Although I have to admit, I've heard Harry Potter called many things, but "the ideological champions of patriarchal society" has never been one of them.

Seriously, I can sympathize with him saying that they're not particularly deep, but neither is a lot of the Children's Literature that he's working with, and it does say something about the times. Complaining because of the gender of the main character makes him seem as shallow as the popular literature that he is trying to dismiss.