Gender and Sexuality

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

The cultures in the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which have been depicted in the Game of Thrones TV series, have a variety of patterns by which they conceptualize gender and sexuality.

"Sexuality" is a social construct, variable across time and space. Patterns of sexuality are not universal and objective constants, but changed over time, and varied from one location and culture to another. Medieval people did not conceptualize the world the way that contemporary 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 contemporary models.

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 and subjective 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. They did have categorization schemes, but they had a different basis. 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."

=Gender and Sexuality in the real-life Middle-Ages=

Patterns of sexuality in Medieval Europe
Two major factors affected patterns of sexuality and gender behavior in Medieval 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 medieval Catholic Church was dominated by an all-male priesthood.

These resulted in four major aspects of society in Western Europe in the Middle Ages: 1 - Sex as a dichotomy between procreative versus non-procreative sex

Sexual behavior and identity was not seen as divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality, but between celibacy and non-celibacy. In turn, because society was dominated by a celibate clergy, their writings praised celibacy as the ideal human condition, and proliferated the view that the only time people were supposed to have sex was specifically to produce children within marriage, as a necessary evil. Therefore, for the non-celibate in Medieval Europe, sex was not defined as a dichotomy between "heterosexual" and "homosexual", but as a dichotomy between "procreative" and "non-procreative" sex. 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. Indeed, even woman on top sex positions were also described as "sodomy" and condemned as abnormal, because it was believed that (due to gravity) this was less conducive to procreation.

2 - Sex as a dichotomy between penetrator versus penetrated

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 strictly conceptualized as "something a man does to someone else by penetrating them with a penis". Men and women were not thought of as performing the same act when they had sex with each other. Men "screwed", women "got screwed", but to say "a woman screwed a man" would seem a contradiction in terms to them. Sex wasn't something two people do together but something one person does to another. In this medieval conceptualization, 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, however, because no penis was directly involved they were not conceptualized as having "sex".

In turn, 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.

3 - Sexual orientation defined not by object choice but by role in the sex act

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. Instead of a man thinking "I prefer having sex with women", he thought "I prefer being the penetrator in the sex act", and did not make much of a distinction between whether he was penetrating a woman or another man. 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. In contrast, 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.

4 - Women and the European Marriage Pattern

While having an all-male priesthood like Islam or Judaism, medieval 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 as soon as they were first capable of reproducing. Men didn't tend to marry in their teenage years but when they were older and more financially established, so this model usually resulted in a wide age gap between an older husband and younger wife, resulting in a hierarchical relationship.

Because medieval Christian women could join the celibate clergy and become nuns (though not priests) if they waited too long to marry, women tended to marry at relatively late ages in Medieval Europe (usually between 20 and 30 years of age). Moreover, because they were older they also tended to be around the same age as established men considered to be of marriageable age - it wasn't even unusual for a 25 year old woman to marry a man who was a year or two younger than she was. This phenomenon is known as the "European Marriage Pattern", and was found in no other contemporary cultures. The result of this pattern was that when women spend many years being unmarried, they have a stronger sense of personhood distinct from their husbands, and when they marry husbands around the same age as they are their relationships are less hierarchical and more mutualistic. Christian women in medieval Europe therefore had a much higher social status and level of independence compared to most other world cultures.

Gender binary and patterns of gender behavior
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.

In contemporary usage, biological sex and gender are considered distinct and separate things. In contrast, people in the Middle Ages thought all three were not variable but inherently linked: a person of biologically male sex was believed to automatically express active masculine gender behavior - not just in the sex act but in all aspects of their everyday life - and to have an innate orientation/attraction to women. A person of biologically female sex was believed to automatically express passive female gender behavior in everyday life, and to have an innate desire to be penetrated by a man.

As a result, 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. Indeed, research by medieval historians has generally agreed that King Richard the Lionheart of England (1157-1199) was quite probably a homosexual - or rather, that he had sex with both men and women at different points in his life. Richard I was one of the greatest military leaders and warriors of his age, however, commanding forces in the Third Crusade, and in many ways was seen as a paragon of "active" masculine behavior - so few in his lifetime seem to have suspected that he would enjoy "passive" sexual behavior with other men in private. Similarly, in Westeros few people actually suspect that Loras Tyrell is homosexual because he is one of the most skilled tournament knights of his generation (i.e. Sansa Stark doesn't suspect it). The TV series slightly changed this so that several characters who lived in King's Landing with Renly are aware of his relationship with Loras: the explanation that Jaime gave in Season 3 was simply that it was "the worst kept secret at court", and anyone who spent long enough time with Renly and Loras would begin to notice it.

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). Contemporary examples would be the Hijra third gender in the Indian sub-continent, or the "Two-Spirit" individuals in Native North American culture.

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 (i.e. Brienne of Tarth) such as participating in warfare (even if she was not sexually interested in other women and exclusively had sex with men) was not seen as a distinct fourth gender - rather she would be seen as a defective kind of "female", a bizarre aberration from the traditional passive gender behavior expected of women.

The strong belief in the Middle Ages about a direct link between physical sexual characteristics and gender behavior is exemplified by attitudes about eunuchs. According to widespread belief, if a male had his penis removed and was turned into a eunuch (or even if just his testicles were removed), he would therefore automatically exhibit effeminate gender behavior as a result. It was impossible to be "masculine", in their view, without a penis. Thus there was a widespread stereotype across Medieval Europe of effeminate eunuchs (which also extended to the neighboring Islamic world).

Similar stereotypes seem to exist in the world of Westeros and Essos: there is a widespread assumption that eunuchs behave effeminately. Varys self-consciously plays into this stereotype to lull others into thinking he is non-threatening: an effeminate, foppish eunuch used to the soft pleasures of court life. Yet this is all just an act Varys puts on to play into other people's stereotypes. In the narrative (and the TV adaptation to a somewhat more frequent extent), several characters frequently mock eunuchs for their lack of male genitals - but like the Middle Ages, the society Martin chose to depict is itself very phallo-centric. People from Westeros, with these biases about eunuchs and a phallo-centric definition of gender behavior, would have difficulty comprehending how the Unsullied such as Grey Worm can be elite warriors. "Warrior-eunuch" itself would seem a contradiction in terms to them.

Another curious aspect of medieval sexuality is that while there are hundreds of religious or court records describing "sodomy", there are hardly any at all which mention fellatio, perhaps only a dozen or so (none mention cunnilingus). Oral sex was rarely if at all mentioned in medieval texts, even to be condemned. The ancient Romans seem to have considered the man whose penis was inserted into a mouth as the active partner, given that he was "penetrating". In the Middle Ages, however, in some circles at least, there seems to have been some debate in the other direction: in this view, the person performing the fellatio with their mouth is the "active" partner because "they're doing all the work", while the man's penis passively receives the fellatio. In effect, if a wife was performing fellatio on her husband, the entire active/passive roleset was suddenly reversed. This was not, however, a stable definition: the few records that discuss fellatio in the Middle Ages seem deeply confused about who was the active partner and who was the passive one - which was normally central to their conception of the act, as something one person does to another - perhaps explaining why they rarely wrote about it at all.

For example, in Season 1 of the Game of Thrones TV series, when Loras performs fellatio on Renly, who can be said to be the "active" partner, and which of them the "passive" partner? Loras because his mouth is being penetrated by Renly, or Loras because this is something he is actively performing and that Renly is passively allowing? ("A question for the philosophers" - Olenna Tyrell).

"Homosexuality" in the Middle Ages
There is a widespread misconception that homosexuals were harshly persecuted in the Middle Ages, but major academic research from the 1980s onwards (by figures such as John Boswell) has found that this was far from the truth. Gender studies about the actual status of homosexuality in Medieval Europe have significantly advanced since Martin first planned out the world of Westeros when he was writing the first novel in the early 1990s. Two main points that have emerged about homosexuality in the Middle Ages in the past twenty years of academic discourse:

First, "homosexuals" were not conceived of as a distinct kind of person in the Middle Ages: rather, homosexual behavior was seen as a kind of act that people could commit, like adultery. Therefore, clerical writings that denounce sins of the flesh actually assume that all men might be tempted to engage in homosexual sex, just as much as they might be tempted to engage in adultery with a woman outside of marriage. 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 having sex with other men, either to penetrate them or to be penetrated by them. There were men who at times enjoyed having sex with other men, but they did not conceptualize of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person. Homosexuality was not an identity, but a sex act.


 * "To the extent that sodomy was an act, or a set of acts, which a man could commit, rather than an orientation, it was not seem as limited to a minority group but was a more generalized threat. Manuals for confessors for confessors envisioned it as a sin that anyone could commit."

On the other hand, unlike in the Greco-Roman era, while medieval people did not really conceive of "homosexuals" as a distinct category of person that enjoyed having same-sex relationships exclusively...they were starting to develop some vague sense of this. Major church writings and other official documents never treated "sodomites" as a specific kind of person, just as an action that people could commit - yet in medical writings and even the "popular culture" of courtly love poetry, some people at times speculate that certain people exclusively preferred same-sex activity.

Second, homosexual behavior was not punished particularly severely - there weren't outright "laws" against it, as in secular laws - but at the same time, it was not something casually accepted either.  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. 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 1950s Hollywood: no "laws" were being broken but it would disgrace and effectively end his career). Still, there were not mass persecutions of homosexuals - just like witch-burnings, such persecutions only really began in the era of religious hysteria following the outbreak of the Black Death in the Late Middle Ages (starting in 1348), and only became wide-scale during the greater religious hysteria surrounding the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s.

=Gender and Sexuality in A Song of Ice and Fire=

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. At the same time, also like a major lord committing adultery, Loras doesn't just casually acknowledge in public that he engages in homosexual behaviors.

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 question is if the novels match it:

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 in Westeros 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
Westeros has more than one major religion in it, and they generally co-exist. In Medieval Europe, the major religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism did not co-exist to such a great extent as the religions in Westeros. On the other hand, all three were Abrahamic religions and their views on sexuality were actually 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 (or can have) very different value sets.

