" and abnormal: it was widely believed that due to gravity, it was more difficult for a man to impregnate a woman in woman-on-top position, so couples who wanted to have vaginal sex purely for pleasure would have woman-on-top sex. This was condemned by the church, because they ruled that sex was purely for procreation.
• 3 - Because sex was conceptualized of as "a man penetrating someone else with a penis", they actually had little conception of homosexual relationships between women. It was not condoned but it was not stigmatized either - celibate male priests who did all of the writing about sexual morals couldn't really understand how two women could physically have sex with each other without a penis ("unless they like, scissors or something" -- South Park). While on some vague level there were general prohibitions against "a woman laying with a woman as with a man", there are only a handful of court records that show women prosecuted for same-sex relationships.

Different culture zones of Medieval Europe

Given that patterns of sexuality vary across time and space, it is difficult to talk about "sexuality" across Medieval Europe as a whole, much less sub-regions. Still there are a few very broad culture zones that may be talked about, largely defined by the affect that religious differences had on separate regions. These are only vague generalizations and the borders are ill-defined.

There were three major religions in contact with each other in Medieval Europe and immediately neighboring lands: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. All three were Abrahamic religions in origin, and actually, all three had quite similar models of gender and sexuality. The defining feature that set Christianity apart from these other two religions is that it had a celibate clergy, which Islam and Judaism did not have. This in turn strongly influenced cultural attitudes about sexuality.

Attitudes towards gender and sexuality in Islamic regions (from Spain to Baghdad) and in Jewish communities were not that different from Christian regions in many respects, as they also possessed a gender binary, and frowned upon sex outside of marriage - attitudes about homosexuality were generally similar to Christian attitudes. What can be confusing is that a very common rhetorical insult was to claim that enemies enjoyed playing the passive role in anal sex with men (seen as a sign of decadence) or that the enemy sodomized male captives. This was purely propaganda and never actually happened.

Even then, there were divisions within Christianity: the Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople was the most powerful and advanced Christian political entity for much of the Middle Ages, yet Greek Orthodox Christianity did not practice exclusive clerical celibacy. In Orthodox Christianity, lay priests could marry, and only the higher-ranking officials such as bishops had to be celibate. Through missionaries, Orthodox Christianity was spread to the Eastern Europe and Russia, influencing their views on sexuality as well, which generally matched Byzantine patterns. Orthodox Christianity formed a sort of intermediate cultural zone between Islam and Catholic Christianity in Western Europe: it was more tolerant of non-procreative sex (i.e. within marriage) than Western Europe, though not quite as much as Islam or Judaism.

Gender binary and patterns of gender behavior

As explained above, in terms of gender behavior and conceptual models, Medieval Europe had a strict gender binary of active male and passive female.

Not every real-life society has a conceptual model of only two genders: some have more than two, and particularly in the developed world in the early 21st century, many now espouse that gender behavior is a fluid spectrum, not rigid categories. Some societies recognize a third gender of biological males whose gender behavior is commonly associated with females. Some societies have not only a third but also a fourth gender, recognizing biological females whose behavior is commonly associated with males (not every society that recognizes a third gender also recognizes a fourth gender). These societies "recognize" more than two genders, in that they consider them to be co-legitimate with the more common "masculine biological male" and "feminine biological female" (though what constitutes "masculine" or "feminine" behavior is culture-specific).

In contrast, Medieval Europe did not recognize more than two genders: a biological male who behaved femininely was not seen as a legitimate, separate category of gender - he was simply seen as a defective kind of "male". Similarly, a female who behaved in traditionally "masculine" ways such as participating in warfare was not seen as a distinct fourth gender, but as a defective kind of "female" because she did not conform to the standards of passive gender behavior expected of women.

