I think it was more... the feminist blogosphere was like "whut, again? fer cripes' sake, Marvel" and was prepared to move on, but for some reason the fanboys got particularly riled about defending that one (I remember Bendis actually put out a whole incredibly inane, idiotic statement about fish-people very early on in the debacle) and so the snap-back to that denial got quite nasty. I came in about halfway through, though, not having been an Avengers reader at the time, so that impression may not be accurate.