The fact that three major religions coexist more or less peacefully in Westeros is a marked difference from Medieval Europe, in which the sense of community, of "us" versus "the Other", was often defined as "Christendom" versus those of other religions. In both Christianity and Islam, slavery was actually allowed - the only stipulation was that it was immoral to enslave persons belonging to the same religion as you. Thus Christians had no problem with enslaving pagans in northern Europe and Muslims in southern Europe - and slave women were often concubines to their masters. In contrast, the Faith of the Seven in Westeros explicitly forbids slavery as a heinous crime - as do the religions of the Old Gods and Drowned God. This is simply a narrative conceit which makes Westeros different from the real-life Middle Ages. In-universe this level of tacit toleration for other religions might be due to the fact that their historical record is over twice as long: the Faith of the Seven was introduced to Westeros six thousand years ago, and there actually was quite a lot of religious strife in the early centuries when it pushed the other religions out to the fringes of the continent. After so many millennia, however, the fighting has long since stalemated, so that all three religions settled into a grudging co-existence.

Northmen and wildlings: followers of the Old Gods
The views of the worshipers of the Old Gods of the Forest towards sexuality are not very clear. In-universe, it is said that the religion of the Old Gods is less formal than the Faith of the Seven, and doesn't have as many "rules" as such. It doesn't even have a priesthood of any kind, male or female, but is based on quite contemplation before Weirwood heart trees in Godswoods. The Old Gods do seem to have several basic social rules, including the sacred bond of Guest right, prohibitions against Incest, Bastardy, Kinslaying, etc. Otherwise, there has never been any mention that the religion of the Old Gods has a specific view against homosexual behaviors - though their exact views are simply unclear.

The only prominent clue has been that Greatjon Umber's uncle Hother "Whoresbane" Umber is apparently a homosexual: he is called "Whoresbane" because in his youth he was sent to Oldtown to train as a maester, but a whore he was with tried to rob him, so he disemboweled the whore (then left Oldtown in disgrace). It is described that the story is only told in whispers, because no one wants to publicly say that it was actually a male whore that Hother was with. Therefore, it would seem that homosexuality is also seen as a social embarrassment in the North.

The Northmen who live north of the Neck but south of the Wall were never conquered by the Andals but in many ways acculturated to the behaviors of their neighbors, such as switching to speak the Common Tongue of the Andals instead of the Old Tongue of the First Men, and adopting a societal model more based on a system of Lordship than clans, etc. This is similar to the North's real-life analogue, Scotland, which in the Middle Ages quickly built itself up into a strong kingdom generally capable of resisting invasion from England to the south by adopting many English cultural and social models.

In contrast, it is said that the wildlings (or "Free Folk" as they call themselves) have very few "rules" beyond what they can keep with their own strength (though they also value guest right, and have prohibitions against incest and kinslaying). Unlike the Northmen and the rest of Westeros, the wildlings also don't recognize a class of hereditary nobility in their society. Given that a core value of the wildlings is that they don't like other people telling them how to live, it is quite possible that they actually place no social stigma on homosexuality.

Similarly, the wildlings apparently don't have a strict gender binary of social roles, in that they have Warrior women in their culture, that they call Spearwives (though a spearwife can marry and have children while still being a warrior). For most of the Northmen, meanwhile, it is seen as unusual for a female to want to adopt the traditionally masculine role of a warrior (such as Arya Stark). At the same time, in some of the fringes of the North, there are some female warriors: Bear Island is under constant threat by sea from both ironborn raiders to the south and wildling raiders passing around the Wall by ship from the north. Because the men are out all day in their fishing boats they can't respond to quick raids against their homes, so the women of Bear Island - particularly their rulers, House Mormont - have had to develop a strong tradition of having warrior women as a practical necessity.

Therefore, what apparently seems to have happened, is that the original First Men might not have had many social gender restrictions on warrior women or on homosexuality, but over the centuries the Northmen gradually adopted many of the social customs and mores of the neighboring powerful Andal kingdoms to the south. The wildlings that live beyond the Wall, however, apparently have far fewer of such social restrictions. Little more can be postulated due to lack of evidence.

The ironborn, followers of the Drowned God
In the Iron Islands, the distinctive Ironborn culture values raiding, and follows the local Drowned God religion. It is praise-worthy for men to take as many concubines, called "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 religion does have an all-male priesthood, the Drowned Men.

Not much is known about the views of the Drowned God religion on gender and sexuality. In general, ironborn culture seems to be very misogynistic. It is considered very controversial that Balon Greyjoy raised his daughter Asha (renamed "Yara Greyjoy" in the TV show) as a surrogate son, and many reject her leadership out of hand just for being a woman. Asha/Yara is very abnormal under the ironborn social model of expected female gender behavior. Then again, there is 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: not a dichotomy between male and female so much as between penetrator and penetrated (active and passive). So long as you were the one penetrating someone else specifically with a penis, it wasn't considered a great concern in Medieval Europe, and men didn't really conceive of women as "enjoying" sex or performing the same action that they did (they didn't care). This is due to the effect that having an all-male priesthood had on Medieval Europe's views on sexuality, and the Drowned God is the only religion in Westeros with an exclusively male priesthood. The Drowned Men are apparently celibate, though this is unclear. For that matter, unlike Medieval Europe, the ironborn don't have a celibate clergy of nuns that women can join - in which case they would probably marry off their daughters as soon as they were old enough to have children; as a result, ironborn girls probably would not have as much of a sense of personhood and social independence, which does seem to match how little power ironborn women seem to wield compared to the rest of Westeros.

Asha is sexually active and no one blames her for it, however this is possibly due to her overall tomboyish attitudes - she is very abnormal under the ironborn social model of expected female gender behavior, and not remotely representative of what is considered "standard" female behavior in their society.

Dornishmen, descendants of the Rhoynar
The Rhoynar ancestors of the modern Dornishmen came from city-states along the Rhoyne River, in the center of the modern Free Cities. They migrated to Dorne about a thousand years ago led by their warrior-queen Nymeria, fleeing conquest by the Valyrian Freehold. There they intermarried with the local population - a mix of First Men and Andals like the rest of Westeros - to form their own unique hybrid culture. The Dornishmen converted to the Faith of the Seven when they migrated to Westeros, but in many ways they just ignored the rules they didn't like, which clashed with their previous culture living in urbane mercantile city-states. As a result they have very different attitudes about sexuality compared to the rest of Westeros - despite the fact that they nominally follow the same religion of the Seven.

A major distinction about Dorne in the novels is that unlike the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, which practice male-preference primogeniture, Dorne practices gender-blind primogeniture. The reason for this is that Dorne managed to resist conquest by the Targaryens and their dragons through resorting to guerrilla warfare, and remained independent from the Iron Throne for the next two centuries. Dorne and House Martell only united with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms about one century before the novels begin, not through conquest but through peaceful marriage-alliance with the Targaryens. As a result they were allowed to keep many of their distinct local laws and customs, such as the head of House Martell being styled a "Prince" or "Princess" instead of a "Lord Paramount", and continuing to practice gender-blind inheritance law.

While daughters do sometimes inherit land and title in the rest of Westeros, it is less frequent, because they only inherit if they have no living brothers. For example, Sansa Stark ranks behind her brothers Bran and Rickon in the line of succession. In Dorne in the novels, in contrast, Doran Martell's heir-designate is his eldest child, who happens to be a daughter, Arianne Martell (who has apparently been omitted from the TV series). The previous ruler of Dorne before Prince Doran was his mother, who inherited rule from her parents in her own right. Dornishmen consider women to be the equals of men, they are treated equally under the law and in inheritance, and they wield political power just as often as men do. The Dornish thus have very different attitudes about the status and role of women than in the rest of Westeros.

In the rest of the Seven Kingdoms, the Dornishmen have a reputation for being hot-blooded and sexually licentious. Indeed, Dornishmen have more "relaxed" views towards sexuality and love than the rest of Westeros. They are quite tolerant about sex outside of marriage, and even have a system of formal mistresses or concubines called "Paramours" - a holdover from the ancient courts of the Rhoynar city-states. Paramours can be held in quite high esteem in Dorne, publicly and openly acknowledged, and in some cases is treated as a lord's wife in all but name. For that matter, it is not considered unusual for noblewomen to openly have their own paramours.

Similarly, bastards do not carry the stigma of shame in Dorne that they do in the rest of the Seven Kingdoms for being born out of wedlock. In the TV series, Prince Oberyn mentions at Joffrey's wedding that his people doesn't despise bastards because they are born out of passion. In fact, bastards are often raised along their trueborn siblings and cousins, and out of proportion to the other Seven Kingdoms, bastards in Dorne much more frequently rise to important positions such as castellans and stewards. The only slight disadvantage that bastards have in Dorne is that they are still considered poor matches for marriage due to their inability to receive inheritance.

The Dornish also have no particular stigma against homosexual behavior, considering it no great concern "if a man lies with a man, or a woman lies with a woman". Oberyn Martell and his paramour Ellaria Sand (whom he treated as a wife in all but name and mother of several of his children) are sexually adventurous, sharing other sexual partners, and not really making a distinction whether they are male or female. In the novels, it is mentioned in passing that Nymeria Sand was "abed with the Fowler twins" when she received word that her father was dead, and later it is casually revealed that the Fowler twins are girls - though it isn't clear if "abed" means she is in a sexual relationship with them, as it is a common practice throughout Westeros for noblewomen to have bedwarmers, literally sharing their beds to keep warm on cold nights.

Thus a Dornish noblewoman can inherit rule in her own right ahead of her young brothers, and while technically married to a man to produce children, also openly keep a female paramour in a deep, loving partner-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.

The Dornishmen inherited their relaxed attitudes about sexuality from their Rhoynar ancestors, but little information has been provided about the cultural factors that made the ancient Rhoynar like this. What is known is that the Rhoynar lived an urbanized lifestyle in mercantile city-states along the Rhoyne River, in contrast with the agrarian culture of the First Men and Andals which was much more focused on direct inheritance of land. It is possible that this more "cosmopolitan" city-culture led the Rhoynar to be more tolerant of sexuality and treat the genders equally. The Rhoynar religion was based on worship of "Mother Rhoyne", the personified goddess of the life-giving Rhoyne River. Mother Rhoyne's had many children who were lesser gods in their pantheon, such as Crab King and the giant turtle known as the Old Man of the River. The fact that their main deity was a mother figure may have also given the Rhoynar a more positive attitude about the social status of women. Even the ancient Rhoynar treated women as the equals of men, and they had many female warriors. Nymeria herself came to rule Ny Sar in her own right, one of the six main Rhoynar city-states.