Medieval Europe did not really recognize a "cis-gendered homosexual male", in that by definition, any male who behaved masculinely (and crucially, played the active role in the sex act, as the penetrator) was simply seen as "male". "Male" was defined as "active" and "penetrator" - with little distinction as to whether he was penetrating females or males. They did not have a heterosexual/homosexual dichotomy, but an active/passive (penetrator/one who gets penetrated) dichotomy. Medieval Europeans were "aware" that some males behave femininely and some females behave masculinely - but they did not "accept" such gender behavior. That is, a male who behaved effeminately, even if he still had sex with women and was not interested in men, was seen as defective; similarly, a warrior-woman who actually didn't have sex with other women but exclusively had sex with men was still seen as a bizarre aberration from traditional gender roles.

Gender and Sexuality in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels

As with the real-life Middle Ages, social constructs of gender and sexuality vary extensively across Westeros, Essos, and the rest of the known world in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels written by George R.R. Martin. They may have also changed over the centuries within the narrative. It is extremely difficult to examine such values beyond Westeros itself, because so much of the narrative is focused on Westeros. So what follows is an examination of the evidence in the novels about gender and sexuality in Westeros, and a few notes about what has been briefly described in the rest of the world.

Overview of Westeros

The Faith of the Seven is the dominant religion in most of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, having been introduced to the continent 6,000 years ago during the Andal Invasion. Only the North managed to halt the advance of the Andals, and thus continued to worship the Old Gods of the Forest. A few Andals also invaded the Iron Islands, but the Faith found little purchase there, and instead the invaders converted to the local Drowned God religion. The Rhoynar migrated to Westeros about 1,000 years ago and settled in Dorne. They did convert to the Faith of the Seven - but ignored many of its prohibitions on sexual behaviors, making the culture of the modern Dornishmen quite distinct.

The core regions of Westeros, the populous and wealthy kingdoms south of the Neck, follow the Faith of the Seven and broadly fall into the same cultural sphere. The Iron Islands and Dorne are actually stated to have the smallest populations of any of the Seven Kingdoms, while the North is not one of the more populous ones, and due to its vast size, it has a very low population density. Thus by far the majority of Westeros's population and land area falls into the cultural sphere of the Faith of the Seven. Of the five settlements large enough to be called "cities" in Westeros, four of them are located in this central region (King's Landing, Oldtown, Lannisport, and Gulltown). The fifth and smallest city is White Harbor, located on the southeastern coast of the North - but it is ruled by House Manderly, a family from the Reach that fled to the North and continues to follow the Faith of the Seven, actually making it a small enclave of southern culture in the North (indeed, it was the Manderlys who built up White Harbor into a southern-style city; it wasn't a pre-established large Northern city that happened to accept the Manderlys).

Gender and Sexuality under the Faith of the Seven, in most of Westeros

The key factors that shaped conceptualizations of sexuality in real-life Medieval Europe are that it had celibate clergy of both genders (monks and nuns), but an all-male priesthood. This led to a dichotomy not between homosexual and heterosexual, but between celibate and non-celibate, and in turn, a dichotomy between procreative and non-procreative sex. Non-clergy were only supposed to have sex for the explicit purpose of producing children. Meanwhile, because there were no female priests writing about sexual morality, sex was strictly defined as penetrating someone else with a penis. This led to a pattern of conception about sexuality based on role in the sex act instead of object choice.

In contrast, the Faith of the Seven does have a gender-blind priesthood, accepting both men and women without distinction. Men become septons and women become septas, but these ranks are apparently the same (it's just a gendered word, like how a man is an "alumnus" from a university but a woman is an "alumna"). Women can also join the all-female monastic order of the Silent Sisters, though there are many other orders not described in the novels, some male, some female, some maybe both. Women are even explicitly described as becoming members of the Most Devout - the ruling council of the Faith of the Seven, which is basically analogous to the College of Cardinals in Catholic Christianity. Septa Unella - the septa who leads Cersei's naked walk of atonement - is a member of the Most Devout, and thus basically a cardinal. While Martin has never explicitly mentioned it, there may well have been a "High Septa" in the past, a female High Septon (their analogue of the papacy).

