It's Not Rape. It's HBO

I have a bone to pick with HBO about their series, Game of Thrones. If you're not caught up on the series and you care about spoilers, don't read this post.

Still with me? Awesome. First of all, I don't want you to get the wrong impression of this post. It's not about the show being worse because it's deviating from the books. In most cases, I think the show is actually significantly better than the books. My beef is with a couple of rape scenes that take place in the show that are not rape scenes in the books.

1) Daenerys and Kahl Drogo. The very first time they have sex in the book is actually a really sweet scene. Yes, they just got married and Drogo can do whatever he wants, but he restrains himself, like, you know, a rational human being. He and Daenerys still have the language barrier to deal with, but despite that, he manages to ask her permission. And she gives it. And it's awesome.

In the show, we got Drogo turning his bride over and doing her doggy-style while she cries. Can anyone tell me what that added to the story? Is it somehow more poignant to have her crying on her wedding night than actually enjoying herself? Or is it just that we expect young virgins to be unwilling and upset their first time? And if that's the case, I can't even touch all of the things that are wrong with that assumption.

I can tell you what the rape did not add. Credibility to their relationship. Despite their rocky start, Daenerys and Drogo fall in love. This is so much more believable in a relationship that begins with a tender wedding night. If, on the other hand, Drogo can rape her and still win her heart, what are we telling the boys who watch this show?

2) Cersei and Jaime. That scene where he raped her next to their dead son's body was all kinds of ick, but I want to stay on track and deal with the rape, because this is another time that the show has felt the need to turn a consensual sex scene into a rape scene and I still don't know why. Maybe they thought it made Cersei more sympathetic. Maybe they didn't believe that even Cersei would want to have sex under those circumstances. Maybe they thought that consensual sex under their dead son's body was too icky even for Game of Thrones  fans to handle, although that doesn't seem likely.

In any case, the result was the same as the first sex-turned-rape scene: there were absolutely no consequences for the raper. We saw Cersei and Jaime in another scene together this week, and while it wasn't exactly civil, it didn't involve Jaime in jail or missing his genitals (I assume. I should think they would have mentioned that if those had gone missing) meaning he suffers absolutely no punishment as a result of raping his sister. Lovely.

Which brings me back to the question of, what are we teaching the boys who watch this show? That it's OK to rape her if you've already had sex with her before? That is something I find utterly disturbing.

I want to be clear that I'm not against all rape scenes and I'm not against changing things that happen in a book to adapt to a show or a movie. I am merely concerned about the seeming preference for rape (particularly the rape of women) over consensual sex and the way that rape is treated.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

(A Mostly True Memoir)
by Jenny Lawson

This book made me laugh until I cried. It was actually kind of problematic since I only read this book while I was at work. BTW NEVER READ THIS BOOK WHILE YOU'RE AT WORK! It is not appropriate.

I had never heard of Jenny Lawson before this book came out and everybody else had already bought it, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Her writing style took some getting used to. It's so over-the-top that I had my reservations about it at first, but it also kind of sucked me in. After awhile, it became part of what I looked forward to when I opened the book.

So Jenny is this super awkward, smart, funny person who had the misfortune to be raised in the middle of no where in Texas. She grew up all misunderstood and nobody in her class liked her, although I totally give her parents props for just full-on accepting her the way she was. Nothing she did seemed weird or abnormal to them (then again, considering their standards, I'm not sure that should really be so surprising). It would have been really easy for most parents to shower all of their love and affection on Jenny's pretty, popular sister, but they never seemed to do that. They tortured their daughters equally and there's a lot to be said for that.

Although this book made me laugh tears, there were also some genuine tears. One chapter she introduces as not being funny because you can't make that subject funny. At first I thought she was right, but then she managed to slip in just a little bit of dark humor and proved herself wrong. Don't mistake me here though, because that chapter was just tragic and one of the saddest things I have ever read.

My favorite part of this book is Jenny's total honesty. She holds nothing back and doesn't pull any punches. When she talks about the terror she feels in social situations, it's so easy for the reader to nod along and say, "Yep, I know exactly how you feel". Because we've all felt it, too, but nobody talks about it. Jenny talks about it and she also talks about the magic of finding people with whom you really fit in and can truly be yourself.