The attitudes of the Dornishmen towards gender and sexuality don't seem to be based on any direct counterpart from the real-life Middle Ages. Dorne itself is loosely inspired by Medieval Spain, which was ethnically and culturally different from the rest of Medieval Europe due to the Muslim conquests. While the Rhoynar did migrate to Dorne from across the Narrow Sea, they converted to the local religion of the Faith of the Seven centuries ago, peacefully, which is different from the drawn-out Reconquista period in Spain (though in some respects it might still be similar to Spain a few centuries later, after the entire peninsula was reconquered by Christian kingdoms, but the Muslim presence still left behind many unique cultural aspects).

A stereotype that Christian Western Europe had about the Muslim world was that they were more licentious, due to not practicing clerical celibacy and thus not possessing such a religiously-based negative view of sexuality, and stereotypes about Dornishmen in the narrative loosely echo this to an extent (though real-life Muslim writers also accused Christians of being licentious; it was just a standard insult). On the other hand, unlike Dorne, real-life Muslim Spain didn't treat women as equal under the law to men, and did not practice gender-blind inheritance law (so women didn't really wield political power very often). Women in Dorne can inherit land and political power, and rather openly engage in sex outside of marriage with other men - not only did nothing like this happen in real-life Muslim Spain, medieval Christians didn't even have a stereotype about them that resembled this. As evidenced from medieval literature and popular epics, medieval Christians never seem to have believed that Muslims practiced equal inheritance law or that Muslim women had a drastically higher degree of sexual freedom. The popular troubadour poetry contains stories of brave Christian knights seducing the daughters of Muslim princes - not seducing Muslim princesses who ruled in their own right. In that respect, these aspects of the Dornishmen seem to be a pure fantasy construct without basis in reality - though George R.R. Martin has openly said that Dorne is not meant to have a one to one correspondence to any real-life culture: it is loosely like Medieval Spain, with some aspects of Medieval Wales (a semi-independent territory on the fringe of the kingdom), but other aspects of Dorne were simply drawn from Martin's imagination and creative license.

Arguably, the one region of Medieval Europe that had the attitudes about gender and sexuality that the Dornishmen have in the fictional narrative was actually Ireland (prior to the English invasions beginning in the late twelfth century) - where the Game of Thrones TV series itself is based and primarily films. Even after converting to Christianity, reliable records such as the Brehon laws evidence that women were treated as the equals or near-equals of men in Celtic Ireland. Moreover, although less well evidenced, many ancient historians described that the Celts in Ireland openly had same-sex relationships (though the true extent of this is unclear and still debated academically). As English domination in Ireland grew, however, English cultural patterns and inheritance laws subsumed the earlier local Irish laws and customs.

The Valyrians, the Targaryens, and definitions of incest
The Valyrians practiced heavy incest between brother and sister, to "keep the bloodlines pure". House Targaryen was a Valyrian noble family that survived the Doom of Valyria four centuries ago, and settled on the islands off the east coast of Westeros. As the last survivors of the Valyrian Freehold that possessed live dragons, a century later the Targaryens conquered and united the Seven Kingdoms. As a political expedient they converted to the Faith of the Seven, but they continued to practice incestuous marriages. This led to conflict with the Faith of the Seven which was only decided through civil war. 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 Targaryen dynasty's brother-sister marriages 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 own first cousin, Joanna Lannister - her surname was already "Lannister" before they were married, as she was the daughter of a younger brother of Tywin's own father, Tytos Lannister. Nor is this a peculiarity of House Lannister, as members of House Tyrell have also married their first cousins: Mace Tyrell's younger sister Mina married her own first cousin Paxter Redwyne. Mace and Mina's mother Olenna Tyrell, born Olenna Redwyne, is the sister of Paxter's father and thus his paternal aunt. When Eddard Stark confronts Cersei Lannister about her incestuous relationship with her own twin brother Jaime, (in both the book and TV versions) she counters that the Targaryen dynasty wed brother to sister for three hundred years, so she and Jaime didn't see what they were doing as comparatively that unusual. The incestuous brother-to-sister marriages of the Targaryens were still seen as very unusual, however, and they primarily got away with it due to their royal status and power, which they felt set them above the rules of normal men. Even after three centuries, brother-sister relationships were still condemned and not considered "normal" in any of the other noble Houses in Westeros.

Polygamous marriages were practiced in the old Valyrian Freehold - it was not universal and frequent, but it was not uncommon either. Aegon the Conqueror was married to both of his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys. Visenya was the eldest of the siblings and Aegon may have married her for political reasons, while marrying his younger sister Rhaenys for love. After the trio conquered and unified the Seven Kingdoms, however, it seems that Aegon himself realized that practicing polygamy in subsequent generations would push the Faith of the Seven too far, so he discouraged his successors from continuing it. The Faith had not openly criticized the polygamous or even incestuous aspects of Aegon's marriages, and in return he tread lightly around them, making both of his sons marry one woman each from outside of their immediate family. After his death, however, his second son Maegor the Cruel, an infamously vicious tyrant, took multiple wives and forcibly married his own niece, leading to a war with the Faith Militant that lasted throughout his six year reign. After he was deposed, his successor and nephew Jaehaerys I negotiated a peace with the Faith, and the Targaryens never had a polygamous marriage again. They did continue to practice brother-to-sister incest marriages (as Jaehaerys I was married to his own sister, Alysanne), but apparently their rationale was that they already had an incestuous bloodline even if they stopped wedding brother to sister - though they could actively choose not to take multiple wives. The Targaryens didn't always wed brother to sister in every generation, and over two centuries later King Aegon V (younger brother of Maester Aemon) became convinced that incestuous bloodlines were what caused many Targaryens to go insane, so he tried to put an and to the practice altogether, though he did not succeed.

A point raised by linguist David J. Peterson is that he is hesitant to develop certain "everyday life" vocabulary in High Valyrian because it is unknown exactly what everyday life was like in the ancient Valyrian Freehold, i.e. he didn't develop a word for "breakfast", as for all anyone knows they just had what we would call "brunch" and didn't even have a distinct word for "breakfast". The heavily incestuous and even polygamous marriages of the Valyrian dragonlords probably led to very complicated familial relationships: Daenerys and Viserys's parents were themselves brother and sister, making Viserys simultaneously Daenerys's "brother" and "first cousin" - it is unknown if High Valyrian would have a distinct term for such a relationship, distinguishing it from a sibling whose parents were not brother and sister. The ironborn practice a limited form of polygamy (though they don't consider it full polygamy), in which they have only one "rock wife" who ranks ahead of all of their "salt wives". In comparison, in a case where a Valyrian dragonlord was in a polygamous marriage to multiple close relatives, it isn't clear if there was a distinct word for one "primary" wife, etc. Also consider that several real-life languages have more specific terms for family members than English does, i.e. Japanese has distinct words for "older sister" (onee-san) and "younger sister" (imouto). The novels don't really give many details on the ancient Valyrians' family structural dynamics, so Peterson avoided trying to describe it for lack of information.

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. Study of the definition of what constituted "incest" in the Middle Ages is considered significant in scholarship because 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.

Patterns of "masculine" and "feminine" behavior in Westeros
In the Middle Ages, women who transcended the weakness of their femininity to exhibit positive masculine traits were called "viragos"- this did not, however, meant that they were suddenly non-women. The nuance is that they thought women were potentially capable of rising to such modes of behavior. It was not insulting to call a woman "virago" or "manful", in many contexts, but meant as a compliment. The difference was very subtle and there is intense ongoing academic scrutiny about the nuances of everyday gender behavior. Basically a woman could give orders with firm and quiet determination, but she couldn't shout out orders assertively the way a man could - in short, if a woman's behavior became "bossy", she was no longer behaving in proper ladylike fashion. One of the more interesting examples of this phenomenon was the Empress Matilda, who fought against King Stephen during the Anarchy in England. Matilda was daughter of Henry I but was usurped by her cousin, Stephen. Accounts say that because Matilda expected to be her father's successor for many years, she grew arrogant, and in many ways was perceived to act like a man, in unladylike fashion, because she openly yelled commands at followers and wasn't demure about it.

In Game of Thrones, Catelyn Tully and Olenna Tyrell have a sense of quite but firm determination to protect their families through political action. In contrast, Cersei Lannister frequently gives blunt orders which seem unladylike - even though her father Tywin behaves the same way, and is not similarly criticized for it. The clear analogue of Matilda in the history of Westeros is Rhaenyra Targaryen, who lived about 170 years before the War of the Five Kings. Rhaenyra was the only woman who ever came close to becoming a Ruling Queen in her own right, inheriting the Iron Throne from her father instead of simply being a Queen Consort married to the current king. Rhaenyra was the heir apparent for many years, and it gave her a sense of confidence bordering on arrogance to her enemies, but after her father died the throne was usurped by her younger half-brother Aegon II. The stated reason many had for siding against her and declaring for her brother was that, on a personal level, they felt she was too domineering - even though Aegon II was an even more domineering hot-head prone to petty outbursts of anger. Rhaenyra had hit the medieval "glass ceiling", as many lords were offended at the idea of being commanded by a Ruling Queen, and had no intention of letter Rhaenyra become the first one to sit the Iron Throne. The gender politics of their conflict play out in the recent series of prequel novellas that Martin wrote about the Dance of the Dragons (which may eventually be adapted into a live-action TV project in the distant future).

Education for aristocratic boys and girls in Westeros generally matches real-life patterns from the Middle Ages. Maesters serve as tutors to children of the lord they serve, boys and girls, in core topics such as literacy or arithmetic. When boys are old enough they also train with their castle's Master-at-Arms in the martial arts. Using a sword is a developed skill, like Olympic-level fencing - you can't just pick up a sword and hack at your opponent like children with wooden sticks. This is displayed in Season 1 when Jon Snow easily overpowers all of the other Night's Watch recruits during fighting practice, and Tyrion explicitly points out that Jon has received formal training from the Stark master-at-arms Rodrik Cassel, while the poor commoners he was facing had not. In the TV series, Maester Luwin is seen in Season 1 quizzing Bran on the geographic location and identifies of the Great Houses of Westeros, including their heraldry and mottoes.

