Wow, that was astonishingly terrible.
My senior year political science teacher got the class to levels of pandemonium one day when he mentioned that the best male athletes are always stronger, faster, and more impressive than the best female athletes. On a purely scientific level, yeah, you can't disprove that (world records for universal "best" are currently all held by men). But the problem comes from us defining women's abilities based on the standard we've supposedly agreed upon, which is currently "man."
Are you fucking kidding me? The standard isn't "man", it's "human". Or in the case of the sports being referred to, it's actually usually universal. Concepts like "time", "distance" and "mass" aren't some sexist ploy by the evil patriarchy to keep women down. If one person runs a certain distance in 9.58 seconds, and another runs it in 10.49, then the first is objectively better (if the goal is to run as fast as possible).
But I digress. What I want to get at is that anti-sexism arguments are often extremely sexist. This article is a prime example. Take for instance Chris' third category of women in entertainment: "men". Defined as "it's a woman, but it might as well have been a man". Yeah, that just means that's she's human and that the type of her genitals didn't matter terribly to the task at hand. That is pretty much the least sexist you can get. To suggest that you may as well make a character male if s/he doesn't have any distinctly feminine qualities encourages the use of the stereotypes we so dread and reinforces the idea that men are the default and they should be used unless there is a very good reason not to.
I think Dan starts out well. The idea of describing what would make a good female character is a good one that is often sorely missing. Many people are saying that women in fiction shouldn't show female stereotypes, but they should also not just be "men" in the way Dan describes. I would love to see these people describe such a character, because I very much doubt that can be done.
It goes downhill from there. Taking a male character and saying "that is what would make a strong female character" seems kind of ironic, but I don't mind so much. It falls deeply into the "interchangeable gender" pool that Dan seems to despise though. But after that, Chris goes on to talk about how "Protecting your young and drawing power from that is a unique skill that women bring to the table" and that (apparently in contrast to women) men want to impress their fathers. Aren't those the exact kind of stereotypes we are trying to get away from because they are overly broad generalizations (and extremely often false)? Caring for your kids isn't a uniquely female thing. And caring about what your parents think isn't uniquely male. It would be far more accurate to say that
people in general tend to care deeply for their kids and (the judgment of their) parents. Why make it into a gender thing?
