Compare that, then, to last night’s opening scene on True Blood: a completely gratuitous dream encounter between Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) and Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård):

Despite indulging in typical Thrones-ian inequality on the cover of Entertainment Weekly earlier this month, True Blood has always been a vanguard for equal-opportunity voyeurism. This is, perhaps, due in some part to the fact that the show has always been somewhat geared towards gay men. The vampire civil-rights struggle (“coming out of the coffin”) mirrored that of the L.G.B.T. community and series creator Alan Ball has been accused by many of having a “gay agenda.” In fact, the gay-friendly content of the show even reportedly caused one actor to quit rather than participate in a gay plot line this year.

Whether it’s a gay agenda or just pure pay cable titillation, True Blood has never pulled punches when asking its male performers to strip down—in addition to Skarsgård and Kwanten, male leads Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) and Alcide Herveaux (Joe Manganiello) have frequently been caught in the (very) buff. It’s the same kind of titillation seen on Game of Thrones that comes with the territory of both the fantasy genre and HBO’s adult-content free-for-all. True Blood has always leaned more heavily on sex and Game of Thrones has tended more toward violence, but this is one place where Westeros could learn a thing or two from Bon Temps. It’s silly, especially in the wake of the popularity of a film like Magic Mike or the Internet reaction to a scene like this one, to think that a little more male Westerosi flesh (a la this season’s brief Daario Naharis concession) would be at all unwelcome by men or women. All men must die, all men must serve, and, if things are truly equal, all men must strip.