Girls, meanwhile, are taught in the "womanly arts" such as sewing, by septas who serve their family as governesses (assuming that Septa Mordane's service to the Stark-Tully family is apparently typical). This is not to say that girls' education was shaping them to remain trapped in a castle all day, sewing, and breeding as necessary. In Arya's first chapter in A Game of Thrones, she mentions that the education she and Sansa are receiving consists of learning to sew, dance, sing, pray, write poetry, how to dress (fashion), and instruments (specifically, Sansa can play the harp and bells). However, Arya also specifically mentions that while she is bad at all of these other traditional "womanly" skills compared to Sansa, she is better at her with numbers - she outright says that girls receive instruction in arithmetic, because they are expected to co-manage their lord-husband's household. The Lady of a noble House rules over the domestic sphere; the Lord's Steward is expected to work with her, but this varies on a personal level: if a Lady is good at math she may want to oversee the management personally, but Arya notes that Sansa isn't very good with numbers and will probably have to rely on her husband having a good steward. Girls are also taught basic horseriding, because it is the primary means of transport (Arya, at nine years old, says she knows how to ride a horse better than the eleven year old Sansa - women are expected to be able to ride for long distances).

Maesters also give boys and girls lessons in foreign languages: High Valyrian is the analogue of Latin in Westeros, a dead language of a fallen empire used by scholars and intellectuals. The novels mention that Arya Stark received lessons in High Valyrian from Maester Luwin, as did presumably all of the other Stark children - but due to her young age she apparently didn't know it well enough to speak yet (when Arya arrives in Braavos she has to spend time learning Braavosi Valyrian). It also depends on how intellectually inclined the student is - Robert Baratheon was probably more interested in martial training than higher education. Tyrion Lannister learned near-fluent High Valyrian from his maester and was a voracious reader on all topics. The bookish Samwell Tarly humbly says that he isn't very skilled at High Valyrian, though he actually knows it reasonably well, but not as well as Tyrion.

Both boys and girls receiving religious training, reading the The Seven-Pointed Star, the holy text of the Faith of the Seven. Boys's education tends to provide more focus on politics, history, and rulership. A point not made clear in the TV series is that it is actually very unusual that Princess Shireen Baratheon has been instructed to read major historical texts about the Targaryen Conquest and Dance of the Dragons. After her father Stannis Baratheon realized that his wife would probably never provide him with a living son, and that Shireen was going to be his only heir, he instructed her teachers to shift to giving her the type of education normally reserved for boys - because he wanted her to be a capable Ruling Queen some day. This is in contrast with Cersei, who didn't care at all about her son Joffrey's education, resulting in him being a barely-educated buffoon who when presented with the Lives of Four Kings, a classic book on the art of good rulership, his only action was to hack it apart with a sword. Shireen is actually better read in texts about the art of rulership than Catelyn Stark or Margaery Tyrell.

Many young girls in Westeros, such as Sansa, look forward to a life of sewing circles, sitting around drinking tea, gossiping, and eating lemon cakes. Others such as Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark, and Brienne of Tarth are not satisfied with this. Cersei notes that she and Jaime were twins and even looked so similar when they were small children that the servants couldn't tell them apart. In the novels, she says a game she used to play was dressing in Jaime's clothes and walking around their castle, fascinated with how differently people treated her when they thought she was her brother. As she bitterly recounts in her drunken rant in Season 2's "Blackwater", when they grew older, Jaime was taken away to be trained in fighting with sword and lance, while she was just taught social manners, how to smile, curtsy, sing, and pray - ultimately to be shipped off in a marriage-alliance. Brienne of Tarth also didn't want to spend her life trying to be "ladylike" and learning how to dress and act (she was naturally very tall and muscular, making her the subject of ridicule), but she managed to convince her father to provide her with formal combat training. In contrast, the women of House Tyrell such as Olenna and Margaery try to use their skills within the framework of traditional femininity to manipulate political power - which is quite important in a political system which is heavily reliant upon marriage-alliances between different noble-families.

Marriage, bastardy, and inheritance
Marriage in the narrative...

The TV series released a behind-the-scenes video featurette about marriage in Westeros (click this link to view), in which George R.R. Martin stressed that as in the real-life Middle Ages, it is by far the norm for the nobility in Westeros to enter into arranged marriages, not for love but to secure political alliances: "Marriage was a way to bind two families together, it was a form of political alliance, and royal marriages are one of the ultimate examples of this." Most members of the Great Houses of Westeros in the TV series entered into arranged marriages: Catelyn Tully and Eddard Stark, Lysa Tully and Jon Arryn, Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, Stannis Baratheon and Selyse Florent, and during the narrative Margaery Tyrell and her successive husbands (Renly Baratheon, Joffrey Baratheon, and Tommen Baratheon). Sometimes with great work and effort over many years, arranged marriages turn into strong relationships - Catelyn herself championed this aspect of her marriage to Ned when trying to urge her son Robb to enter into an arranged marriage. While they may not grow to love each other, couples in arranged marriages are often able to maintain at least a functional public partnership. Many dread being trapped in miserable arranged marriages, such as Robert and Cersei, or Lysa's loveless marriage to Jon, a good man but old enough to be her father. Only two major political leaders in Westeros in the current generation married for love: Tywin Lannister and Doran Martell. Tywin married his own first cousin Joanna Lannister out of love, even though she brought him no new lands. He actually loved Joanna dearly and it was said she brought out the best in him, and her death giving birth to Tyrion left him heartbroken and embittered. Later in life, Tywin hypocritically tried to force all three of his children into loveless arranged marriages (succeeding with Cersei and Tyrion). Doran Martell is an example of lord who married for love, but as happens in real life, he and his wife eventually fell out of love. In the novels, he wed the noblewoman Mellario of Norvos, but after several years she found the customs of Dorne to be so foreign that she became estranged from Doran and moved back to Norvos (divorce does not exist in Westeros), leaving Doran with a heavy heart.

Prostitution, contraception, and abortion

 * See main article "Prostitution"

Prostitution, of course, existed in the real-life Middle Ages and throughout history. In Westeros as in Medieval Europe, there is a general "boys will be boys" attitude of male privilege, and noblemen are not particularly criticized for having sex with prostitutes (i.e. King Robert Baratheon is a notorious whore-monger), while in contrast, women who have sex outside of marriage are severely punished.

In the real-life Middle Ages, due to high infant mortality rates the nobility as well as commoners actually wanted to produce as many babies as possible: for the common laborers, each new child was a potential new worker that could assist them on their farm; for nobles, more children meant a guarantee that their lineage would survive. Therefore, prostitutes were the only women in the Middle Ages who regularly practiced contraception: any scholarly research into the history of contraception - women's reproductive rights and control over their own bodies - which extends back to look at the origins of these practices in the medieval era, has to examine records about prostitutes.

Prostitution is practiced throughout the continents of Westeros and Essos. It is tacitly legal in the Seven Kingdoms, as kings and lords usually find it more profitable to simply tax brothels than to ban prostitution outright. Every now and again a particularly pious lord (such as King Baelor Targaryen) will attempt to shut down the brothels within his lands, but with varying degrees of success. In the novels, Littlefinger's full quote to Eddard Stark about prostitution is: "Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I've found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, they pay good coin like everyone else".  The TV series has frequently made use of prostitutes in what have been referred to as "Sexposition" scenes.

In the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the views of all of the major religions about contraception and abortion have actually not been prominently mentioned - but abortion is quite commonly practiced across Westeros. To induce early-term abortion, women in Westeros can drink a kind of herbal tea called "moon tea", which is a medicinal concoction of several different kinds of herbs (the main active ingredient is a flower called "tansy", but it also includes wormwood, mint, honey, and a drop of pennyroyal). Most if not all maesters know how to make moon tea upon request, as do many woods witches or local apothecaries, etc. Yara Greyjoy (called Asha in the novels) is an independent warrior-woman and unashamedly sexually active, and at some point she learned how to make moon tea on her own from a woods witch. What isn't clear is whether making moon tea is openly legal, or, if there are technically religious and/or secular laws against making moon tea, but they are just very frequently ignored on an everyday level. In the novels, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish actually impregnated the young Lysa Tully while he was living at Riverrun, but this infuriated her father Hoster Tully, who threw Baelish out of the castle, and then forced Lysa to drink moon tea and abort Baelish's child. The Game of Thrones TV series hasn't mentioned moon tea at all - specifically because the detail about Lysa's abortion was condensed out for time.

Male privilege

 * See main article on "Rape"

Beyond Westeros
Outside of Westeros, we know little and less. Only a vague sketch can be made of the different social models and attitudes regarding gender and sexuality in these regions beyond Westeros itself.

Free Cities
The inhabitants of the Free Cities practice many different religions, so their cultural values about gender and sexuality can vary considerably, perhaps even within a single city.

The Free Cities are the surviving colonies of the Valyrian Freehold, which fell four centuries ago in the Doom of Valyria. The Valyrian ruling class itself practiced heavily incestuous marriages of brother-to-sister to keep the bloodlines pure, and frequently engaged in polygamous marriages - though how much this affected their colonies is unknown. Apparently these practices were abandoned after the fall of Valyria by the ruling classes in each of the Free Cities - the Valyrian religion itself is mostly extinct (save for a handful of the old aristocratic families in Volantis, but not all of them).

In contrast to Westeros, on the eastern continent of Essos across the Narrow Sea there are a large number of local religions across the nine Free Cities, but few religions that are widespread across large geographical areas. Even so, each city may contain worshipers of numerous different local religions that are not to be found anywhere else in the world. The Free City of Braavos has a very diverse, cosmopolitan religious makeup, welcoming all faiths.

The one major exception to this is the religion of R'hllor, the Lord of Light, which is very widespread. The Lord of Light religion is also the most popular faith in the southern Free Cities: Volantis, Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh - it is said to outnumber all other faiths in Volantis, where the Temple of R'hllor is three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor in Westeros. It also seems to be fairly popular in Pentos, and apparently has some numbers in the other four Free Cities (there is a Temple of R'hllor in Braavos, though it is far from the most popular religion in the city).

The religion of the Lord of Light apparently a bit more sexually tolerant than the Faith of the Seven. 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 worshiped in the Free Cities, even in a single city, that at least some of them don't seem to persecute homosexuals, as a few characters from the Free Cities in the novels are openly homosexual.

The Lord of Light religion apparently does practice sacred prostitution: it is mentioned that the religion purchases unwanted slave children to raise in its service, who can be trained to be (as adults) priests, servants, or temple guards - though also as cult prostitutes who operate in the temples. This also seems to indicate that the religion is more tolerant of sexuality in general than the Faith of the Seven.

