There's a biiiig difference between saying "This story is overly sentimental, melodramatic, and poorly characterized," and saying, "This story is a typical girly novel." The former is addressing the story on its merits--the critic doesn't think it has many, but it is the story that matters. The latter is addressing the writer and audience as a measure of a story--the critic thinks that all books with the given characteristics are "written for" women, and that most books written for women have the given characteristics.

I particularly like this argument. It angered me about the whole dicussion that the idea to use neutral and technical descriptions was dismissed, because of something like "what's the problem with having a word that describes the readers?"