I didn't really bring up slash because it's a little outside the realm of my post, but I did try to address it further up, and I still stand by what I said. Yes, slash hurts people. I'm just pointing out that Mary Sues hurt people too.

The purpose of this post is not to talk about Mary Sue policing or of how fandom should or should not react to the issue of it. That's been covered elsewhere. The purpose of this post is to say that the issue of Mary Sues themselves is way more complicated than I think it's being treated in this discussion. Privileged Mary Sue authors have power over less privileged readers, and I'm just trying to point out that this meme that "Mary Sues never hurt anyone and we should celebrate her as an awesome female fantasy!" is not as simple as it seems on the surface.

And yeah, there needs to be a lot more definitional work done on Mary Sues at the moment, just so that everyone can establish a baseline of agreement, but I just don't have the time or the energy to work on that at the moment, so hopefully someone else will pick up the slack. :)