Of course. Video games and film are art, and as art they ought to be critiqued for how they portray a variety of concepts, including race and gender, and by extension racial and gender diversity. If a person wants to write about how Princess Peach represents an outdated portrayal of women as damsels in distress and items that need to be won, than that's there right. It's a valid artistic critique. No one else beyond the critic really has to agree with it,and the creator of the art is free to ignore it. It may be poorly supported by evidence in the creation, and may extrapolate way too much out of little bits and pieces of the protect. But so long as the critic doesn't outright things up that aren't in the product to begin with, then the criticism is still valid.
I think the main problem with all this is that people tend to confuse "critique" with "censorship," with the belief that these criticisms are somehow aimed at "censoring" developers and forcing them to alter their "true vision" to please critics. And while this is certainly a thing that happens, this is also something you can expect from art. It's fairly common for creators to change their visions in response to criticism. In fact, outside criticism is typically quite important to the creative process, since people from the outside can often spot problems that the creator can't. Sometimes a creator won't even want to, but their bosses, whether due to their own personal criticisms, focus groups, or whatever, will force the change. But this sort of thing isn't exclusive to gender/racial criticism, and has existed for decades.
