A few years ago, I was talking with a friend, a university second-year, who was considering majoring in film. She was taking one of the intro classes, and the professor showed a clip from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. One of her male classmates apparently objected to the clip on the grounds that there was no way a woman Buffy's size could be that strong.
For what it's worth, he was right. Buffy hurls much more massive characters around in a way the laws of physics do not allow (equal and opposite reactions and all).
But this is not in the least bit unusual in movies and television, even in shows without any real fantasy or science-fiction bent. How many times have you seen an action movie in which a character casually shoots off round after round, sending the bad guys flying but remaining firmly in place him or herself? And if you're willing to include fantasy and science-fiction there are of course tons of examples.
So maybe that guy just liked his fiction realistic. That's fine. But something about the way it was phrased had both of us wondering if he would have objected to Superman or other ridiculously-strong male characters. Our conclusion was that he probably wouldn't have, or at least not so strongly, and that and other incidents lead both me and my friend to conclude that some men seem to be unable to identify with female characters in the way we (and many of my other female friends) identify with male ones.
There is no doubt in my mind that we can blame that on the patriarchy – not only are men and boys discouraged from identifying with women, but because men are very well (usually overly) represented in so many genres, they can avoid identifying with women (putting themselves in their shoes for the duration of the story) if they prefer. Whereas girls, and especially girls who like action or science-fiction or fantasy, often don't have the option to do the same with male characters, because so many books and movies and especially so many of the classics have a primarily male cast. Then, too, I for one have always found it difficult to identify with stereotypical or inactive characters, female or otherwise (1). This problem is worse for other marginalized groups - people and especially women of color, disabled people, queer and especially trans- people, etc.
All this is part of why it can be so hard to come to a self-accepting point of view, as a member of a marginalized group, and so easy to see oneself from the normalized perspective – the view from a place of power. W. E. B. Du Bois referred to this as double consciousness.
1) Feminist Frequency discusses common tropes in some depth and you can also read Sarkesian's thesis about strong women in sci-fi/fantasy television.
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