To be fair, any sane individual detests Goodkind.



My parenthetical comment about all three being used at once was the most important part. That said, your personal tolerance for such subjects is different from mine or any one else's. Also, profanity is the weakest condition for me and goes beyond mere words to actions typically coupled with violence.

One example is Robb Stark and the Red Wedding: was it really necessary to have Robb's head cut off and his direwolf's head sewn in its place? And that's one of the more "tame" parts of the SoIaF!



You are definitely giving people too much the benefit, given the content of a fair amount of contemporary popular culture these days.



I hadn't considered Lynch as being "gritty", since the violent scenes, while described in detail, are actually pretty infrequent in my recollection of the story and the profanity never goes beyond dropping f-bombs all over the place (which does get tiresome, after a while).




I draw the line at where very detailed descriptions are necessary to the story being driven forward, and where they can be dispensed with entirely or mentioned only in brief on a "told-not-shown" basis. I know that's vague, but by its very nature the topic is entirely subjective.

Perhaps a counter example also involving Martin of what I do find acceptible is Tyrion's father's treatment of the girl Tyrion wanted to marry and having the barracks gangrape her. This works for me because we see how much of a bastard his father is, and how much it eats at Tyrion's soul years later: it was necessary to the story.

In general, though, the level of misogyny in Martin, (particularly) Bakker, etc is plain ridiculous. To claim that's a legitimate reflection of the real world is absurd. Yes, there is prostitution, rape, gender/sex discrimination, etc to be encountered in everyday life even in the most wealthy of communities - but even the worst specific examples to be found in history don't come close the everday life portrayals those authors describe in their stories.