While it should be needless to say, this article deals with the season 5, episode 10 season finale of the HBO series Game of Thrones. If you have not seen it and plan on watching it, don’t read this. We are also going to discuss some subjects which involve violence against women, so if you are the sort that requires a Trigger Warning or directions to an appropriate Safe Space, you should leave now. Oh… there’s also more than a little violence against men, little people (or dwarves or whatever the correct term is) children, animals and, well… pretty much everyone. You have been warned.

If you’ve been even remotely interested in the social justice crowd’s war against Game of Thrones because of the way they showed rape happening in a very rapey, murdery, torturey, horrible, pseudo-medieval and entirely fictional landscape, you probably saw my last item on the subject. Sansa Stark had been raped by her husband on their wedding night (which is still a matter of some debate on the definitions) and indignant viewers who apparently tolerated all of the endless horrible things done by horrible people through five and a half horrible seasons decided to walk out. Or at least they said they would.

Now the season has dragged to its horrible conclusion. (Which, by the way, I found to be absolutely fantastic since I’m probably a horrible person.) I flipped through the Game of Thrones news on Google, and wonder of wonders… I found no raging complaints. Allow me for a moment to revisit the previous episode brouhaha linked above which caused all the stir. Sansa is escorted to the newlyweds’ bed chamber where her new husband (who I would call “horrible” but the character really leaves horrible far in the rear view mirror) instructs her to undress with his creepy, Stockholm Syndrome butler in the room. She never gets to undress before he rips some of her clothing and consummates the marriage while she looks incredibly angry, hurt, sad and scared all at once, though without any verbal protest. It was an awful scene and he’s an awful guy.

Let me tell you about a couple of things that happened in the finale which failed to generate any outrage. An evil man is shown who visits a brothel every day and demands service. Any girl shown to him who looks even remotely close to sixteen years of age is dismissed as being “too old.” He insists on a parade of female children who are more in the range of twelve. He’s not shown raping them, but it’s clear what’s going on. In the finale, he is whipping two such girls with a stick and is then murdered by yet another girl (Arya Stark) in the same age range. Judging by the silence of the critics, this is apparently fine.

Then we have the long running tale of Cersei Lannister. In this episode, Cersei is released from a prison cell only to have her hair cut off and is then made to walk the length of the city naked for the crime of adultery and various other sexually related sins. Along the way, a few guard walk in front of her to prevent the throngs of citizens from actually murdering her, but they do nothing to prevent her from being pelted with rotten fruit as well as urine and feces from chamber pots which are dumped on her. All the while, a woman dressed for all the world like a nun walks behind her ringing a bell land yelling “SHAME” over and over. If that’s not “slut shaming” (a big thing on the Left) I don’t know what is. And yet Salon (of all places) somehow found Cersei’s punishment to be artistic.

Cersei’s punishment seems, to the modern viewer, to be woefully inadequate for the crimes that we all know she has orchestrated. But what will be the lasting consequences of Cersei’s public humiliation? She cannot recant a confession that was witnessed by thousands in her walk through the city. Does she think that by engaging in this public spectacle that she can simply return to her vaunted position of power and privilege? Not likely. In medieval law, the whole point of the public humiliation was to permanently brand the offender, not with a burn upon the skin, but with a visual performance of the confession, to establish the publica fama. Cersei should find reintegration into the royal affairs of King’s Landing very difficult. But that is up to George R.R. Martin, HBO and the writers of Season 6.

I’m sorry, but… ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s somehow more artistic and acceptable than Sanya’s rape scene? Then again, we all know that Cersei is “a bad person” so I suppose she deserved it, huh? At least she’s over 18.

Another child murders a chief character in the show and he can’t have even reached puberty. The Dragon Queen is once again captured by the same tribe of heathens who made sure she was raped repeatedly in season 1. The list goes on. It’s a horrible night of horrible people doing horrible things to each other. And yet, apparently because it doesn’t include a scene of actual intercourse featuring a female who doesn’t explicitly say “Yes” at each step of the proceedings, it’s suddenly fine and dandy. (By the way… the crew at Vox found it “hopeful.”)

I’m done ranting now. If you have any more complaints about how the characters on this show are treated in the context of the “Campus Rape Culture” in America, kindly direct your thoughts elsewhere. I don’t care to hear it.