The southern Free Cities are said to be quite similar in culture and customs. Each was founded primarily as a merchant venture. Volantis, first and most populous of the Free Cities, has long dominated the quarreling "three sisters" to its west: Myr, Lys, and Tyrosh. Each of them have large slave populations that outnumber the freemen (by five to one in Volantis, and around three to one in the others). The Lord of Light religion is quite popular in each of them, particularly Volantis, though they also have local religions - the Weeping Woman and a love goddess are two local deities in Lys. Of all the Free Cities, Lys is famous for producing in its pleasure houses the finest bed slaves in all the world, and it is generally regarded as a city of vice.

While many of the cities are ruled by magisters (a council of ruling wealthy merchants), Volantis is ruled by a council of three triarchs, who are elected for one year terms. There are two political parties: the pro-war "Tiger" party and the pro-trade "Elephant" party. Candidates for triarch must be from the old aristocratic families that can trace their bloodline back to Valyria, but all freeborn landholders have the right to vote, male or female. It is also officially possible for a woman to be elected as a triarch - though in practice there has not been a female triarch in three hundred years. The last female triarch was Trianna, a very important figure in Volantene history who was elected four times. After the devastating losses in the Century of Blood caused by the Tiger party's fruitless attempts to reconquer the other Free Cities, Trianna led the Elephant party to sweep them out of power in new elections, cut the city's losses, and refocus on rebuilding the Volantis's power through trade.

Pentos is a northern Free City though it has more similarities with the southern ones, in that it was also founded as a merchant venture, and the Lord of Light religion is apparently fairly popular there. Unlike all of the other Free Cities, however, there are unconfirmed legends that it was not founded from scratch by the Valyrians, but was a pre-existing settlement that they conquered. The original inhabitants were allegedly akin to the Andals who lived just north of Pentos at the time, and in modern times they are said to be quite similar to men from Westeros in appearance. This indigenous background may explain certain unique local practices in Pentos:  the Prince of Pentos (elected by the city's magisters and largely their puppet) is required to welcome in each new year at a celebration in which he must deflower two virgins, called the Maid of the Field and the Maid of the Sea, which is believed to bring the city good fortune in the coming year. This probably indicates that Pentos has somewhat more relaxed sexual attitudes than in Westeros, or at least, that the religious authorities don't stop this practice from continuing - either because they aren't powerful enough or because they actively tolerate it.

Three of the Free Cities were founded many centuries ago by religious separatists from Valyria: Norvos, Qohor, and Lorath. All of them are northern Free Cities, located as far away from the heart of the Valyrian Freehold as possible, so that their cults could continue their practices undisturbed. Norvos is still ruled by the order of Bearded Priests, an all-male priesthood (it is implied but not confirmed if they practice celibacy). On the whole their religion is quite conservative, with the city's bells calling the populace to frequent daily prayers. The Norvoshi religion is stated to only tolerate sex among the populace purely for procreation - even the time for this act is signaled by the city's bells, though the times when they are rung for this are said to be few and far between. Overall the Norvoshi religion's attitudes seem to be quite similar to medieval Christianity - though the Norvoshi don't seem to have a separate clerical order for women, which would give them the opportunity for life outside of the normal family unit. Otherwise, only the priests of the religion are allowed to wear full beards, as a sign of their status. Free men of Norvos cannot have beards, but instead they wear long moustaches (perhaps in imitation of the ruling priests, as a sign of their status). Slaves of both sexes and even free women share their heads completely bald - though Norvoshi noblewomen are aware that this is considered strange by the gender standards of many neighboring lands, so when they are among foreigners they wear full wigs (Doran Martell's estranged wife Mellario was herself a Norvoshi noblewoman).

Not much is known about the culture of Qohor, save that the Black Goat of Qohor which is the deity in their religion demands daily blood sacrifices - usually animals, but also condemned criminals on high holy days. Meanwhile, Lorath was founded about 1,700 years ago by the Cult of Boash, the Blind God. The followers of Boash followed extreme self-abnegation, even more than the Norvoshi religion, which led them to believe that all humans were equal - in the sense that they were all equally worthless before their god. Therefore the cult held that there was no difference between men and women, or between slave and freeman, so Lorath became a haven for runaway slaves from the rest of the Valyrian Freehold. About a thousand years ago, however, the Cult of Boash dwindled and died out, and power fell to various magisters and merchant-princes who had grown in power in the city (mostly focused on fishing ventures). As a result it isn't known if present-day Lorathi still treat women as equal to men, as a surviving local custom, or if that practice faded along with the original religion. Nothing has been said of what current religions are popular in Lorath.

Braavos was founded as a refuge by escaped slaves fleeing from Valyria, and is thus vehemently opposed to slavery, with a very egalitarian and tolerant culture. Many diverse religions are followed in the city, much moreso than even in the other Free Cities. Of the twenty-three founders of the Iron Bank of Braavos seven were women - though it hasn't been mentioned if any high-ranking officers of the bank are women during the time of the main novels. Courtesans are held in high cultural esteem in Braavos: while they do have sex with their clients, they are highly trained in poetry, music, literature, etc. and are considered the pinnacles of cultural refinement. Many courtesans own their own barges in the canals, where they are attended by multitudes of servants that they hire. The wealthy and the powerful from across the Free Cities and even Westeros vie for their affections, as a status symbol (Braavosi courtesans are somewhat similar to real-life Japanese geisha). Thus Braavos seems to have quite tolerant attitudes towards sexuality and the status of women.

Slaver's Bay
The attitudes in Slaver's Bay about gender and sexuality are less clear than in Westeros and the Free Cities. The great slaver cities such as Astapor, Yunkai, Meereen, and New Ghis have vast slave populations, many of which are treated as mere property by their owners. Female slaves are made to breed new slaves, and slave boys are castrated by the hundreds to be made into Unsullied warrior-eunuchs. There are both male and female pleasure slaves, taken as young children to be trained in "the way of the seven sighs" to service the aristocrats: Yunkai in particular specializes in training bed slaves (though they are not quite as highly esteemed as those in Lys).

The exact sexual norms of Slaver's Bay are therefore unclear: a slave-owner has sexual access to their slaves, but it it is unknown what degree of sexual freedom is considered typical for women from the slave-owning classes (either with other men from the slave-owning classes, or with slaves their families own). While some of them do engage in homosexual activity, and train male or female slaves for a variety of sexual services, it is vague how typical or widespread such behavior is considered.

The Ghiscari religion practiced in Slaver's Bay is centered around a Temple of the Graces in each city, apparently run by an all-female clergy known as Graces, who are color-coded by their style of dress. The Red Graces are temple prostitutes, while the Blue Graces are healers, and the high priestess is known as the Green Grace. Given that their religion includes sacred prostitution, the Ghiscari probably have more relaxed views on sexuality than in Westeros. Meanwhile, their religion is apparently dominated by an all-female clergy, which might affect their views on the status of women. The Green Grace of a city, such as Galazza Galare in Meereen, can wield significant political power.

It is unknown how common it is for women to wield political power in Slaver's Bay, or if it even a normal occurrence. Some of the slaver families such as the House of Pahl seem to be run by women after Daenerys kills all of their men in her conquest of Meereen.

It is unknown if the Graces can marry, though it does not seem that they do. If so this might mean that aristocratic families in Slaver's Bay, as in real-life Western Europe, might marry off their daughters are relatively late ages, because if they wait too long and she is no longer suitable for marriage she can always join the Graces and still occupy a significant social position.

Dothraki
A little more is shown of Dothraki society than other regions in Essos, even several of the Free Cities, due to the time Daenerys spends living with them in the first novel. Even so, not as much is known about their culture compared to Westeros itself. Their religion of the Great Stallion actually has quite a complex belief system of omens and superstitions.

The Dothraki appear to be a male-dominated society, and there is no mention of female warriors. Dothraki men frequently take women from lands they are pillaging as concubines, and they do practice slavery - even against other Dothraki. Sex with slave women apparently isn't a moral concern.

The Dothraki practice polygamy, and the novels mention several other khals who have multiple wives. Khal Drogo just happened to be unmarried already when he married Daenerys. It is unknown if there is any ranking system among their wives - such as how the ironborn have one primary "rock wife", then multiple "salt wives" who are basically formal concubines (though it is considered a marriage and their children are legitimate). The actual status of a Khaleesi is variable, however: some khals may only take one wife who they are infatuated with, who wields great informal power in the khalasar, while in other cases a khal may have multiple wives who he just treats as concubines. It is said that a Dothraki khal might sometimes even share his wife with his bloodriders, though he will never share his horse with them. In some ways therefore it does not seem that women are held in high regard by the Dothraki.

At the same time, however, they do not really have a male-dominated inheritance system, or even a formal inheritance system. When a Khal dies, there is no guarantee that his khalasar will follow his son - they follow strength. If a khal has an adult son who is well-respected, he will be considered his heir (termed a "khalakka"), however if his son is only an infant or if he has no sons, the khalasar will break up into new smaller ones commanded by his former lieutenants. Also, both Dothraki men and women are expected to ride everywhere on horses - even pregnant women, who are apparently not considered weak due to their condition. Only slaves walk on foot, and the only people in a khalasar who are carried in horse-drawn carts are the feeble, the injured, the very old and young, and pregnant women are are in the middle of childbirth (the whole khalasar of thousands of people in transit doesn't stop moving just because one woman went into labor). Khals can also have a great deal of respect for their mothers: Khal Mengo, who first united the Dothraki to begin their first great outburst of conquest at the beginning of the Century of Blood, was said to have been counseled by his mother, the purported witch-queen Doshi.

Interestingly, the only Dothraki "priesthood" of any sort is all-female: the Dosh khaleen who reside in Vaes Dothrak. They are the widows of dead khals, and they serve as seers and wise-women, who read the omens that decide when it is favorable to go to war. Even the most powerful khal would be hesitant to defy the word of the dosh khaleen. Thus women can achieve powerful positions in Dothraki society, specifically dominating their religious clergy which can dictate sexual mores. While these widows are apparently celibate, the Dothraki do not actually have a "celibate clergy" in the sense of a "celibate clerical order": it is not a "lifestyle choice" any woman can make, but part of the natural life course, and only a few Dothraki women ever get married by khals. The dosh khaleen don't choose celibacy and by definition they have all had sex before: they are all widows, and they are attended by eunuchs to protect them so apparently they are no longer sexually active. While in real-life medieval Christianity the celibate clergy held up its own lifestyle as a morally superior choice which the non-clergy didn't make, the dosh khaleen wouldn't expect most Dothraki women (who never marry khals) to be able to choose a life of celibacy at all: therefore there isn't a strong reason for the dosh khaleen to denounce sex among regular Dothraki men and women.

