This sort of thing bugs me.

People seize upon depictions and rush straight to accusations of endorsement. The things they attack have little to do with causation.

I feel like I maybe understand that the writer is looking at exploring how ingrained sexism is in our culture, but these articles come over as way too accusatory and one-eyed.

Like, who really thinks WoT has any appreciable effect on reinforcing or rationalizing sexism and patriachy? Rather, the opposite is true, imo.

It's fairly obvious that Jordan was intentionally including powerful scary women to explore ideas about gender. Sending the message that women should not have power... Yeah, right. Nevermind all the powerful and benevolent female characters the MC learn to depend on despite what he has been taught by culture and experience.

As a white middle class male he is writing primarily for people like himself, that's pretty clear. Write what you know et al.

By including sexist archetypes and tropes and then putting his own spin on them, Jordan is getting his audience to engage and consider these ideas from different perspectives. What Jordan thinks about women is different from what I think, why is that? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he is, maybe we both are.

That is the beauty of fiction, putting new perspectives on familiar situations. Impossible, stupid, repulsive or brilliant it's all make believe. Make up your own mind - a work of fiction is different for everyone who reads it.

Are fantasy readers more sexist on average? I highly doubt it. But articles like this seem to imply that the people who enjoy these sort of books are narrow minded and should feel bad.