“Captain America: Civil War” just came out and there are already people who hate Sharon Carter. On the one hand, maybe you shouldn’t be surprised about this, considering the vitriol thrown towards the “Star Wars” franchise with the announcement of “Rogue One” and its female lead. On the other hand, maybe you should be, since a lot of the people who hate Sharon Carter seem to be women.
There’s been a call to action on Tumblr to boycott the idea of Sharon Carter having any involvement with “Avengers: Infinity War”, claiming that the reason she shouldn’t appear is because it would take attention away from other female characters who have yet to be established fully. I have a distinct feeling however that that’s not the actual reason why so many people dislike her.
I have a feeling that this Anti-Sharon Carter sentiment is mostly born of the fact that she shares a kiss with Steve Rogers in “Civil War,” and that this hasn’t been taken very well among some parts of the fandom.
We could bring up the fact that in comics, Sharon Carter has been dating Captain America for the better part of four decades, and we could bring up that even in the movies, while it could come off as weird for Cap to start dating the niece of his former girlfriend, it isn’t as though he knew the Carters were related to each other when he first expressed any interest in her. But, it could just as well have been Black Widow who Cap had a romantic interest in, and she’d probably get just as much hate as Sharon has been getting.
When you pair off an attractive male character with another attractive male character, you can make the claim that you really want to see some progress in media. It’s a fair argument: we all want to see ourselves reflected in the media we consume, and that extends to romantic relationships, too. Frankly, there aren’t very many LGBT relationships in mainstream media, and they definitely don’t get a whole lot of attention in movies. It’s something audiences want to see.
That said, when you’re pairing these two hot men together, you can have the excuse that well, they’re gay, of course they’re unavailable to me, a woman.
When a hot guy kisses a girl, however, that’s not really the case.
There are plenty complaints a person can have against the development of a Steve/Sharon relationship in movie canon: we haven’t had a lot of time to see the relationship between them develop as romantic, if we’re being honest, and yeah, movies are oversaturated with hetero relationships. It’s a fair and totally reasonable complaint to have. As audiences, we should demand more than a "That was late," to explain two characters kissing. We deserve more of a build up to any romantic relationship rather than them being sprung out of nowhere (let's look back at the kind of weird, kind of out of the blue romance thing that happened between Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff back in "Age of Ultron," we don't like when relationships are thrown at us out of nowhere).
But then, if your main argument against having Sharon Carter show up in other Marvel movies is that she takes time away from other female characters, I’ve got a problem with that. For one thing, we need more women in these movies. Especially more women of color, too, but in general the gender gap ratio between male superheroes versus female superheroes is pretty wide, and I’d rather have more women than less. Having more women doesn’t mean they’re going to take time away from developing the ones that are already there: if you’re really concerned about that, then complain about the fact that there are three Captain America movies, three Iron Man movies, and three Thor movies—but not a single Black Widow one. Campaign against the cancellation of “Agent Carter.” But don’t ask that we sacrifice the presence of another woman because for whatever reason—she gets in the way of your ship, she gets to make out with Chris Evans, she’s there in the first place—you dislike her.