The Dothraki language developed by David J. Peterson offers no specific clues. Dothraki pronouns make no gender distinctions: the language does have grammatical gender, but between animate and inanimate, not male and female (like the Basque language and many real-life Native American languages). In English it is the other way around: English nouns dropped the different grammatical genders found in Indo-European or German, but English pronouns do retain gender distinction. In Spanish, grammar gender endings distinguish between a male cat (gato) and a female cat (gata). Dothraki does not do this, and doesn't have one overall word for "goats" both male and female. Dothraki does distinguish between male and female goats, but it uses entirely separate words: "dorvi" (male goat) and "jin" (female goat) - just as in English "stallion" (male horse) and "mare" (female horse) are separate words for different genders of the same kind of animal. Little can be firmly read into these points, however, about broader Dothraki conceptualizations regarding human gender behaviors.

The combined effect that all of these factors on Dothraki society is unclear: a powerful female priesthood of widows, generally a male-dominant warrior society, men can have polygamous marriages, but a less formalized inheritance system than Westeros. The novels have simply never mentioned what the Dothraki attitudes about homosexual behavior or gender patterns are. For all we know, they might have a concept of more than two genders, like the Native American "Two Spirit" model (the Dothraki are loosely inspired by a mix of real life Turkic and Native American peoples). Just because a Dothraki warrior behaves in ways the men in Westeros find to be "masculine" doesn't mean he doesn't also have sex with men - or, that like Medieval Europe, the Dothraki conception of gender isn't based more on a dichotomy of penetrator/penetrated. Alternatively, the Dothraki could have the same views about homosexuality and gender binary as men in Westeros: the narrative simply has not given any information on the subject (i.e. we've never heard Dothraki insulting men from other cultures by claiming that they are homosexuals, etc., which would indicate that they have a cultural bias against it).

The fact that the Dothraki don't have a celibate clergy might imply that they don't consider non-procreative sex to be quite as shameful as in Westeros. On the other hand, the religions of Islam and Judaism in the real Middle Ages didn't practice clerical celibacy either - and while they were somewhat more tolerant of non-procreative sex within marriage, neither of them were particularly more tolerant of homosexuality than medieval Christianity was. At the same time, even when medieval western Christianity had clerical celibacy, homosexuality was simply frowned upon, there weren't formal laws against it. The presence or absence of a celibate clergy can somewhat indicate the general trend of a culture's attitudes towards sex, but even when it is practiced there is still room for a considerable variation in social attitudes on gender and sexuality, so it is difficult to tell.

The Dothraki are prominently stated to have very different attitudes about shame than people in Westeros or the Free Cities: everything in a khalasar is done in the open, so public nudity or publicly having sex in front of a crowd of people isn't considered to be shameful. Dothraki even openly have sex in wild orgies in front of crowds gathered at wedding ceremonies. On the wedding night the husband and wife also ride out into the fields to have sex for the first time in the open air, not in a tent, as they believe that anything important in life should be witnessed by the sky instead of being hidden. This does seem to be congruent with the fact that the Dothraki do not have a celibate clerical order. Societies in real life with non-celibate clergies are generally more tolerant of non-procreative sex among the non-clergy.

Both the novels and TV series also note that the Dothraki prefer rear entry/"doggystyle" sex positions between men and women, i.e. in the novels Daenerys's narration at her wedding notes that the Dothraki men are having sex with the women from behind in Dothraki fashion.

Summer Islands and Sothoryos
The culture of the Summer Islands is very much what might be called "sex-positive" in real life. Summer Islanders believe sex to be a gift from the gods for humanity to enjoy (even when non-procreative), regarding it as a joyous and life-affirming act. Although specific details about the Summer Islander religion have not been revealed, it is said that they consider sex to be an outright "holy" act, and therefore nothing to be ashamed about. While it has not been specifically mentioned, they apparently don't have any stigma against homosexual sex either.

Prostitution is considered a very respectable profession in the Summer Islands and is even practiced by highborn islanders (who do not financially need to do it, but as a form of temple-prostitution). In fact, all Summer Islanders - male or female, highborn or lowborn, rich or poor - are expected to spend one year in the temples of love honoring the gods with their bodies. Those deemed the most beautiful and most skilled earn the right to stay and become revered priests or priestesses. They thus definitely do not practice clerical celibacy, and both men and women can join the priesthood - matching the pattern of a society that doesn't vilify non-procreative sex as sinful.

The Summer Islands religion worships a score or so of gods and goddesses both great and small, but special reverence is shown to the god and goddess of love, beauty, and fertility. The physical union of male and female is sacred to these deities, and thus joining together in sex is considered a form of worship by the islanders that honors the gods who made them (again, it hasn't been mentioned what their attitudes about homosexuality are, given that their two primary gods symbolize and rejoice in the union of male and female, but as they don't vilify non-procreative sex for pleasure, it is probably implied that they are tolerant of homosexual behaviors). The priests and priestesses of the Summer Islands are quite esteemed at their skills, as they consider lovemaking to be an artform, as worth of respect as music, sculpture, or dance. Funerals in the Summer Islands are not somber occasions mourning the deceased but celebrations of the lives they led, with wine and lovemaking.

The Summer Islanders apparently consider women to be the equals of men, both socially and in inheritance law. Apart from being able to become revered priestesses, female islanders are frequently mentioned as rulers of different isles. Each of the islands is ruled by its own prince or princess, and the three largest islands are divided between several rival princedoms. They were once all united for the first time over 5,000 years ago by the warrior-queen Xanda Qo, Princess of Sweet Lotus Vale, who was succeeded by her daughter Chatana Qo, but the islands politically fragmented afterwards (though they remain largely peaceful). It is stated that Summer Islander women are warriors just as the men are, and that both male and female Summer Islanders are considered the finest bowmen in the world.

The Summer Islands themselves are located due south from the Narrow Sea that divides Westeros and Essos. Farther east, due south from Slaver's Bay, lies the third known continent, Sothoryos - separated from the Summer Islands by a considerable distance across the Summer Sea. Little is known about this largely unexplored continent, the northern regions of which are filled with dense and dangerous jungles. The coasts are constantly scoured by slavers from further north, and the only permanent settlements are pirate dens used as bases of operation for more slaver raids. Between Sothoryos and the Summer Islands is the island of Naath, home of Missandei. Very little is known about their culture, save that their religion believes that there is only one deity known as the Lord of Harmony, who created the universe; the religion commands respect for all life, so the Naathi will not fight even to defend their homes and persons. They do not even eat the flesh of animals due to their beliefs, but are vegetarians. Anything else about their culture is unknown, such as if their religion has male or female priests, or even has a clergy, or what their attitudes are about the role of women and moral values about sex.

Qarth
Little is known about the religion of Qarth or their official attitudes about such matters, but they appears to be a sexually open society. The great triple walls of Qarth are considered a wonder of the world (as recorded in the list made by Lomas Longstrider): while the outer wall is 30 feet high and decorated with images of animals, and the middle wall is 40 feet high and decorated with images of warfare, the innermost of the three walls is a 50 foot high edifice made of black marble, decorated with carved images of lovemaking (which make Daenerys blush). Apparently they don't consider such publicly displayed artwork to be obscene.

The traditional dress for Qartheen women leaves one breast exposed. Daenerys switches to this style of dress when she is in Qarth (there is a disproportionate amount of fanart depicting this). The TV series adaptation chose to omit this entirely, feeling that in prolonged scenes it would damage the integrity of the drama.

Qarth has quite a refined and cosmopolitan culture, located at the crossroads of trade between north and south, east and west - particularly due to controlling the straits that lead between the west and the wealthy lands surrounding the Jade Sea to the east. Traders from half a hundred different lands can be found mingling in Qarth, and its rulers are merchant-princes from the different trade guilds who value wealth more than old bloodlines (much like the Free Cities), though the old aristocratic families known as the Pureborn are engaged in defense of the city as much as trade. Qarth is also extensively engaged in the slave trade, and presumably this means slave-owners have sexual access to their slaves, including trained pleasure slaves, etc.

The Qartheen consider exaggerated displays of emotion to be a sign of refinement and civilized behavior, thus if Qartheen men are reporting bad news, they will make an over-exaggerated display of weeping (and apparently don't consider this shamefully effeminate behavior).

Xaro Xhoan Daxos is a powerful and immensely wealthy merchant-prince in the city but it is strongly implied that he is homosexual, as his mansion is noted to have numerous young attractive male slaves, and Daenerys' POV narration points out that despite his verbal protestations of passion for her, his eyes never particularly linger on her body. Xaro's offer of marriage to her is purely for political and economic purposes. Nonetheless, if Xaro is indeed homosexual he takes no significant steps to hide it, i.e. openly surrounding himself with attractive male slaves and remaining unmarried.

The Further East
East of Qarth and the Dothraki city Vaes Dothrak are the largest mountain chain in the world, the massive Bone Mountains, which stretch from the northern to southern coasts of Essos, and forming a major block against east-west travel. At the southern end, the Straits of Qarth form a narrow chokepoint to any sea travel between the Summer Sea to the west and the exotic lands around the Jade Sea to the east. For men in Westeros, knowledge about the world beyond their own shores drastically diminishes east of the Bones - so that these distant lands in the Further East of Essos are half-legendary to them. Most of what they have to go on are unreliable rumors, more than a few of them probably tall tales told by drunken sailors. Little was revealed about these lands in the main novels: the first significant descriptions were given in the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) (and according to the co-authors, they had no input on these sections, it was all purely from Martin's own imagination).

