In Chak De, for no fault of his own, because of his faith, he is branded a traitor, loses his livelihood, his career & becomes a social outcast. That's much more than run of the mill fragile male ego, or whatever you wanna call it. https://twitter.com/FuschiaScribe/status/1304101337752371202

From the way he was treated bec of his faith, he defines the necessity of fairness in the game where the only parameter that defines u is ur skill on the field. He wants to eliminate any bias & makes performance the sole test of worth. Not just bias against women but ALL biases.

Players have to overcome personal biases & prejudices b4 they play as a team & fight against the anti-women's-team bias as a whole. They overcome biases of region, class, language etc. among themselves to grow as a team. That's intersectionalism if I've ever seen it in a movie.

They have to fight personal battles outside the team whether it be challenges like being "unladylike", their career being belittled by their S.O., forced family obligations etc. Some fight against their position as a "fish out of water" bec of their race, class, lang & region.

That's not token feminism. That's a deeper understanding of bigotry than the movie is given credit for. The man is made to look good, in some instances, even as an unaware non chalant Messiah. But that's nowhere near to the entire movie being an exercise in male ego satisfaction.

If the women empowerment was just supposed to be a crutch to satisfy his male ego, he would have been an actual Messiah who fixes everything with a flick of the wand. Like Akshay Kumar does in his movies. That is not the case here. To illustrate that point:

In his "70 min" speech, he says "after these 70 min. whether something changes or doesn't, things go right or wrong, you will always have these 70 min. & no one will take them away from you"
That's not a man sticking a band aid on a wall crack & feeling good about himself.

That's a man that's aware that you may even win here in the field but that's not an end of all sorrows. It's the pursuit that's meaningful. We have seen token feminism in movies just to sell tickets & this was not one of those movies.

The movie could've been much much better. There's definitely some tokenism wrt the tribal & NE players. But it's not the opposite side of the spectrum where women empowerment is just a tool either.