There are arguments made up down and sideways about why it's "acceptable" or why it's not, etc. Does the blatant misogyny bother me? Of course it does. Was it rampant back in the Medieval era? There's no one alive who can say with certainty.
What we can say, and by we I mean myself and hundreds of feminist bloggers, is that we live in, currently, now, a "
rape culture."
It's unfortunate for reasons beyond enumerating, (and believe me, all of those reasons are more than numerated on blogs, just google it) but it's a sad fact of life.
Because we live in a rape culture, it desensitizes a large majority of the populace to the wrongs and evils of misogyny and rape. It is rape culture that makes HBO's super rapey and exploitative misogynistic presentation of GoT "okay" to a lot of folks.
It's those of us who don't adhere to rape culture, who actively stand against it in whatever meaningful way we can, that make up the very vocal (but sadly) minority of people that say misogyny
is wrong, rape
is abhorrent and we
should be morally outraged and horrified about it, regardless of era/fictional setting/reality/etc.
The thing is, rape culture also exists in the fantasy setting of GoT. Westeros and reality are actually somewhat similar when comparing them side by side.
There are men in both GoT and reality that value women as equals, even if those "equals" being measured aren't blanketed across the gender. In GoT, Ned treats Catelyn as his equal. From everything we've gathered of Ned (primarily in the books), he treated his sister as an equal. More importantly, he treats Cersei as an equal. (He was morally outraged when Robert backhanded Cersei, and upon next seeing Cersei, asked her if she was alright, whether Robert had hit her before, and flat out stated that Robert should never have done it.) As far as he was concerned, Cersei was kind of the devil, but that was based solely on her own actions
as a person, and despite his personal feelings toward her
as a person, he never demeaned her or thought less of her because she was a woman.
There are men in both GoT and reality that treat women as though they exist solely for the pleasure of men, that they are entitled to the "hot chick they want to bang." This is evidenced in GoT with Theon Greyjoy, especially in the HBO series. He frequents whores and treats them as whores. He shows little regard to the captain's daughter's honor/virtue while banging her up, down and sideways, even when the girl begs him to take her as a 'salt wife' because her father will beat her up, down and sideways because she gave her virtue to Theon, who has no value of women. Most importantly, treats Asha/Yara (his sister, posing as a fisherman's wife) as a common whore that can be bought with the "chance to tell her grandchildren about her wild night with the Lord of Pyke." This is also evidenced in reality by men like Elliot Rodgers, who frequented forums lamenting about being "involuntarily celibate (incel)" because despite his wealth, he couldn't "get chicks."
There is also the interesting paradox of chivalry and chauvinism. Chauvinism is the concept that women are inferior to men and thus aren't capable of doing things for themselves. It is not a
hatred of women the way misogyny is, but it is looking down on women as being inferior to men. Chivalry ties into chauvinism because men desire to "protect" women, which, despite intention, implies that said women are incapable of protecting themselves.
Why do men carry their brides over the thresholds of the door to their home? Because superstition said that you could only enter the home with the right foot crossing the threshold first, and women just couldn't be tasked with such an enormous responsibility as remembering which foot to enter the house first on. You know, because Right or Left is such a hard thing to remember, let alone the fact that we're talking about superstition here.
In GoT, let's look at Jorah. You could make the argument that he is protecting his queen, and sure, he is, BUT... Jorah has this really bad habit of talking down to Dany. It goes from initially coaching her (as Khaleesi) to adapt in the Dothraki, a dynamic in which he is a mentor to a student (and which she treats as such), but as things progress, he becomes less formal with her (and don't quote his "but he's falling in love with her" to me) and starts outright talking down to her. "You don't understand this, and you don't understand that, and etc. etc. etc." Dany might
say "I'm only a young girl and know little of the ways of war," but that's an act. She knows, and more importantly understands, exactly what's going on, it's just that playing dumb, she's able to disarm enemies. In many ways, this makes her far superior to the guy that keeps mansplaining to her how she doesn't get it. And any real, modern day woman can tell you she's been mansplained to before.
Am I excusing HBO for it's blatant and violent misogyny and chauvinism? Absolutely not. I'm simply saying that it's all a part of the larger issue.
/Rant
(mostly 
