“What would be considered”. Sorry
I help out with the youth group at church and one of the students is in the 10th grade and he is pretty retro (loves movies and tv shows from the 80s and 90s). He used to be a big Star Wars fan and lost interest due to "disney making it a princess product" as he puts it. He was asking me the other day how did all this happen or when did it start, and I couldn't pinpoint an exact person who started this but had some ideas.
What did start it all? I know Ghostbusters 2016 seems to be the first movie to actively be made to piss off fans (when the original director was trying to do Ghostbusters 3 and they screwed him over). With Star Wars, if they wanted to appeal to actual women who were fans they could've used Jaina Solo or Mara Jade.
Was it in gaming? I remember when gaming magazines seemed to have constant articles about women in gaming or about the "abuse" they received online as if they have never heard the language you hear where guys get together and hang out.
Comic books? I mean they literally made comics of women sitting around the table discussing feelings and as Eric July said "modern comics are made for 14 year old girls on tumblr who don't read comics"
So honestly who is patient zero or who is to blame?
Patient zero didn't lead to the epidemic. The centralisation of social media with the advent of Facebook/twitter and their feed based algorithm is what I'd consider the beginning of the end. Let me explain:
These platforms are setup to reward cheap emotionally reactive content. The sheer volume of shock posts also drowns out other subjects. So the result is that you got a population that's hooked up on the same system, seeing the same thing and these things are mostly reactionary bullshit. Who thrives in an environment like this? The loudest crybabies. Slowly, everyone gets "woken" up to their laments and call to actions are made. If you oppose said resolutions, you easily get publicly shamed because, after all, that itself is good content.
Meanwhile, businesses start using tools to analyze the platforms' data. There's never been a better way to sample public opinion at this scale in human history. Whether accurately or not, they start thinking that the trendier topics are what people care about and want. Again, the platform rewards shock so what comes on top are the laments of the crybabies and their call to action... So this leads businesses to adapt their strategy consequently. The statistics tell them that they should pander to cause XYZ and so they do.
Entertainment is the first industry to fall because their products live and die on trends more than they do out of their own artistic merit. They are the first to tune in to the feed and adapt to what they see there. What do they see? Cries of discrimination. What do they do? Adopt the "solutions" proposed by the loud ideologues.
And this my friend, is how it started.
Underrated comment. I hadn't considered it before but your argument is convincing.