That does not seem to be what research shows, but rather your personal experience:
For animated children movies, I found that 80 % male leads are reported for 1990-2020. Source
Couldn’t find data for children movies in general.
And I found for children books that there is still a slight male overrepresentation on average but in general it being around 50 %for the last few years. Source, search for “Fig. 2”
I feel like it’s awfully interesting though that we have ‘parallel discussions’ whenever someone says “hey this specific thing sucks for women.” […] The answer to that isn’t “we need better male role models in movies” (though it would obviously help as well) as it’s dodging the original question.
Yes, perfectly agree with you! I think both are important points and needed to tackle the issue of patriarchy, because if we don’t teach boys to be better, they never will be and grow up to ask “but what about me?” when they read about feministic topics.
And I fully agree, the way the op posted it with “counter point” already send the discussion in the wrong way.
Yes, it’s not a counter point but rather an also important parallel discussion. We need to have higher standards for male role models, or we will continue to have incels fill the space.
See it more positive, don’t look at the amount of comments, but rather at the votes:
the 2 highest main comments and most of the high voted main comments are agreeing with the main gist of the post. That there are then people discussing that is a different thing, but a majority of the people watching this post agree that there is a problem and recognize it.
People who feel attacked by it are naturally more interested in answering and sending their own viewpoint out into the ether. But most votes are not agreeing with them. So majority of those here in this post are on the right trajectory, but of course still have to do the walking towards that direction.