Therefore, unlike in the real-life Middle Ages, in Westeros:

• 1 - Because there are female priests in the Faith of the Seven, they probably don't strictly define sex as "penetrating someone with a penis", but a wider range of behaviors.
  • Someone in the real-life Middle Ages would not describe Jon Snow as having "sex" with Ygritte when he performs cunnilingus on her - yet people in Westeros probably do consider cunnilingus to be "sex".
  • Correspondingly, sexual relationships in general are less hierarchical, because sex isn't thought of as a thing a man does to a woman but a mutualistic experience they do together. Renly Baratheon and Loras Tyrell are presented as seemingly having a fairly mutualistic relationship, instead of a hierarchical relationship such as the senpai and kōhai (or seme and uke) homosexual relationships among medieval Japanese samurai (Loras served as Renly's squire and as the king's brother Renly technically outranked him, but Loras was considered the more active and martial of the two, one of the best knights in Westeros, while Renly was more of a statesman).
• 2 - Sexual relationships between homosexual women were barely understood in the real-life Middle Ages, even to criticize them. In contrast, homosexuality between women is probably criticized in Westeros as much as homosexuality between men - because the female priests understand that women can give sexual pleasure to each other without a penis.
  • Indeed, the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) mentions that septons have tried to admonish the Dornishmen because they feel it is no great concern if a man lays with a man, or a woman with a woman - real-life medieval people would probably not even have mentioned women laying with women, finding it conceptually impossible. It isn't clear if the authors intended this when they wrote this detail, but by coincidence it matches up with the social effects logically resulting from having female priests.

On the other hand, the Faith of the Seven still has a celibate clergy overall, so they would still have a basic dichotomy between celibate and non-celibate, and thus procreative and non-procreative sex (at one point in the novels a member of the Most Devout tells Cersei that the gods made men and women's private parts purely for the begetting of children).

Therefore:

• 1 - Men who have sex with other men probably are not thought of as a distinct category of person, because all non-procreative sex is considered bad.
• 2 - Homosexual sex is probably not viewed as particularly worse than other venal sins such as adultery - i.e. Loras Tyrell isn't seen as particularly worse than King Robert Baratheon's frequent whoremongering. In real life, homosexual relationships were only particularly singled out and villified after the Reformation and Enlightenment, when the priesthood in Protestant parts of Europe was no longer celibate, while the Catholic Church responded by extolling sex within marriage. The divide between procreative and non-procreative sex had weakened and was no longer the defining aspect of "proper" sexual activity.

This is the pattern that would be expected of having both a gender-blind priesthood of both men and women and a celibate clergy overall.

The A Song of Ice and Fire novels do have characters in them who have same-sex intimate encounters - but realistically, they have never gone into a lengthy speech clearly defining their mental framework about sexual behavior. The novels never say that men who have sex with men are thought of as a distinct category of person: this might be a simple omission and Martin assumed that they actually think of it as a category, however, same-sex relationships have been mentioned in such vague terms that they could easily match the expected model, that they don't think of it as a distinct category.

On a more general level, it does appear that same-sex relationships in the novels are not seen as any sort of heavily vilified taboo, but as expected, a venal sin roughly on par with adultery. No actual "laws" against homosexuality have ever been mentioned in the novels. It is simply seen as socially disgraceful.

Therefore, in general, views on sexuality and gender in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (in the core regions of Westeros that follow the Faith of the Seven) are somewhat closer to modern patterns than to the medieval model - but, the presence of female priests is a drastic change from how real medieval society operated. The differences observed compared to the real-life Middle Ages - sex is not hierarchical but mutualistic, not strictly defined as something a man does to someone else using a penis, greater insight into female sexuality, etc. - are all things that would logically result from having female priests.

Whether Martin consciously intended these differences is unknown, i.e. as an invented fictional world not connected to real life he was free to make this change, and perhaps preferred writing about people whose mental frameworks are closer to modern ones, both for himself as an author and to readers.

The fringes of Westeros, with unique religions and cultures

Northmen and wildlings: followers of the Old Gods

The ironborn, followers of the Drowned God

Dorne, descendants of the Rhoynar

The Valyrians, the Targaryens, and definitions of incest

The Valyrians practiced heavy incest between brother and sister, to "keep the bloodlines pure". The Valyrians also practiced polygamy - it was not universal and frequent, but it was not uncommon either.

