Wow - i tried to read all or at least most of this thread since my last posting, so now i'd like to add some thoughts:

On the "autor's intention against reader's perception"-topic:
In my opinion the autor has the last word on what he intended to say. Even if there are comunication issues the autor should know best, what he meant.

On the "equal appearance" topic:
If i'd write a story where i have to know how the characters feel, i'd probably stay with characters i can identify with. This may be the main reason why white straight males write about white straight males. One Problem with the equal appearance is also, that there will always be groups of underrepresented or ignored people. Next thing is that you have only so much equal positions in a story - the fewer there are, the more problematic things will get, because if you have only two top positions, where one is the hero and the other his mighty opponent, would it be wise to grab for maximum diversity?

Looking at the OotS, the gender representation was set in the first strips, where the OotS was a typical group of adventurers. I have been in some PnP groups, and i must say, regardless whether there were female players or not, the female hero count was always 1 to 2 out of 5 to 6.

On the "representation of women in society" topic:
There actually was a reason, why men are overrepresented especially in military (and as a result in leading positions there) - think of a small tribe with 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, which is about to engage in combat. If many of the men die, but the women survive, the tribe will recover - if the men survive while many of the women die, the tribe will parish. But if leadership of a tribe is gained by being a great warrior, this leads to men leading tribes.

On the "Haley's leadership" topic:
Let's look at what Haley did when she had to take Roy's place as leader of the OotS: she ordered the main part of the group to retreat to safety while taking it upon herself to retrieve Roy's corpse. Ok, here hide skill had to do with it, but that's what i've been said makes a good leader: not just sending one's people out to get killed but trying for keeping them alive. And that's something she accomplished very well.

And just for the record: i still think Belkar should be listed as bisexual, as he acknowledged that it was no sacrifice for him to check on male prostitutes (ok, we have no information about how inconspicuous he should check). At least we do not know if he is straight (and i'm not sure if every other character listed as straight is proven so)

Oh, and i'm still not convinced that the MitD is male - we do not even know if it is of any type with existing different genders.

After checking once more: could we add Julia Greenhilt to the "Other" group?