Without advancing the argument that a man can ever truly be feminist (I would not call myself one, and distrust any male who describes himself thus) the fact is that many women, at least in their response to The X-Files, are also very far from being feminist, either because, unlike you, they set a limit on where politics ends in order to preserve their sanity and not question every taste and decision, or because, unlike you, they are right wingers at heart, dream of being Jane Eyre with Rochester, and don't have any real issue with patriarchy. I think it's really more a matter of what perspective someone has. Many- perhaps even most- of the highly active online women fans of The X-Files in its heyday, the sort of people affiliated with the "DDEB", seemed to have zero issues with the "male gaze" you mentioned or the decreasing autonomy of Scully in later seasons (perhaps because the ones that did have issues stopped watching or stopped caring enough to even comment), and some did not even care about Scully as a character, perfectly happy to see her neglected in favor of Mulder, so long as they could sexually objectify Duchovny's speedo. Many female fans' issues with Scully extended to disliking GA as a person, partly because the actress's sexually liberated persona was even more repellent to them than the brief moments of sexual autonomy afforded to Scully. There are some women who come out of the woodwork online whenever the episode Never Again is discussed, to make sure their weirdly sex-obsessed puritanical and anti-Scully perspective gets heard. The "top 15" list posted by one of the women recommended for a future guest in this thread, while much smarter than that, does represent this extremist, certainly anti-feminist shipper perspective, in which the ship is defined as not just the most important thing in the show but the only important thing in the show- to the point that in listing the Anasazi arc as their all time favorite episodes, they write a long paragraph in which they talk about Mulder's boxer briefs and never even mention indigenous people- and in which the ship itself is envisioned in a way that sees Mulder as the dominant figure and Scully's perspective as irrelevant, except for her slow realization Mulder was always right, the only arc she is allowed to have. The fact that the creators of that list largely ignore the work of Darin Morgan- which seems to side with Scully and deconstructs Mulder's character- and simply dismiss the episode Never Again as "substandard" without further explanation- it is, of course, also critical of Mulder, and sympathetic to Scully- indicates their bias. They do however include later, more complacent and Mulder centric comedy episodes like Triangle, Dreamland (despite their own description calling it not particularly great and over-extended "fluff") and even Post Modern Prometheus, whose rape apologetics they shrug off as mildly distasteful but ultimately irrelevant in light of its stylishness. I endorse in theory the idea of having more women fans on the podcast, regardless of their politics (in X-File politics, the number one question is often where one stands on the shipper spectrum) and I think it would actually be fun to have guests who would be able to get into a real debate with (noromo-ish) Kumail, because a bonafide argument is something this podcast hasn't had yet, and I kind of miss it. but this idea that women fans of this show have historically been or are today more sexually progressive, or even more interested in the Scully character, is untrue, at least with regard to the straight women who watched it as adults (i.e. gen xers or older) when it initially aired, and have been fans ever since. If anything, the current regular males on the podcast, Devin and Ricky, along with Rhea and Emily and Kumail himself of course, seem far more likely, all of them being highly PC on gender issues, to interrogate any future characterization of Scully that is objectifying, and if anything, to bend over backwards to criticize the rape related plots much more remorselessly than some of these women who have been recommended as possible replacement guests and apparently are a-ok with Post Modern Prometheus because hey, that final dance was so sweeeeeet. Personally I feel Emily would be a good guest to appear more often than just once a season, but she is probably busy. It's a shame video games are unimportant to me and The X-Files is, since Kumail and Emily share a podcast about the former subject. I agree with you that on many episodes, a woman's perspective is totally essential, but not just any woman's perspective is the same, and in the case of Never Again I would prefer to hear Emily's perspective rather than some of these random women people are suggesting.