House Targaryen was a surviving Valyrian noble family that settled on the islands off the east coast of Westeros, and later conquered and united the Seven Kingdoms. As a political expedient they converted to the Faith of the Seven, and abandoned polygamy, but they continued to practice incestuous marriages. This led to conflict with the Faith of the Seven which was only decided through civil war.

This may have affected how incest was defined in Westeros. In the real-life Middle Ages, the Catholic Church defined incest as any marriage between relatives who were third cousins or closer, i.e. marrying a fourth cousin or a third cousin once removed was not incest. In Westeros, however, it is apparently not uncommon for members of major noble Houses to marry their own first cousins. Tywin Lannister himself married his first cousin: her full maiden name was already "Joanna Lannister" before she married.

The incestuous marriages of the Targaryens were still seen as very unusual, but they felt that their royal status set them above the rules of normal men. Apparently this aspect of Valyrian/Targaryen culture was loosely inspired by the incestuous brother-sister marriages among many of the real-life pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.

The definition of what marriages were considered incestuous in real life actually changed over time. During the early Middle Ages it fluctuated considerably, with instances of first degree cousins marrying, but other instances in which seventh degree cousins were forbidden to marry. The Catholic Church only officially set the definition of incest as marriage within third degree cousins or closer at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The reason that study of the definition of what constituted "incest" in the Middle Ages is important is that it is further evidence that there was never a single "traditional" definition of marriage, but rather, that the definition of marriage changed considerably over the centuries.

Beyond Westeros

• The Free Cities
• Slaver's Bay
• Qarth
• The Dothraki
• The Summer Islands and Sothoryos
• The Farther East
  • Yi Ti
  • Hyrkoon
  • The Jogos Nhai
  • Asshai

Gender and Sexuality as adapted into the Game of Thrones TV series

Depictions of gender and sexuality in the Game of Thrones TV series adaptation by HBO generally match how gender and sexuality are presented in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels.

For the most part the TV series has focused on sexuality in Westeros, because the novels simply don't describe different social structures in Essos in very great detail, i.e. the novels didn't go into much detail about the view of the Dothraki on gender and sexuality, so the TV series didn't invent what was already unclear from the source material. In Westeros, the views of worshipers of the Old Gods (the Northmen and wildlings) and the Drowned God (ironborn) are similarly vague in the novels, so the TV series did not invent any new details either.

The TV series does accurately include the details from the novels that conceptions about gender and sexuality are very different in Dorne compared to the rest of Westeros.

A point of minor confusion is that the words "homosexual" and "gay" did not exist in the Middle Ages ("gay" in particular is a very recent term), and they don't exist in the novels either. A commonly used term in the Middle Ages was "sodomy", but the novels have avoided using this term, probably because it stems very specifically from the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Book of Genesis does not exist in the world of Westeros, so that's not a term they would use either. The TV series kept this point and also avoids using the terms "homosexual", "gay", and "sodomy". The first two of these are more obviously used in modern settings, but without the word "sodomy", "sodomite", etc. the TV series has at times had to struggle with how to refer to homosexuals:

• When Renly and Loras's relationship was discussed by Cersei, Joffrey, and Margaery in Season 3's "Dark Wings, Dark Words", Cersei just called him a "deviant" (which Joffrey copied), or "perversion". Margaery delicately said of Renly to Joffrey that "I don't think he was interested in the company of women".
• Later in Season 3's "The Climb", Tywin Lannister and Olenna Tyrell discuss rival marriage-alliance plans (in a scene invented for the TV series). Tywin just refers to Loras's homosexuality as "unnatural behavior". Olenna calls it "buggery", though the script also introduces the description "sword swallower" (which is not from the novels).
• In the Season 4 premiere "Two Swords", Cersei referred to Loras as a "pillow-biter" - which is not a term from the novels, and probably not from the real Middle Ages. Apparently, "pillow-biter" is actually a very modern term originating in the 1970s: the euphemism refers to a man who enjoys being on the receiving end of anal sex from another man, and is thus face down in the bed's pillows and bites into them when he orgasms. Olenna herself also later refers to homosexuals as "pillow-biters" in Season 5's "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken".

