Insofar as I've interpreted the discussion correctly, the people who wrote the linked essays and the people who agree with them don't seem to be arguing that a Sue - or a regular old OFC - can never be problematic. They're arguing that the dilation of the term "Mary Sue" until it encompasses every female character and half the real women in fandom is harmful, and that automatic knee-jerk rejection of EVERY Sue - even the ones who really are Sues according to sane definitions of the term - is harmful.
Besides, in your example above, it strikes me that the theoretical WOC might be just as upset to see Spock paired with Kirk, or T'Pring, or Christine Chapel. Those characters may be canonical, but isn't it still just as much of a value judgment being made, *if* the person in question is being presented as being sooo much better for Spock?
As for power fantasies... very few people out there fantasize about being disempowered. There are of course different ways to empower oneself in fantasy - sometimes I fantasize about not being fat, sometimes about a world in which being fat wouldn't automatically code me as unattractive, undisciplined and unworthy. And the thing I'm most against regarding the whole "Mary Sue police" thing is that if I wrote a character who was fat and yet still considered respectable and desirable, she'd be "unrealistic", and if I wrote a character who was fit or, god forbid, even slender but who could otherwise be said to resemble me, it'd be "wish-fulfillment" and either way, I'd be screwed.
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Besides, in your example above, it strikes me that the theoretical WOC might be just as upset to see Spock paired with Kirk, or T'Pring, or Christine Chapel. Those characters may be canonical, but isn't it still just as much of a value judgment being made, *if* the person in question is being presented as being sooo much better for Spock?
As for power fantasies... very few people out there fantasize about being disempowered. There are of course different ways to empower oneself in fantasy - sometimes I fantasize about not being fat, sometimes about a world in which being fat wouldn't automatically code me as unattractive, undisciplined and unworthy. And the thing I'm most against regarding the whole "Mary Sue police" thing is that if I wrote a character who was fat and yet still considered respectable and desirable, she'd be "unrealistic", and if I wrote a character who was fit or, god forbid, even slender but who could otherwise be said to resemble me, it'd be "wish-fulfillment" and either way, I'd be screwed.