The soft bigotry of low expectations

If a woman* had written this, people would say, "looks like someone just took her first Women's Studies class." A guy writes it and it's thunderous and prophetic.

* even a famous woman: Natalie Portman or Sarah Polley, say.

UPDATE: Trevor points out that Joss Whedon essentially minored in Gender Studies. If the same had been true of our hypothetical female author, I bet any negative reaction would have included some cracks about how she was only saying this because she'd been indoctrinated by hairy-armpitted campus feminazis.

On Trevor's question of "Is it even possible to communicate this kind of understanding outside of a university classroom?": I've never taken a Gender Studies class. All it takes to figure out the content of Whedon's epiphany, really, is living as a woman, but even empathy and listening to women, or just some critical awareness, should be enough. What we've got here is an extended cover of a Yoko Ono tune, and even Whedon admits it's stale and derivative. That his rant is being lauded all over the web is deeply depressing.