Female protagonist? What do you think?

[Khuutra]

I_hate_Itagaki said:

Khuutra said:

Looks like I'm bad at staying away.

Differences and discrimination are not the same thing. Fire Emblem is chalk full of perfectly strong, fully realized, sexually confident men and women and has some of the most even-handed representations of all genders. Your original point was that women were weaker, which is to say they were worse in a fight and have less utility. That's verifiably false. You've tried to claim that women in Fire Emblem are all stereotyped in the Japanese way (which is to say weak and dependent) and that's both wrong and mildly racist.

Demanding perfect gender equality is not how you fight sexism. Trying to deny certain inherent differences between the sexes is its own special kind of sexism because it implies that there is a certain default mindset that should be portrayed for everyone - and it's predominantly male.

And for the record, yes, there is at least one case off the top of my head where a woman protects a man in Fire Emblem: Louise is the one who guards her husband Pent, in spite of him being an extremely powerful mage.

@Mr Khan:

I agree with point 3 in principle, but there are (very large) schools of critical analysis that reject authorial intent altogether and look at a work in a vacuum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDlcyio0QC4&feature=related

Have we gotten to the point where you're not willing to mount an argument anymore? Why not? I want to get to the root of why you think gender representation has to be not equal but identical in order to avoid sexism. As someone who takes gender relations and depictions in media fairly serious, the idea seems counterproductive, especially since identical representation results in everyone being either men or men who have boobs.