The emperors of Yi Ti, a massive empire on the north shore of the Jade Sea, have been said to have polygamous marriages to multiple wives, and to keep concubines. However, it is unclear how common such practices are: if they are limited as a special right of the emperors, or of the nobility, or if even commoners do this. Court eunuchs are also apparently fairly common in Yi Ti: men who voluntarily get castrasted so they can hold sensitive government positions of power. Yi Ti has has eleven ruling dynasties in its 8,000 year history, one of which were the "Pearl-white Emperors" - a series of nine eunuchs whose combined rule lasted 130 years, and whose dynasty is considered to have been a golden age of peace and prosperity. Before they ascended to rule they lived as normal men, taking wives and siring heirs, but upon becoming emperor each was then voluntarily emasculated (removing not only the testicles but the penis shaft too), so that they would not be distracted from matters of state. The Nine Eunuchs only reigned many centuries ago, however, and later dynasties stopped doing this. Little is known about religious beliefs in Yi Ti or their organizational structure. Generally it is known that the religion of Yi Ti, somewhat like the real-life concept of Yin and Yang, believes in two major deities: the Maiden-Made-of-Light who preserves the good, and the Lion of Night (depicted as a man with a lion's head) who punishes the wicked. They also venerate their "god-emperors" as minor deities. It is unknown if any women have ever come to rule in Yi Ti, either on the imperial throne or among the local nobility. Otherwise nothing else is known about their religious or cultural values that give any more insight into their views on sexuality.

South of Yi Ti in the Jade Sea is the large island Leng, which was conquered by settlers from Yi Ti but rebelled against the mainland about four centuries ago. The Yi Tish settlers made common cause with the remaining indigenous Lengii people (who still lived in the southern third of the island). Unlike the dynasties of god-emperors in Yi Ti, however, Leng subsequently came to be ruled by a matrilineal line of god-empresses. It is also tradition that each empress of Leng take two men as consorts (one Yi Tish, one Lengii).

The city-states located high in the Bone Mountains have quite unique practices regarding gender and sexuality. There are are only three major passes through the Bone Mountains, each of them guarded by a city-state: Kayakayanaya, Shamyriana, and Bayasabhad. They were founded as garrisons to guard the passes by the now-fallen empire known as the Patrimony of Hyrkoon. These mountain kingdoms are each ruled by a small caste of "Great Fathers", but are dominated by fierce women warriors, infamous for fighting bare breasted, and wearing iron rings pierced through their nipples and rubies in their cheeks. Moreover, it is the custom of the Hyrkoonians to castrate nearly all of their males when they reach the age of adulthood. Only their women become warriors, and make up their entire military. The eunuch males serve as worker-drones, filling all other social roles from scholars and priests to craftsmen and farmers. Only the males they deem the largest, strongest, and most attractive are not castrated, and allowed to mature and become Great Fathers - literally named so, because only they breed with the women of their cities to produce the next generation. The women-warriors of these city-states are among the fiercest fighters in the world, capable of shutting down access to the mountain passes too all outsiders, either the Dothraki from the west or Yi Ti and the Jogos Nhai to the east.

Between Yi Ti to the south, the Shivering Sea to the north, and bordered by the Bone Mountains to the west, are the wind-swept plains of the Jogos Nhai. They are a nomadic people who perpetually raid the lands of Yi Ti to the south and war against the Hyrkoonian city-stats to the west. Unlike the Dothraki, whose khalasars can contain thousands of riders, the Jogos Nhai are divided into smaller close-knit bands of kin groups - though conversely, while the Dothraki khalasars frequently war against each other, as a rule the Jogos Nhai never fight each other. Also while the Dothraki are conquerors the Jogos Nhai focus more on raiding: when their enemies' armies counter-attack they flee back into the plains instead of facing them head-on like the Dothraki would. The result is that they seldom raid neighboring lands in vast conquests but chip away at them through many small but devastating raids which are difficult to counter. It is a cultural rite of passage that young men steal livestock from neighboring clans, while young women customarily "kidnap" husbands from them. Skull-binding is practiced on infants of both genders to elongate their skulls: men shave all of their hair except for a short mohawk, while women shave their heads completely bald. Each band of Jogos Nhai is co-ruled by a jhat (war chief) who is always a man and a Moonsinger who is always a woman: the jhat rules over all things military (i.e. external politics) while the moonsinger is a combination priestess, healer, and judge, who rules over all internal affairs. This division of labor is very strict - though the Jogos Nhai have some quite unique views on gender (see the "Transgender" section below).

If one follows the north coast of Essos past the Bone Mountains, one will eventually reach the Thousand Islands, a large archipelago of windswept rocky islands (of which there are actually no more than about three hundred isles). This is the furthest east that men from Westeros have ever explored, in one of the great voyages of Corlys Velaryon. The isles are not very hospitable and are inhabited by a strange and primitive race who are hostile to foreigners, though they fear the ocean. The islanders are said to be hairless and to file the teeth of their women to points. Most interesting in the description given about them in the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014) is mention that their males are circumcised. This raises another point: it does not appear that any major religion or cultural group in either Westeros or Essos practices circumcision. Judaism never existed in this fantasy world, so there was never an Abrahamic commandment for circumcision - in the modern era circumcision is therefore also near-universal among Muslims, and while dropped as a religious practice in Christianity, it became a common cultural practice in the United States in the nineteenth century due to medical arguments that it was hygenically beneficial. It is also a common practice in indigenous cultures in Africa, the Americas, and Australasia. In contrast, circumcision is apparently so rarely practiced in the world of Westeros and Essos that the Thousand Islands are the only culture ever mentioned as practicing it - and the in-universe maester who was describing them apparently didn't even have a word for it. Instead of just calling it "circumcision", he rather literally describes that they "slice the foreskins from the members of their males". This point about circumcision actually came up in the TV series in Season 5: during Cersei's walk of atonement a male extra flashes her. In the March 20, 2015 issue of Entertainment Weekly, reporters on set noted that a debate was occurring in the production team about whether they should keep the actor they had selected, because he was uncircumcised - at least some of the production team were aware that circumcision doesn't exist in the three major religions of Westeros, and apparently doesn't exist in the known regions of Essos either. Eventually, however, they decided that the shot was so brief that no one would readily notice so they kept the actor.

Very little is known about mysterious and ill-omened Asshai, on the far eastern side of the Jade Sea, feared as a city of sorcerers, warlocks, shadow-binders, and worse. Nothing grows in Asshai: the Ash River it sits next to is poisonous, and its fumes kill any animals or plants brought into the city. Even drinking water has to be imported into Asshai. The fumes from the Ash River also seem to render people sterile if they live there long enough. As a result the Asshai'i do not reproduce with each other, but purchase slave children from the international slave-trade, then raise them as the next generation of Asshai'i. Melisandre herself was born a slave but as a child was taken to be raised in the temple of the Lord of Light in Asshai. The attitudes of the Asshai'i towards gender and sexuality seem to be as enigmatic as virtually everything else about the city - though given that they physically can't procreate anymore, and given Melisandre's open attitudes about sexuality, it doesn't seem that they would have a need to shame non-procreative sex acts.

Far east of even Asshai at the edge of the known world is Carcosa, a strange city ruled by its yellow king - but the less said about that dark city the better.

Transgender people in the A Song of Ice and Fire mythos
No Transgender characters have been mentioned by name in the main A Song of Ice and Fire novels, that is, persons born as one gender but who live as another. Transsexuals apparently do not exist in the modern sense - that is, no culture seems to have the surgical means to carry out gender reassignment surgery, nor can this be done through magical means, etc.

There probably are transgendered people in Westeros, but like real-life Medieval Europe the culture of the Seven Kingdoms only recognizes a gender binary between male and female. There are records of transgendered people in Medieval Europe (that is, those who openly lived this way and did not hide their feelings) but they were found shunned on the fringes of society i.e. a few court records note prostitutes that were actually male-to-female transsexuals who were engaging in survival sex work. Something similar probably happens in Westeros, i.e. Littlefinger says that his brothels cater to any taste, but mainstream society across Westeros really doesn't recognize transsexuals as a legitimate lifestyle.

A better question would be if there are other cultures in the broader A Song of Ice and Fire mythos in which what a modern audience might call transsexuality is openly accepted - and in fact there is one major example. The Jogos Nhai in the Further East have very interesting attitudes towards gender: each nomadic band's jhat (war chief) is a man, while their moonsinger (a combination priestess/healer/judge) is always a woman. However, a physically born male can become a moonsinger - but to do so he must dress and live as a woman, to the point that the moonsinger's biological sex is not immediately obvious to outsiders. Similarly, a biological female can become a jhat, but she must live as a man. The Jogos Nhai do not have a social system that recognizes four genders, however, and they actually have a strict gender binary when it comes to social roles: they simply don't see biological sex to be inherently linked with gender, which is something someone can choose. Among the Jogos Nhai, the jhat rules over all external affairs of war and raid (external politics) and leads the war band in battle, while the moonsinger rules over all internal affairs, being a combination priestess, healer, and judge (presumably this means that any Jogos Nhai merchants have to either be women or transexual men living as women). While the Jogos Nhai have been mentioned in passing in the main A Song of Ice and Fire novels, these more extensive details about their culture were not revealed until the World of Ice and Fire sourcebook (2014).

What is interesting is that while the Jogos Nhai live so far east of even the Dothraki Sea that they are barely mentioned in the novels, this does not mean that they would never be encountered in the lands to the west. Specifically, the Free City of Braavos was founded by former slaves from Valyria who overpowered their guards and fled on the ships transporting them. As a result the founders of Braavos had a very diverse ethnic and religious makeup: Rhoynar, Ghiscari, Summer Islanders, Andals, Valyrian criminals, and even Yi Tish and Jogos Nhai who had been sold into slavery. The moonsingers among the Jogos Nhai fraction of these escaping slaves rose to prominence, and following visions they had guided the fleet north until they found the perfectly sheltered and hidden harbor where they built Braavos. The new city they created honored all faiths, and there is no one religion with a majority or even a plurality - religions from the far corners of the world are followed in Braavos, from the Faith of the Seven to the Lord of Light, to the Many-Faced God of Death is worshiped in Braavos. However, they always gave special veneration to the moonsingers for their role in founding the city, and it appears to be one of the more popular religions in Braavos, with a large temple. Logically, while this has never been outright stated, it is possible that followers of the moonsinger religion in Braavos continue to follow the religion's beliefs about gender roles, i.e. there might be Braavosi sellswords who, following the moonsinger religion of their ancestors, are women who live as men - and conversely, there might be moonsinger men who live as women and work as merchants or even bankers in Braavos. Little of this has been touched upon in the narrative - but unlike the distant plains of the Jogos Nhai north of Yi Ti, Braavos is a quite frequently visited location in the story.

