A complete tangent about why how the female coding thing is implemented in fandom bothers me (again, obviously transfem headcanons are fine and great, this is different), is that while going through someone's blog I literally saw a post they were refuting that was like "who embodies the female experience more Dick Grayson or Jason Todd", someone was like "y'all do know there's actual women in the Batfam right" and this other person responded "yeah but theyre badly written"
And lmaooo point by point
Ah yes because Dick Grayson and Jason Todd have never, ever been badly written. Ever.
All of these women are great characters who have been in some very well written comics and are just as rich and interesting as these men
please don't pretend you've ever tried to read about any of them, you clearly haven't
As for representing the female experience, Stephanie Brown is condescended to and discouraged and sometimes abused by every man in her life (and occasionally a woman joins in), but finds the inner strength to still pursue her goals and be defiant. She goes through a teen pregnancy. She's treated extremely differently from the male Robins and fired unfairly. She goes through sexual violence.She starts believing that she is lesser, and blames herself for being manipulated. She dies and is victim blamed to hell and back. She is not given a memorial like Jason gets nor is her death treated as important/haunting to Bruce. But then she comes back, and she eventually realizes she doesn't have to be dependent on the approval of men in her life and carves out a place for herself and receives support from other women. This doesn't solve the sexism she faces or her self esteem issues, but she's more confident and happier now.
How the hell is that not a representation of a female experience. Often completely unintentionally on the writers part, they agreed with her treatment in parts of this, but she's still so resonant because of that (and the fact that the demands of her largely female fans bought her back is another layer to things, as well as the fact that a DC writer said to my face that the women who fought for her to be recognized the same as Jason were annoying and he wishes he could shoot them. That became part of my female experience for sure.)
As I said, Jason and Dick have been through things women can relate to and that's fine, it's fine to discuss that-- but saying they're female coded or a reflection of the female experience and then ignoring actual female characters and their resonance with women's experiences--that's wrong.
(It's also like any kind of suffering is "female coded" sometimes--I remember a post in the heyday of the MCU that claimed Bucky was female coded because he was brainwashed and tortured- my dude, that happens to men in fiction and irl all the time, it is not the same as the character being a stand in for a woman or female role. )
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