Joffrey in the novels never threatened to declare homosexuality a "perversion punishable by death" (which he said to impress Margaery in "Dark Wings, Dark Words"). There has never been widespread persecution of homosexuals in Westeros, so in context this is sort of like Joffrey saying "adultery will be punishable by death". It is in keeping with his trend from the novels of making outrageous and psychotically violent proclamations with little or no provocation (i.e. when starving war refugees come to the castle gates begging their king for food, he stands on the battlements and shoots several dead with his crossbow, insulted that they think him "a baker").

Notes to be incorporated into this article

There was not so much a divide between “Heterosexual” and “Homosexual” as between “Active” and “Passive”, or “the one who penetrates” (male) and “the one who gets penetrated” (female).

Perhaps the largest difference between sexuality in the Middle Ages and in contemporary society is that conceptually, “sexual orientation” was not defined by object choice, but by role preference. Males were not conceived of as “masculine” because they were attracted to female bodies as a sex object; instead it was defined as “prefers to be the penetrator in the sex act, not the one who gets penetrated”.

As a result, so long as a male was the one doing the penetrating, he was not conceived of as abnormal – regardless of whether he was penetrating females or penetrating other males.

Only males who enjoyed being penetrated by another male’s penis were perceived of as abnormal.

Meanwhile, medieval concepts of sex were so phallocentric that it was not conceptually understood that two women could even have sex with each other: given that sex was strictly defined as “penetrating someone else with a penis”, and two women were not doing this, it wasn’t conceived of as sex. It was not accepted, nor was it stigmatized. The celibate male priesthood who wrote about sexuality could not really conceive of such intimate contact between two women as “sex”.

4 – Moreover, gender behavior of active/masculine or passive/feminine, played a fundamental organizing role: they saw them as inherently linked.

Women wanted to enter convents to be free from the control of a husband. For monks, celibacy made them super-male, the height of the male virtues of self-control. Celibate women did not achieve the same level of moral superiority: it was merely said that they overcame the weakness of the female sex, but not that they surpassed non-celibate men the way that celibate monks did.

Page 39 – Pre-pubescent Eunuchs cannot achieve erection Page 42 – women transcend the weakness of femininity, by showing masculine self-discipline

• • • page 43 – Third Gender in other societies.

Page 43 – Celibacy with Gregorian Reform, page 45 – Byzantines not as much Page 50 – Rape and the Two Seeds theory

Page 60 – Marriage – transfer of property, ensuring that any children of this union will lawfully inherit from their parents. A way of linking families and acquiring lawful children. Many of the Merovingian kings of France in the 500s to 900s were engaged in polygamous marriages; many nobles also married close-degree cousins to consolidate family wealth. The Church saw it as a spiritual union and by the twelfth century, succeeded in redefining marriage. The Gregorian Reforms of the tenth century not only resulted in a celibate priesthood, but succeeded in making a politically stronger clergy not dominated by the nobility, who could in time pressure the aristocracy to accept their moral dictates.

Thus, in the eighth century, marriage was largely seen as a transfer of property, ensuring the production of legitimate children (of confirmed parentage) who would inherit that property, and thus linking two families politically. By the twelfth century, the new push for a celibate clergy had resulted in reforms which redefined marriage, infusing it with a spiritual-religious element.

Incest prohibitions were redefined at this time (not third cousin or closer).

Page 62 – Divorce did not exist for Christianity, only annulment. Divorce was easier for both men and women to achieve in medieval Jewish or Muslim communities. Polygamy was practiced in the Islamic world at the same time as in Merovingian France but it was already in decline and becoming fairly rare (only the very rich could afford it).

“Marriage in the Middle Ages was not an affirmation and official recognition of love between two people as much as it was the establishment of a legal unit which legitimized children and facilitated the transfer of property from one family to another and one generation to another.”(Karras 147)

Inheritance laws varied widely across Medieval Europe. In some regions and times women could not inherit at all, in others women inherited after brothers, in others the inheritance was gender-blind. Moreover, many major regions actually did not practice primogeniture at all, even between two sons: instead of the elder son getting all of the family lands in a winner-take-all system, the land would be divided evenly between two sons. Female landholding affected how many women would therefore wield political power, and many actually did.

