If there’s one thing I thought I could count on in this life it was the feeling of sheer and utter horror that swept over me every time I watched Game of Thrones with my parents. Horror not necessarily because the show is full of monsters on horseback and characters disemboweling each other left, right, and centre, but because everyone and their loyal servant was getting naked and getting it on. And I mean everyone: Queens and concubines, pirates and priestesses, brothers and sisters — even Hodor, the dependable oaf famous for shouting his own name ad nauseam like a human Pokemon, made a surprise appearance in the buff. In other words, like most HBO fare, GOT was not a show you wanted to watch with mom and dad.

Until today, that is. It appears as though things have changed on Game of Thrones. Now in its seventh season, I find myself watching the show every Sunday night, sitting next to my family, utterly horror-free. Horror-free, and kind of disappointed.

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This is because the gratuitous nudity and sex I thought I could count on has all but disappeared from the fantasy world of Westeros. Everyone is wearing so much clothing on GOT these days I sometimes doze off and come to wondering if I am watching Downton Abbey (Daenerys Targaryen, a.k.a. Khaleesi, once the most consistently naked woman in all the Seven Kingdoms is now consistently bundled up, not unlike the Dowager Countess, a.k.a. Maggie Smith, on Downton). What the hell happened?

Either a), someone turned up the AC on the set. Or b), (more likely), critics of the show’s bacchanalian bent finally got their way.

In a recent piece in the Guardian called “Game of Thrones has finally, thankfully ditched the sex for good” journalist Graeme Virtue (his actual name, no kidding) writes, “Sexposition was the stick used to beat Game of Thrones in the show’s early running, and it always felt like some HBO executive hedging their bets: if we’re going to let these fantasy characters discuss the detailed history, weirdly messed up seasons and absurdly tangled royal lineage of some made-up quasi-medieval continent, best throw in some titillation to stop bored viewers tuning out.”

Mr. Virtue isn’t alone in damning the titillation tactic. For some time, culture writers have been decrying gratuitous nudity on GOT, many of them in the name of feminism. Here’s writer Rebecca Bohanan bemoaning Khaleesi’s birthday suit in the women's magazine, xoJane, last year: “I hated the way the first season ended with a long, lingering shot of the “powerful” dragon queen’s boobs.” (And here, I thought it didn't linger quite long enough.)

Feminist writers have taken issue not only with the show’s previous habit of portraying women naked for the simple sake of portraying naked women; they dislike its tendency to portray women raped in graphic detail. I understand the latter criticism, but I have a lot of trouble with the former.

Yes, there are historically more naked breasts than penises and male torsos on GOT and yes this is a double standard, but why must the popular response to this one-sidedness be a complaint about sex and nudity in general? Why not advocate for more equal-rights exploitation instead? In other words, why not advocate for men and women (and giants and white walkers) in the buff! I am a big-tent feminist, or you could say, a big naked-tent feminist. My feminism includes not less gratuitous nudity, but more, as long as it’s egalitarian gratuitous nudity — which in a way makes it less gratuitous. Maybe this is because I’m gay, and my idea of what’s sexy does not involve Ryan Gosling reciting poetry and baking cookies in his underwear. Nor does it involve a scene in which a beautiful straight woman beds a gentle eunuch with rock hard abs. This latter happens to be the only GOT sex scene heterosexual feminists appear to be celebrating online. Meanwhile, had this female character gone to bed with Khaleesi, say, instead of the gentle eunuch, I’d bet a large lode of dragon-glass that the scene would have been denounced in multiple feminist think pieces as sexist BS and food for the “male gaze.”

Well, I believe in food for everybody’s gaze.

And I believe that in times of political unrest and uncertainty such as these, we can all benefit from a little gratuitous nudity on television — be it a “lingering shot of a powerful dragon queen’s boobs” or the naked backside of a gentle eunuch. Bring it on, GOT. The people are counting on you.