Hey, @mask-of-anubis hope you don't mind that i made a separate post with your tags as the main focus point. ( the tags are taken from this post if anyone is curious) But I felt the the topic is too important to just be kept in the tags.
Thoughts under the cut.
I want to preface this post by saying that you're completely right, that the hoa girls are held at a much higher standard compared to the boys. Sadly this is a common reccurence in most media.
Female characters are scrutinized for everything they do, no matter if you are a "traditonal gal", a "female warrior" or something in between.
As you pointed out, these girls are complex and they make mistakes ( and thank god that they do, because if they didn't and were instead some mary sues hoa would be boring as hell). We have to thank the writers for that because they wanted to create human characters.
Simply put: people scream about wanting "complex female characters!" and when they get them on screen they whine about how "toxic" "pathetic" "whiny" "bitchy" they are.
Let's take for example the worst form of this behavior: The S2 Joy-Nina rivalry. (yes, i'm really going there).
I'm one of the few people in the entire hoa fandom, that thinks that their rivalry ( while i can agree that it overstayed its welcome sometimes) was actually a good arc, and in some ways was inevitable.
People thinks that feminism means "the girls must always get along!" Ignoring that forcing two girls who have very different views, becoming friends just for the sake of Feminism™ is actually going to diminsh the quality of the story, and the characters themselves too.
In fact, since its quite implied in the pilot that joy has a major crush of Fabian, and i'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but no girl is going to be happy that her crush isn't single anymore, especially when (at least from joy's pov) she and fabian were quite close. Of course, the way joy went about it in s2 was wrong, but the girl is traumatized ( as all the characters in the show are to various degrees lol) and instead of blaming the teachers, she focused her anger on the easy target.
But keep in mind that Nina isn't a saint either: she's passive aggressive to an unhealthy degree, she lashes out at her friends, and is very possessive about a boy who isn't her boyfriend anymore.
But people, instead of trying to understand why they act that way, They prefer the easy way out aka calling them something along the lines of "Bitch" "Horrible" "Toxic" "Pathetic" "Whiny" "Bully" and everything else under the sun.
Really it's quite concerning that i've seen this behavior in multiple fandoms, and it has no intention of stopping. And no matter how you spin it, female characters can never win, because people will find a way to hate them regardless.
Because as you said, when did male characters ever been held responsible for their own actions? Right, never.
Because fans, somehow to make their fave male character "he's just a soft boy™ who can do no wrong ever" , they have to ignore every single flaw they have. Even if those flaws make them interesting.
Instead female characters are always blamed, villified for the same things the male characters do.
And really everything comes down to the double standard , doesn't it?
