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  ====Sex and violence====
  Despite its otherwise enthusiastic reception by critics, some have criticized the show for the amount of female nudity, violence, and sexual violence it depicts, and for the manner in which it depicts these themes. ''The Atlantic'' called the series' "tendency to ramp up the sex, violence, and—especially—sexual violence" of the source material "the defining weakness" of the adaptation. George R. R. Martin responded that he feels obliged to be truthful about history and human nature, and that rape and sexual violence are common in war; and that omitting them from the narrative would have rung false and undermined one of his novels' themes, its historical realism. HBO said that they "fully support the vision and artistry of Dan and David's exceptional work and we feel this work speaks for itself."
  The amount of sex and nudity in the series, especially in scenes that are incidental to the plot, was the focus of much of the criticism aimed at the series in its first and second seasons. Stephen Dillane, who portrays Stannis Baratheon, likened the series' frequent explicit scenes to "German porn from the 1970s". Charlie Jane Anders wrote in io9 that while the first season was replete with light-hearted "sexposition", the second season appeared to focus on distasteful, exploitative, and dehumanizing sex with little informational content.
  According to ''The Washington Post''s Anna Holmes, the nude scenes appeared to be aimed mainly at titillating heterosexual men, right down to the Brazilian waxes sported by the women in the series' faux-medieval setting, which made these scenes alienating to other viewers. ''The Huffington Post''s Maureen Ryan likewise noted that ''Game of Thrones'' mostly presented women naked, rather than men, and that the excess of "random boobage" undercut any aspirations the series might have to address the oppression of women in a feudal society. ''Saturday Night Live'' parodied this aspect of the adaptation in a sketch that portrayed the series as retaining a 13-year-old boy as a consultant whose main concern was showing as many breasts as possible.
  In the third season, which saw Theon Greyjoy lengthily tortured and eventually emasculated, the series was also criticized for its use of torture. ''New York'' magazine called the scene "torture porn." Madeleine Davies of ''Jezebel'' agreed, saying, "it's not uncommon that ''Game of Thrones'' gets accused of being torture porn—senseless, objectifying violence combined with senseless, objectifying sexual imagery." According to Davies, although the series' violence tended to serve a narrative purpose, Theon's torture in "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" was excessive.
  A scene in the fourth season's episode "Breaker of Chains", in which Jaime Lannister rapes his sister and lover Cersei, triggered a broad public discussion about the series' depiction of sexual violence against women. According to Dave Itzkoff of ''The New York Times'', the scene caused outrage, in part because of comments by director Alex Graves that the scene became "consensual by the end". Itzkoff also wrote that critics fear that "rape has become so pervasive in the drama that it is almost background noise: a routine and unshocking occurrence". Sonia Saraiya of ''The A.V. Club'' wrote that the series' choice to portray this sexual act, and a similar one between Daenerys Targaryen and Khal Drogo in the first season—both described as consensual in the source novels—as a rape appeared to be an act of "exploitation for shock value".
  In the fifth season's episode "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken", Sansa Stark is raped by Ramsay Bolton. Most reviewers, including those from ''Vanity Fair'', ''Salon'', ''The Atlantic'', and ''The Daily Beast'', found the scene gratuitous and artistically unnecessary. For example, Joanna Robinson, writing for ''Vanity Fair'', said that the scene "undercuts all the agency that's been growing in Sansa since the end of last season." In contrast, Sara Stewart of the ''New York Post'' wondered why viewers were not similarly upset about the many background and minor characters who'd undergone similar or worse treatment. In response to the scene, pop culture website ''The Mary Sue'' announced that it would cease coverage of the series because of the repeated use of rape as a plot device, and US Senator Claire McCaskill said that she would no longer watch it.
  As the sixth and seventh seasons saw Daenerys, Sansa, and Cersei assume ruling positions, Alyssa Rosenberg of ''The Washington Post'' noted that the series could be seen as a "long-arc revenge fantasy about what happens when women who have been brutalized and raped gain power"—namely, that their past leaves them too broken to do anything but commit brutal acts in their own turn, and that their personal liberation does not effect the social change needed to protect others from suffering. ''Time'' reported before the seventh season that "Even if Benioff and Weiss don't always admit it, the show has changed. Scenes in which exposition is delivered in one brothel or another, for example, have been pared back".