At t'other place I had an interesting discussion with someone about Kameron Hurley's "We have always Fought" Essay though it devolved rather quickly into him complaining that it should never have been nominated for a Hugo and me pointing out that it actually hit the eligibility requirements just fine.

However my intention with the remark was that the argument ("if you can accept dragons you should be able to accept non-traditional gender roles") seems to make sense on the surface but that actually suspension of disbelief is an awful lot more complicated than that. I certainly don't think its a particularly good argument prime facie for persuading people accept women in a wider range of roles in fantasy fiction without actually unpicking their assumptions about why such roles are unrealistic. If you don't want to get into a big discussion about gender, society and culture then "of course its a wish fulfilment fantasy" covers a lot of the same ground without sounding like a cheap shot.