Page 73 – Contraceptives/Abortion

Page 74 – both the rich and poor wanted many children, and thus probably didn’t practice contraception. Only prostitutes regularly practiced contraception, so any history of “reproductive rights and practices” must examine court records about prostitutes.

Page 79 – it was *universally* believed in all medieval writing that the source of female pleasure in the sex act was directly caused by the ejaculation of semen into her body. They actually thought the direct contact of semen into a woman’s vagina after a minute or two physically caused a woman to have orgasms – was the only thing that could cause a female orgasm. They thought women craved solely penetration and ejaculation.

Page 81 – medieval people knew what sex was – they all shared one bedroom!

Page 70 – girl education --Sew, dance, sing, write poetry, how to dress (fashion), musical instruments (harp, bells), and also basic horseriding. They are also taught practical mathematics, because a female noblewomen is expected to be the head of managing the household, working closely with the castle’s steward.

Page 83 – rear entry or woman on top sex was believed to make it difficult to conceive.

Page 84 and 140 – Oral sex rarely even mentioned in the middle ages’ texts, even to be condemned

Page 86 – “First Night” did not exist!

Page 87 – a woman’s primary role was as preservers/producers of “family” so sexual transgression for them was worse; page 88 – laws don’t accurately reflect actual attitudes; the church *tried* to say adulterous men were just as bad, but not very successful.

Page 92 – Sometimes that just how they talked – Define “love”! Kill the monster!

Page 100 – Legitimization of bastards

Page 107-108 – female prostitutes were seen as an outlet, prostitutes were the only ones who knew anything about contraception

Page 109 – medieval writers had no idea about women’s same-sex activity; it doesn’t involve penetration with a penis, though using a penis-shaped object is unnatural. Only TWELVE women were ever convinced in court of same-sex behavior, compared to hundreds of men.

Page 113 – Rape – women’s “consent” irrelevant Page 114 – Women did not tend to choose their husbands, their parents did. Other than overt, physically violent cohersion, they didn’t have a concept of emotional/economic cohersion, threats, etc. Page 115 – Gregorious – Repentance

Page 121-123 – boys will be boys double standard, male privilege Page 124 – “plucking a rose” was a common sex euphemism. Page 125 – Bastardy wasn’t a problem yet for Norman kings in the 1100s. Bastards often weren’t *quite* as looked down upon…early on, at least…Henry I of England had 6 known concubines and over 20 illegitimate children. Page 127 - Slavery of other religionists was okay Page 128 – Men who had sex with men – didn’t prefer with men, but preferred the passive role, thus preferred being a woman; they saw sex role and gender behavior as linked. Page 126-128 – “Rape”, as they understood it, you didn’t really need a woman’s consent. They were passive.

• • • Page 129 – There was no “homosexual identity”; not a preference for men, but a preference for playing the role of a woman.
    • Page 130 – attitude towards Eunuchs in Baghdad reflects this

Page 133 – Sodomy was used to “other” but Christian/Muslim attitudes about male homosexuals really weren’t that different. Page 134 – Non-procreative sex is “sodomy” including woman-on-top. Page 136 – “not natural” according to Thomas Aquinas = “not for the benefit of the species”. 3rd Lateran outlawed sodomy; unclear if enforced at the time, but later was enforced and carried the death penalty post-Plague. Raging debate whether medieval people conceived of “sodomites” as a type of person.

Page 135 – “Sodomy” is bad because it is non-procreative

• • • Page 136-137 – a “Sodomite” wasn’t actually a species of person, ANYONE could be tempted by it. On the other hand, unlike Greek and Roman times, they were starting to get a vague sense that some people preferred it exclusively. ***Page 146 – Marie de France’s remark about boys with boys.

They saw it as an act, but not an exclusive preference.

