Write Away

I think the thing that the "men with boobs" complaint was originally trying to address was that femininity is looked down on. Women are now often allowed to do things that are considered traditionally masculine, but feminine things are still considered lesser. See how women have come to wear pants all the time over the last several decades but men still can't wear skirts because that's girly and thus degrading.

So now there's a problem with writing female characters. If you write them as more traditionally feminine, you get misogynists looking down on them, but now you will also get a certain brand of feminist disparaging them too because the writer is obviously basing the character on stereotypes (insert an eyeroll here, if you please). So often the only female characters who are allowed to be considered "strong female characters" are the ones who act more traditionally masculine because they're defying the stereotypes. You know, the stereotypes that have been defied thousands of times since the start of the feminist movement.

The problem with the term "strong female character" is that some people interpret the "strong" is "well-made" as in an compelling character that you can empathize with (not necessarily sympathize and want to succeed but empathize and understand), but other people interpret the "strong" as being more like physical strength and the sorts of things that would come to mind if you called a real person strong.

I hate that everyone is expected to be strong all the time, both in real life and in fiction. This is one of my soapboxes that I step onto a lot. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and I hate that people aren't allowed to show their weaknesses except in certain, limited acceptable ways. I hate that some strengths are treated as superior to others. That some are treated as though they cancel out weaknesses while other, particularly ones that are considered more feminine, aren't given the same kind of praise.

Basically, I think there is a very real problem that the whole "men with boobs" complaint is trying to address, but I think it's going about it in the wrong way.