When the social context of an act makes that act abhorrent you avoid that act.
In this case the social context around the use of a particular plot point makes the use of that plot point sexist. So people (like Anita and myself) are saying maybe we should at least think twice before using that plot point.
As for not focusing on the stuff surrounding X, in the case of a trope the trope is it's own context. I'm still trying to find a way to phrase this that you will acknowledge, but when the social context is in no small part shaped by how a trope is used and how common it is then criticising and discussing the trope is a central aspect of changing that social context.
Except here is where you are wrong. There is nothing making these plot points sexist. Just because something complies to a common theme doesn't make it bad. You know what
is bad? A conscious effort to remove or change anything that doesn't comply. That is the problem here, something very much missed in the series.
The only time she even touches on it is when she mentions Starfox Adventures, and even that is horrifically misrepresented. It was changed to drag it out of development hell and recoup some losses by stapling it onto a popular franchise. Her explanation is "Shigeru Miyamoto said it should be Starfox so it was because women don't get a chance!"
You know what? I'm flexible. I can debate your grounds if you are unwilling to compromise. Lets define a few terms, so to speak.
So now a trope is as you say it is, and its prevalence is an essential part of being a trope. I don't agree with this at all, but for the sake of conversation we will treat it like it is so that we are both using the same term in the same way, no use debating semantics.
So there are two parts of a trope: What happens, and how often it happens. For example, what happens might be that a woman is kidnapped, and how often it happens would be found with some statistics that I don't think anybody actually has, we just assume it is past some imaginary threshold that we have decided is too high. Lets call this 'what' a plot device.
So a woman getting kidnapped is a plot device, independent of anything else, and then when you look at it in a social content you have yourself a trope.
Now, Anita carefully describes the plot device, and she provides examples to prove it actually exists. So she is presenting a plot device. And then she calls it sexist.
She never actually goes so far as to explain why this device is a trope, because she never really goes into any level of prevalence. She never explains just how common it is, beyond "It happens all the time guis!!"
As such, without explaining the broader social context, she never presents a trope, she just points her finger at a plot device and calls it sexist, and assumes you will agree with her. She does go to lengths to find many examples of the plot device, but proving there are multiple examples of a plot device means nothing towards social context, this is call anecdotal evidence.
At one point she mentions real life violence against women, but this is an irrelevant appeal to emotion (I'm going to point out the irony of appealing to the audiences emotional response at the idea of violence against women
while criticizing games for appealing to the audiences emotional response at the idea of violence against women) as there is also violence against men in the real world, but the difference is that men are
supposedly portrayed as asking to harmed less often in games (I say supposedly because once again this reference to prevalence is never made, it is just assumed we will agree) and as such it isn't a problem.
It is reasonable to assume she is against the plot device and believes
any use of it is sexist. As if had the damsel in distress device only been used once in human history, it would be sexist. Perhaps she isn't actually against the trope, that is just a word she mistakenly uses to describe a plot device, but is instead actually opposed to the plot device. She think women should never have been, and never again should be, anything less than the protagonist or at least given the same amount of agency in
a video game. In a medium where the protagonist is the only one with any sort of real agency.
Her argument is poorly constructed and reminiscent of second wave feminism.
Killing gay characters off at a higher rate than straight has a historic and social context going back to the Hays code. It's still surprisingly common today. It's a trope that has harmed people in the past, through either explicit attacks on homosexuals (by showing them getting punished for their sexuality) or simply removing gay characters from the public eye by having them die out of stories. As such if you are trying to write a story that is accessible to gay people you probably want to think twice before shoving your only gay character into a fridge. At least if you are going to do it understand the context and why it is very likely to piss a lot of people off.
It's akin to having a horror film and killing off all the people of colour leaving just your white hero and heroine at the end. Sure, the story might naturally flow that way. But the historical context are going to make people view it a certain way, and you had damned well better be aware of what you are doing.
Read the name of that article you linked. What does it say? "Why does the gay character always have to die", now that sounds a little different to what you are saying, that the gay character isn't allowed to die. Once again, when there is a mandate that the gay guy must die, it is offensive, when it just happens because that is how it happened then so be it. A homosexual character has the same rights to an interesting story as any other character, including a death.
Also, reductio ad absurdum. Do you see the difference in having a black character who dies and having a cast of black characters who all die and only two white characters live? Suddeny having a single homosexual character die is "akin to having a horror film and killing off all the people of colour leaving just your white hero and heroine at the end"? You don't see how that is an absurd exaggeration?
I don't know if you are arguing from ignorance of if you are choosing misleading fallacies.