Page 141 – the age/dominance hierarchy; not as strict in Northern Europe. Male homosexual relationships often mirrored this (in the south, anyway). Generally, homosexual relationships mirrored the patterns of heterosexual relationships. Page 143 – Long-term sexual/romantic relationships? Few records to give evidence. Page 145 – deep passionate relationships were celebrated among men, a “band of brothers” (Robert cares about Ned, not Cersei)

Page 154 – beddings actually occurred, though they were less titillating and more matter-of-fact. The aristocracy married young, around 12-14. Page 155 – “To suggest that sexual identities, attitudes, and practices in the cultura that gave us our legal systems and religious traditions were different teaches us that the way things are, or the way we imagine them to be, Is not the “natural” way but historically contingent.” Page 156 – “Marriage” defined as “monogamous, indissoluble…a relationship in which sexual intercourse could give rise to children who could inherit property” was hammered out in a long, drawn out process over the course of the Middle Ages.

Page 158 – Sex wasn’t something two people do together but something one person does to another; “sexuality” was a matter of gender role rather than object choice.

A – 1 – Social construct, variable 2 – “Sexual identity” was based on reproductive/nonreproductive 3 – active/passive dichotomy played a major role in defining 4 – They saw biological sex/gender behavior/sexuality as linked

B – the Greagorian Reform 1 – Clerical Celibacy 2 – Marriage (divorce/incest defined; bastardy)

C – Marriage – “rearing of children”? Tangent – Inheritance Law. Sex is good for reproduction. All other sex is unnatural. Pleasure was not egalitarian, didn’t understand women. Rape – the two seeds theory, “First Night” never existed.

D – Both Rich and Poor wanted children. Prostitutes were the only ones practicing contraception.

Because Medieval Europe conceived of sex as an action, not an identity choice, they didn’t think that “homosexuals” existed as a category. They didn’t conceptualize that there was a specific category of men who exclusively preferred to only have sex with men. Such men did exist, but how would they conceptualize these urges they felt? They had no models to follow.

Beyond the Faith of the Seven

2 – Westeros has more than one major religion in it, and they generally co-exist. Medieval Europe had Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. They didn’t get along that much, but all were basically Abrahamic religions and their views on sexuality were not radically different. In contrast, the Old Gods of the Forest and the Drowned God are completely unrelated to the Faith of the Seven and have very different value sets.

What the heck is the view of the Old Gods towards sex? They believe in marriage and have ruled against bastardy or incest, but otherwise, it is frequently said that the Old Gods “don’t have many formal rules” compared to the Faith. It’s a religion of quiet contemplation in Godswoods. Of course, the Northmen and wildlings might culturally see sex as frivolous and indulgent when they should be focused on survival, but no, we’ve seen Northmen and wildlings boast about their sexual prowess. Even one of Greatjon Umber’s uncles is secretly a homosexual. So if the Old Gods don’t have that many rules, do they have rules against adultery and homosexuality? Or even a cultural stigma? The Northmen apparently do have a stigma against it because the Umber is not openly homosexual…but maybe that’s cultural diffusion from the Faith of the Seven from the south, just like maesters or speaking the Common Tongue.

The Drowned God religion is fairly misogynistic. It’s praise-worthy for men to take as many concubines, salt wives, as he can, though the children of salt wives are not considered bastards. They do also have rules against bastardy and incest, etc., and “marriage” is a rite of the Drowned God performed by a priest. For that matter, the Drowned God *does* have an all-male priesthood. It is considered very controversial that Balon raised Asha as a surrogate son, and many reject her leadership out of hand just for being a woman. Then again, there’s mention in the fifth novel that some of Victarion’s men raped a maester they took prisoner from the Shield Islands. So it is quite possible that the Drowned God religion is actually closest to what happened in Medieval Europe: so long as you’re the one penetrating someone else specifically with a penis, it’s not a problem, and they don’t really conceive of women as really “enjoying” sex or performing the same action that they do, they don’t care. Asha, however, is sexually active and no one blames her for it, but this is possibly due to her overall tomboyish attitudes. We don’t know much about the Drowned God religion on this point.

