First off, didn't read the entire thread, this response is solely based on the OP. Secondly, for anyone who thinks it would make a difference, I am male:
First choice of words for Mrs. Anita Sarkeesian argumentation: biased nitpicking.
The ME marketing does not mean male Shepard is the default way to play the game, the marketing has in fact always emphasized that the player has control over how to play the game and it has likewise always mentioned the fact you can choose between a male or a female protagonist.
And the simple reason that marketing shows the male Shepard is that the target audience, the gamers are still mostly male. Using male Shepard is a simple mathematic equation of reaching the largest portion of the target audience with minimum ressources used. Making an extra wallpaper/lithograph/poster/flyer/etc. with a female Shepard on top of that simply inflates the costs associated with marketing for very little return (because female gamers did buy the series too, despite not having a marketing campaign focusing on female Shepard, so it's not like BioWare would have anything to gain from doubling the costs for an allround marketing). Add to that the simply problem of how to make trailers for both sexes. Do you make two different trailers showcasing both Shepards? If so how do you decide which ones to show when? Or do you make a single trailer showcasing both Shepards and risk a confusing audience if they didn't know that that man and that woman on the screen are the same protagonist?
And just to drive my initial point of "biased nitpicking home" when she mentioned male Shepard being exclusively on all covers of the games, she did forego the ME3 CE cover that also boasts the female Shepard on the other side, whilst still showcasing the male side on her little background picture. That is most definately NOT the product of an objective argumentation!
To add to that point, "Shepard and Fem!Shep" is a distinctioned coined by the fanbasem which, the shock, does consist of male AND female gamers. Nevermind that the point is inaccurate, because the distinction has always been "Sheploo and Fem!Shep" on the basis that the default male Shepard is modelled after Mark Vanderloo and the female Shepard had no such remarkeble similarities with a real person, hence simply Fem!Shep. Now, that's something that she could discuss instead, why doesn't Fem!Shep have a model compared to Sheploo. That would have been a valid point compared to the one she tried to make.
I'm sorry, but with such blatant mistakes and disregard for the most simple of economics, I don't respect her argumentation at all. She's not providing a viable discussion, she's nitpicking based on her bias.
As for the OPs own point:
The default has to be chosen. So what if it's male? Would changing the default to a statistically averaged female default make any difference? Wouldn't it in fact not simply turn the situation upside down and open grounds for male gamers to note the lack of default association with their sex? I don't see this as an issue at all. Defaults are defaults, there has to be one and it can only be one, it's a technical limitation of the choice-system, period.
As for "feeling" like male or female:
What keeps you from feeling as female or male? I play pletny of female characters in games where I have the choice and I don't have any difficulty tapping into my character in a way that makes me feel her identity as distinctively female as opposed to when I play a male character.
And if we're simply talking marketing again, I had no trouble to navigate Mirror's Edge despite the protagonist being exclusively female.
So where exactly is the problem?
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