I thought this issue, which is breaking off of an earlier discussion on Westeros, might lead to some interesting discussions here, so I'm copy/pasting what I wrote there for the split post. There are several links embedded in that post, so the link to the original thread is below for those who want to read the Requires Hate posts that are part of this discussion.

Last night in another thread, there emerged a discussion about the issue of lesbian rape and the lack of female agency in works such as Joe Abercrombie's The Last Argument of Kings. Shortly, posts from that thread will be ported over here, but I think it might behoove us to not just focus on that particular novel, but also consider the issue of violence and the often-associated lack of agency, particularly with females and homosexual characters, that often occur in the so-called "gritty" fantasies.

Since some in the discussion last night were reacting strongly to the comments made over at the Requires Hate blog, it bears keeping in mind that the quickest way to lose any sort of ground in a debate is to attack the person rather than counterpoint his or her arguments.

With this in mind, what I found interesting about the Requires Hate comments is the underlying belief that beneath the violent, profanity-laced narratives lurks a rather conservative, misogynistic mindset where the rapes and degradations of groups traditionally removed from power (women, homosexuals of all genders) are portrayed in an almost lurid fashion in several of these novels because it is assumed that because repression occurred in various human societies over different periods of time. This leaves aside, according to the argument presented in several other comments over there, that portraying only the worst elements unadulterated by the complexities of human interactions in which there was no steady, heavy oppression inevitably distorts the very real issues of agency/hegemony to the point where it is easy to assume that there was no agency of actions among these groups. The violence that is a hallmark of such stories (the battles, the rapes, the tortures, the intimidations, etc.) to some, like that reviewer quoted, represents not human nature but the distortion of it in service of downplaying the roles that the often-disenfranchised did play when direct access to power was denied.

Hopefully, pro and contra statements on the above paragraph will be the focus of this discussion and not the personal qualities of those forwarding or critiquing these arguments.