Then of course we come to Dorne. The Rhoynar ancestors of the Dornish came from city-states along the Rhoyne River in the Free Cities. They converted to the Faith of the Seven when they migrated to Westeros, but they just ignored the rules they didn’t like, so 1 – they see men and women as equal, both in inheritance and sex, 2 – they keep formal mistresses called paramours, and 3 – they don’t consider it a big concern “if a man lies with a man, or a woman lies with a woman”. Thus a Dornish noblewoman can inherit rule in her own right, and while technically married to a man to produce children, also openly keep a female paramour in an a deep, loving relationship. The Dornish, however, do not see this as a matter of the object choice dichotomy, given that even women do it. They just have a very fluid and non-binary attitude towards sex.

Outside of Westeros, we know little and less. The Free Cities have many different religions so their cultural values about sex can vary considerably. Courtesans are held in high cultural esteem in Braavos, and throughout the Free Cities formal concubines are not uncommon. Norvos was founded by religious extremists who are a very conservative all-male priesthood and who believe that sex is strictly for the creation of children.

The religion of the Lord of Light *apparently* is a bit more sexually tolerant; in their dualist view, the Lord of Light made humankind male and female, and the Lord of Life is in a struggle of the power of life versus the power of death against the Great Other. Therefore, when male and female are joined together it is a life-affirming, powerful act. This might indicate that they don’t view non-procreative sex as positive, but it is unclear. Either way there are so many other religions worshipped in the Free Cities, even in a single city, that there are multiple homosexual characters from there.

The Valyrians were obsessed with “keeping the bloodline pure” and practiced heavy brother-sister incest whenever possible (though apparently, not parent-child). Polygamy was also fairly common. We know little about how the Valyrian Freehold functioned at its height. We can only see them through the window of how the early Targaryens functioned in Westeros: apparently marriage and bastardy were rules they had, and there were female dragonlords, but Aegon I became lord ahead of Visenya? Was this due to Westerosi influence? Uncertain. Several historical Targaryens were homosexual, but they always stood apart from the peoples they ruled. This may have influenced the incest laws of Westeros, given that first cousins marry often in the Seven Kingdoms.

The Summer Islands are very “sex positive” and view it as a holy, life-affirming act, even when non-procreative, that the gods gave it to humans to enjoy themselves, and apparently they don’t make a distinction against homosexual sex either. The sex values of other religions such as the Lord of Harmony on Naath are less clear, so Missandei’s views are not certain.

In Slaver’s Bay, worship often involves temple prostitutes.

Asshai actually can’t reproduce because living there makes you sterile, they “reproduce” by adopting slave children. Therefore, if Melisandre is any indication (she is much more explicit about this with Gendry in the TV series) they don’t have particular rules against any sex acts.

We don’t know much about the Dothraki. On the one hand, male warriors are dominant, and they can have more than one wife. On the other hand, the only “priesthood” they have are the crones of dead khals, the dosh khaleen…how would this affect their attitudes towards sex? For all we know, the Dothraki have a “two spirits” conception of sex, like certain nomadic Native American tribes (i.e. some Dothraki warriors might have sex with other men, but still behave masculinely, and no one would think that was unusual). Little has been said about this.

Yi Ti’s emperors have been said to have concubines but how common this is, it’s unknown, The Hyrkoonian city-states of the central mountains are organized like mole rats, like a hive. They’re ruled by female warriors, all but the handsomest and healthiest males are castrated at a young age and treated as worker-drones. The few they don’t become breeding stock for all the women warriors.

Qarth…or, the dress the launched a thousand fanarts!....yeah…

The Jogos Nhai have very interesting attitudes towards sex and gender. They see social roles as very linked to gender behavior, but that these are independent of biological sex. Warriors are a masculine role, but the priesthood, healers, judges, and other domestic affairs (i.e. merchants?) are female roles. Thus if you’re born female but want to be a warrior you have to live as a man, and if you’re a man who wants to be a merchant you have to live as a woman. This is due to their religion of the Moonsingers. Notably, the Moonsingers are a major religion in Braavos, due to some Jogos Nhai slaves taking the lead among the diverse group of escaped slaves that fled there. So logically, it might not be unusual to run into an Iron Bank member who is actually a man living as a woman, because she follows the Moonsinger religion.