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Zardnaar, I empathize with some of your issues with TLJ and don't think questioning whether Rey is a Mary Sue or not is inherently sexist, but I think you are going a bit overboard in trying to line her up with Luke and compare them in every detail. No matter what way you look at it, their "Mary Sueness" is similar.
The only thing that bothered me about Rey's Mary Sueness in TFA was how she could hang with Kylo Ren in a lightsabre duel. I know he was injured, but it still seemed a bit absurd and definitely damaged my suspension of disbelief. But
overall she wasn't really any more Mary Sueish than Luke. If she was, it wasn't by much - and not worth getting upset about.
The Mary Sue is a female version of wish fulfillment. Luke, and superheroes in general, are male versions of wish fulfillment. I don't know why female wish fulfillment would be any worse, except insofar as TFA felt like fan fiction and the Mary Sue is derived from fan fiction. The more obvious difference is that it is generally inserted into contexts that have been historically male dominant (e.g. superhero and action films).
I think we can all agree that female characters should have equal or at least simlar place in films, even historically male dominant ones. Or at least I hope we can agree on that!
That said, where I differ from the "orthodox liberal view" is in two ways. One has absolutely nothing to do with sex or gender and is more about creativity. I am all for seeing more female heroes in film, but I would like to see more new properties. Do we need an all-female Ghostbusters, Ocean's 8 or, gods forbid, a Jane Bond? Why not something new? Similarly with Rey: aside from the lightsabre duel, my main issue with her is creative: she's simply too similar to Luke in too many ways. Not exact, mind you, but it would have been nice to see them come up with something a bit different.
Secondly, I think these female heroes end up being too paper thin in terms of to what degree they are actually female; in a lot of cases we are getting female versions of male heroes, but not truly feminine heroes. What that would look like, I don't know, and could be any any number of things - but rather than saying, "Let's do a female Luke," I'd rather see "Let's see what a female force prodigy might look like." Or rather than saying, "Let's wear pant-suits so we can fit into the male work environment," why not say "Let's wear what we want to wear and define ourselves."
Now the potential problem with taking that approach is that it implies intrinsic differences between men and women, which some take issue with (despite, well, biology). But aside from biology, let us remember that Star Wars is based on mythic archetypes; the lightsaber is a sword, which is a rather phallic representation of spiritual will and power. It even becomes "erect" when activated. What might a (non-phallic) female force weapon look like? Would it even be a weapon? There are interesting creative possibilities there that haven't been explored, at least in the films.
Regardless, I think the issue needs to mostly be taken up by women, not men. Women need to decide how the heroine looks, what a female force prodigy would be like. I just hope we see more versions of actual
heroines, and not just "female heroes." I don't think Rey utterly fails in that regard (or Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, etc), but I would like to see them go further. Maybe the first step is "female heroes," and then next we can see what a heroine might look like.
But I will throw in one suggestion: how about a heroine that doesn't solve all conflicts through violence? Or at least is maybe more of an aikido master than a boxer? I remember the great Ursula Le Guin talking about this, taking issue with the notion promulgated in cinema and genre literature, that all conflicts must be solved through violence. I don't care if this hypothetical hero/ine was male or female, but all I'm saying is that if a heroine wants to pave new territory and not just remake everything in a female version of traditional male tropes, why not a heroine that says "enough of the violence - there has to be another way."
