I honestly think the criticism of 'strong female characters' is often just misogynistic and bioessentialist.
Most of the time, I hear people define the 'strong female character' trope like this: "I like strong female characters, just not when they act exactly like men with the genders swapped." Now, I do understand that this can be a valid argument sometimes. If a character genuinely has no traits other than being aggressively masculine and rejecting all feminine traits, and the writer specifically wrote them that way because they don't think femininity can be strong, then yes that's a valid criticism. Specifically because of the intention behind the writing.
HOWEVER, a female character acting 'like a man' is not a valid criticism on its own, and reeks of bioessentialism. I cannot count the number of times I've seen people define the 'strong female character' trope as "men with tits" Like, imagine saying this about a real woman??? Yeah, that would be bad. You are insinuating that a woman cannot 'act like a man' whatever that means and still be a woman. That a woman with those traits must be poorly written because a woman would NEVER act that way.
When you ask these people to give an example of a strong female character they do like, it usually goes like this: "There's plenty of well written strong female characters I like, for example, X. X is strong and badass but also enjoys her domestic work." Oh, so you think a strong female character is only valid if she has enough stereotypically feminine traits to balance it out? This is what it often boils down to.
People think a female character must reach a minimum threshold of femininity in order to classify as a good and realistic representation of a woman. If the character is perceived as only having masculine traits, then she is labelled a badly written character. They believe this likely because they think there is an inherently feminine nature in women, and if that is not represented in some way, then that character is not accurate to what a woman is. I don't think I have to explain why that's problematic.
BY WOMEN, btw. So many women will say that a female character is poorly written because they can't relate to them being masculine, and they don't think the character resonates with their 'womanhood'. Well guess what, NOT EVERY WOMAN HAS THE SAME EXPERIENCE OF WOMANHOOD. YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIND EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER RELATABLE.
Anyway that's it, that's my speech. I have more I could say but this would get way too long.
Also all the parts in quotes were directly taken from what I've seen people saying about this topic. I also saw someone describe Karlach from BG3 as an example of the 'strong female character' trope and calling her a "man with tits". KARLACH. So yeah these fuckers would probably have a fit if they ever went to a butch lesbian event ig.
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