One named Intersex character does appear in the main novels, in Tyrion Lannister's storyline when he reaches Slaver's Bay. After Tyrion is captured by slavers he is sold to the master Yezzan zo Qaggaz, in part because he is a dwarf and Yezzan enjoys collecting slaves with some deformity or another to add to his private grotesquerie - sort of like a private "freak show", though he treats these slaves reasonably well. One of Yezzan's favorites is an intersex slave named Sweets (called a "hermaphrodite" in their context), who has apparently been trained to be a bit of a courtier, speaking four languages including High Valyrian. Sweets uses female pronouns: she is willowy with violet eyes, long purple hair (apparently dyed), and is well dressed in fine Myrish lace and jewels. When asked if she is a man or a woman she says "I'm both". The morbidly obese Yezzan often has Sweets serve as his bedmate. In return Sweets is grateful for how comparatively well Yezzan treats her and his other slaves (i.e. dwarfs and other deformed slaves probably wouldn't last very long in the normal slave markets if Yezzan hadn't collected them for his menagerie). Sweets is presented as a positive character who is friendly and candid with Tyrion and warns him to steer clear of Yezzan's cruel slave overseer, Nurse. She is also witty and astute, having no illusions about what will happen to all of Yezzan's slaves if he dies and the other more cruel masters take them. After Tyrion flees her fate is left unknown. Tyrion's storyline in Slaver's Bay was drastically condensed in the novels, so that well over a dozen characters were cut for time and Yezzan himself only has a brief appearance, so as a result Sweets doesn't appear in the TV series.

=Gender and Sexuality as adapted and depicted in 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.

Depictions of homosexuality in the TV series
The TV series actually shows homosexual relationships a bit more prominently than in the novels. Renly and Loras's relationship was implied in the novels but neither of them are Point of View characters so all of this happened "off screen" in the books. In contrast, the TV series invented scenes in private between Renly and Loras clearly indicating that they were in a long term romantic and sexual relationship. Similarly, it is only mentioned in the novels that Oberyn Martell has sex with men as well as women: the TV series invented scenes showing him at brothels actually picking out both men and women to have sex with, and clearly explaining that he doesn't really draw a distinction in his attractions (i.e. that he is bisexual, as is Ellaria, though "bisexual" isn't a word in their culture).

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 explained to Joffrey that Renly was a homosexual by using the more convoluted description 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 (and only in British slang, it is not a common term in American slang).  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 psychopathically 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").

Portrayal of the status of women in the TV series
Many secondary characters from vassal Houses below the main Great Houses were removed for time, so for the most part female leaders of Houses were cut for time. Several Houses just happen to be headed by women, either because they inherited it due to having no surviving brothers, or as widows who serve as regents for their children. Lady Hornwood was a major Northern vassal (who gets killed by Ramsay Bolton), and Lady Tanda Stokeworth is the head of House Stokeworth. The TV series mentions Lady Whent in a blink-or-you'll miss stray line of dialogue in Season 1 - though she dies off-screen soon afterwards (in both the novels and TV series) and is not mentioned again. Barbrey Dustin (nee Ryswell) is the current head of House Dustin and has a fairly large role in the fifth novel. Another point is that so many Northern men died at the Red Wedding that several of the major Northern Houses are now ruled by widows.

House Mormont's other members are an important and unique case: due to being located on the west coast of the North, the Mormonts' domain on Bear Island is vulnerable to attack from both the Iron Islands to the south and wildlings on rowboats from beyond the Wall. Because the men are away at sea fishing for hours or days at a time, the women of Bear Island have had to develop a strong tradition of having female warriors. The current head of House Mormont is in fact Jeor's sister Maege Mormont - who made a non-speaking cameo in Season 1 but hasn't been mentioned since. Her daughters are important characters in the novels, the eldest of them all warriors. Her ten year old daughter Lyanna Mormont was mentioned in Season 5 when she sent a letter to Stannis, much as she did in the novels. Maege's eldest daughter Dacey Mormont was a member of Robb's personal bodyguard in the novels, and was the only one of his bannermen who managed to fight her way to the doors of the banquet hall during the Red Wedding (only to run right into enemy reinforcements, upon which she is killed when Ryman Frey drives a longaxe into her belly).

Apart from the general absence of many secondary characters due to time constraints, the women from the Great Houses that actually appear in the TV series have been presented with variable status compared to the novels.

Catelyn Stark's role as a political leader of the Stark faction was drastically reduced in the TV series, with many of her actions given to her son Robb instead. In the novels, Catelyn and Robb essentially run the Stark faction as a team: he is an expert military leader, but his mother is his primary advisor on political matters - she grew up in southern Westeros and is more familiar with its complex court politics. Most of this was removed from the TV series: it is Catelyn and not Eddard that wants him to go to King's Landing to find out who killed Jon Arryn - the TV series changed this so that she weeps as he chooses to leave. In the second novel Catelyn's POV narration says that she wishes she could be back at Winterfell with her younger children, but she knows there's a war going on and she is needed at Riverrun managing their faction's political affairs. The TV series changed this to have Catelyn actively planning to return to Winterfell and talking about how much she misses her children, instead of discussing political strategies. The TV series also invented a monologue in which she blames herself for wishing that Jon Snow would have died when he had a bad fever as a child - and that all of their family's bad fortunes are somehow the gods punishing her for this (though something like this could have happened in the novels, and Catelyn does have a habit of of blaming herself for things that can't really be her fault). It is possible that all of these changes were made in an attempt to make Catelyn more sympathetic to the audience despite the fact that she hates Jon Snow, i.e. not showing her as a stern and firm political leader and emphasizing her "maternal" aspects. The novels, however, make it a point that it is entirely normal and expected for Catelyn to dislike Jon Snow, and even Jon knows this. He is a bastard child that her husband made the shocking move of taking to his home castle to raise alongside her own children. In their society, Ned's choice to do this deeply shamed his lawful wife - specifically, Catelyn, Ned, and Jon all know that this is something shameful that Ned did to Catelyn. Nor does Catelyn mistreat Jon - she is simply cold to him and tries to ignore him, and Jon himself doesn't think this is unusual or expect Catelyn to behave otherwise. She is not his stepmother. Another possibility is that the TV series wanted to increase Robb Stark's role and felt that having his own mother be his main political advisor would diminish his importance.

Aside from the Starks, the status of women in several other Great Houses is generally similar to what it was in the novels. Lysa Arryn rules over the Vale as Jon Arryn's widow, even though she has become mentally unhinged. Season 4 even included Lady Anya Waynwood in one episode (as one of only three major vassal Houses of the Arryns that appear in the TV series, the others being the Royces and Corbrays). For House Tully, there are currently no major female leaders, simply because Catelyn's mother died years ago, and her brother is unmarried. Catelyn is a major figure in the combined Stark-Tully alliance, while Lysa is now ruling over House Arryn.

Among the Lannisters, Tywin's wife Joanna is actually said to have almost co-ruled with him but she has been dead for decades by the time the narrative takes place. Among either the Lannisters or Baratheons, the only particularly active female leader is Queen Cersei herself.

Cersei is a major character in the TV adaptation, and is presented as a major figure in the Lannister faction as she was in the novels, though several features were moved around or omitted for time. In the novels it is Cersei, not Joffrey, who explicitly orders the death of her husband Robert's bastard Barra (and it is mentioned she has had others killed). This was in part her revenge on Robert shaming her in this way but also a very practical concern that some would consider the bastards (i.e. Gendry) to have a better claim to the throne. After Tywin returns to King's Landing Cersei is politically sidelined for the most part, and after Tywin dies she turns out to be very inept at rule - but this is essentially what happened in the novels. On a societal level, Cersei as a woman has the right to rule through her underage son as Queen Regent - it's just that Cersei personally isn't a very good ruler, even compared to other women in the narrative.

One major Lannister woman who was cut from the TV series was Tywin's younger sister Genna Lannister, who married a younger Frey son. As a result she doesn't have any formal rights to rule given that her meek husband is still alive, though she is still both strong-willed and respected. Jaime meets with her when he goes to check in on the Freys besieging Riverrun after the Red Wedding.

Otherwise, neither the Boltons nor Freys had any women holding political power in the novels. Walder Frey treats each new wife like breeding stock and no Frey women hold positions of power, while Roose Bolton's first two wives died some years ago. Roose married Fat Walda Frey to cement their alliance after the Red Wedding - which occurs in the TV series as well. Walda had a few more lines in the novels; she is presented as actually fairly intelligent, but otherwise in both versions she doesn't wield any political power.

The House Greyjoy storylines have been drastically cut in the TV series, to the point that they barely appeared after Season 2 ended other than brief cameos, and didn't appear in Season 5 at all. In the novels women actually rarely if ever come to political influence in ironborn society, even compared to the mainland. Balon Greyjoy's wife Alannys is still alive but she went half-mad with grief after losing all of her sons at the end of the Greyjoy rebellion (with Theon taken away), and returned to her home castle at Harlaw to live in her dotage. Yara Greyjoy (named Asha Greyjoy in the novels), however, is quite an exceptional ironborn woman, a warrior in her own right who has risen to captain her own ship and command soldiers in battle. Generally her portrayal in Season 2 was similar to the novels, in that she is a warrior and that Balon trusts her with leading his main attack against the North (at Deepwood Motte). Asha Greyjoy is even a POV narrator in the novels, and after Theon is presumed dead she is vying with her uncles to be named her father's heir and rule as Queen of the Iron Islands some day. While all of the Greyjoy subplot was cut from the TV series after Season 2, the result of this removed one of the few women in the novels who is a military and political leader (even Brienne of Tarth is unusual for being a woman with military skill, but she isn't a commander or political figure).

Meanwhile, House Tyrell has women in very prominent albeit informal and unofficial political roles. Olenna Tyrell is in many ways the real leader of the Tyrell faction, closely associated with her granddaughter Margaery Tyrell. If anything, because the Tyrells were not POV characters in the novels, the TV series has actually presented them more prominently than in the novels. The novels don't have any scenes of Olenna and Margaery in private discussing their political strategies (scenes that pass the Bechdel Test), but the TV series took time invent these scenes (something similar probably happened in the novels, but "off screen").

Dorne...Arianne Martell....what?

=References=