One for Sorrow

Yes, the whole label of "feminist" or not is really hard to pinpoint. The whole thing that's sexist in things in general is that male characters can be whatever they want because they're not really ever seen as representing their gender, where as females tend to be judged on all sorts of qualities they're supposed to have. Sometimes this leads to some odd ideas. Like I remember once somebody comparing a relatively minor female character to Snape and showing how it was so feminist because she was better than he was in so many ways. And it was true but...she was still a minor character that did very little in the story, while Snape's flaws made stuff happen. You could say the same about any story where you have a whole bunch of soldiers at the center of the story, and they all have girlfriends at home that write to them and are paragons of virtue. Who cares if the girls are supposed to be great? The men are still the ones you'd want to read about.

But then, of course, if the women do make mistakes there will often be people saying they're being portrayed badly etc. Male characters are just given more freedom, imo.