People respect power

People frequently hate Meadow Soprano more than Tony Soprano, and Skyler White more than Walter White. Yet these two are by all metrics much better people than Tony or Walter. Whatever failings they have, these must be lesser than the character failings of Tony Soprano or Walter White. What’s worse, being a hypocrite or a murderer?

A popular explanation is societal misogyny, i.e. our common internalized hate towards women. This also includes women hating other women.

There may be a gender component but I think it’s not that big of a part here. If everything else remained the same, and Meadow Soprano was Tony’s son, I think (s)he’d still get roughly the same amount of hate relative to Tony.

No, the common thread joining Meadow Soprano, Skyler White and every single instance of a person screeching on the street on camera is power, or lack thereof.

In today’s world it’s not popular to say this, but our ancestors wouldn’t find anything weird about it: people respect power.

In other words, you can get away with many, many things if you are powerful. You can quite literally be the worst person in the room - you can kill, torture, be sadistic, be mentally unbalanced, you name it - any single negative thing is tolerated the more power you have. Sticking to the world of TV fiction, this explains why Claire Underwood in House of Cards is not “annoying” the same way Skyler White is. She’s ruthless, she’s powerful. Sure, her husband is even more so, but we don’t hate her more than her husband in the show. Or at least, I don’t feel like she gets the same disproportional level of hate.

So it’s not that people hate female characters because they are female, they hate them because they are loud or obnoxious or hypocritical, but without power. Them being female has nothing (or very little) with it. And sometimes female characters aren’t even loud or obnoxious. Maybe they’re just vocal and adhere to a moral code. Those are obviously good things. Yet, even in that case, we will find ways to hate them if they have no power to accompany their voice and their moral code. This is pretty weird if you think about it - we respect power so much that we will literally ignore good traits (and even actively hate them) if they aren’t accompanied by power.