The only thing I have to disagree with her about is her assertion that high school is the lowest point of our lives. That was not true for me. I have since been through times that were way harder than anything I had to put up with in high school. I may be alone here, but I had a lot of fun in high school. No, I'm not still friends with all of those people, and yes we were all total self-centered drama queens, but that doesn't change the fact that I had fun. Those people and that drama was what I needed at that time in my life to grow as a person and that's what I did and I think I'm better for it now. Maybe Jenny is a better person today because she had to stick her arm up a cow's vagina.

Bridge of Birds

A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was

by Barry Hughart

This book was awesome. It was a birthday gift from a friend last year and I had never heard of it, so I had absolutely no idea what I was in for. I was expecting something full of profound Eastern wisdom, like Amy Tan, maybe even Salman Rushdie, or something in the middle. Instead I got something much more light-hearted with an author that did not take himself nearly so seriously.

The first several chapters are devoted to the description of a town in China and how all the children between eight and thirteen fell ill. The narrator, who goes by the name Number Ten Ox, is sent to find a wise man who can help cure the children. That's when Li Kao enters the scene and everything gets better. If you pick up this book and get frustrated with the beginning, I highly encourage you to keep reading. It's totally worth it.

So Li Kao and Number Ten Ox set out on a series of adventures which involve gold and mystery and treasure and long-forgotten deities and more treasure. They end up far from their original destination, but of course everything turns out to be connected so they get to help out a poor peasant girl at the same time that they acquire the cure for the children of the town.

Master Li is my favorite forever, but despite the fact that he was narrating the whole story, I had a much more difficult time getting a feel for Ox. Numerous times their adventures involve deception and Ox, despite seeming like such an honest, small-town boy, doesn't appear to have any trouble pulling his weight in their cons. I thought it clashed rather starkly with the character I was introduced to at the very beginning.

I suppose a naive character combined with the devious Master Li could be sufficient to explain the anomaly. Although definitely a good guy, Master Li is clearly no stranger to deception. I suppose it's believable that merely his influence imposed on the impressionable young Ox is enough to turn the latter into an effective con man.

That being said, I want to be Master Li. I might have to start going around telling everything that "there is a slight flaw in my character."

Death by Food Pyramid

by Denise Minger

This book was awesome. I read it for my Paleo "book club", but I would not call this a paleo book. Minger is very good at remaining objective and is careful not to push any one diet. She emphasizes the fact that there is no such thing as one ideal diet which will work wonderfully for everyone. She breaks down a few genetic factors which will influence the type of diet a person does best on and explains the effect of those genetics. It was enough to finally make me want to sign up for 23andMe.com

This book is perfect for people who don't understand science. It's about science and how studies are conducted, but Minger does an excellent job of making all of her information very accessible. She doesn't bog the reader down with variables and statistics. Instead, she explains the most pertinent parts of science and the terminology that gets used in published studies. She explains what a well-conducted study needs and what we can glean from studies that are less than ideal (because we can rarely, if ever, get a perfect study). Best of all, Minger does not tell us what to do or whom to believe. Instead, she urges us to be skeptical of any and all studies and she gives us the tools that we need to discern the sources of valuable information from the ones that are best taken with a large grain of salt.

My favorite part of this book was the section that pertained to the title. I had thought that the food pyramid was based on the work of Ancel Keys and did not realized that money played any real part in it. As Minger points out, "USDA" stands for "United States Department of Agriculture", not "United States Department of Nutrition". The department's job is not to promote nutrition, but to promote American agriculture. Apparently when the food pyramid was designed, the wheat business was the one with the deepest pockets, hence the prominent place in the largest section of the pyramid. The meat and dairy businesses were not happy about the arrangement, and some minor concessions were made in their favor, but it does appear that Keys' dogma also played a role in the building of the pyramid.

While I had been aware of Keys' influence on society's current conventional wisdom, I had not realized that the USDA had hired a team of nutritionists to design the first food pyramid. What those nutritionists came back with looked a lot like what I think of the Paleo food pyramid looking like. Granted, there have been some variations on that pyramid, but the main similarity was the restriction of grains and sugar. It made me feel better about my eating habits and emphasized what I had already known about the need for vegetables to be prioritized in our diet.

Minger points out that Paleo is not the only lifestyle with devoted followers and she breaks down each one (Paleo, Mediterranean, and whole foods plant-based) in terms of their pros and cons. She points out what they have in common, but she emphasizes that their greatest overlap is not in what they include, but in what they exclude. They all exclude sugar, refined grains, and vegetable oils, providing evidence that what we don't eat might be at least as (if not more) important as what we do eat.