This is coming from someone who is an outsider to all this. I appreciate Studio Ghibli, but that is basically it. Any sexualisation of women I cannot swallow.

And that is basically the point I am going to make. Anime and even more so cosplay seems to be based on the sexualisation / pornification of girls and women. That seems to be at the core of all of it. Honestly your question sounds to me a bit like: "Can porn and prostitution be empowering for women?" You are engaging in something that at the core, in its very fabric, is anti-women, so how can it be possibly be empowering? Engaging in it will always excessively expose you to misogyny and just in order to cope in that kind of sphere (if you don't want to go in full attack style ala Drew Afualo), you will basically have to swallow some of their views. As long as there isn't a women only cosplay convention I woud personally stay away from all of this.