I think your take on Survival Horror is probably on point, though not necessarily
deliberately sexist on their part. Survival Horror games definitely have female protagonists more frequently for the same reasons that many survival horror games make your protagonist extremely weak and incapable compared to, you know, God of War.
That having been said, while she didn't pick the best example during your discussion, it's also true that Japanese games have a much longer history of competent and well characterized female protagonists
and secondary cast members, as well as games aimed primarily or entirely at women that aren't, you know, Barbie horseshit (sorry to Barbie fans, it was the easiest way to get to the point). Many series that this is a characteristic of took an extremely long time to begin making it out here, died before they could ever see localization, or still aren't localized, and a lot of them are extremely niche, but they very much do exist.
This is at the core of what
Twig and I have mentioned a couple times throughout the thread. Anime and anime games get a bad rap for bad treatment of women and they deserve it by many angles of assessment, but a lot of stuff that'd look outwardly problematic to us winds up having surprisingly strong character writing (in context of anime's unique theatricity--it's rarely a naturalistic medium). This disconnect is actually, in my mind, probably a large part of WHY we wind up talking past each other in these kinds of debates so often, especially when anime and anime games get involved.
The best way to characterize it, in my mind, is that historically problematic Western games often had instances of "Why is the only female cast member only present to act feminine and be ogled?" until things began to push forward, and Japanese games trended (and still trend) toward "Oh my god, why are you disempowering and treating this fully fleshed out, well-developed, likeable character like a goddamned Playboy spread in this scene?" or "Why in the actual fuck did you put her in this outfit if you were going to put so much effort into writing her?"
More cynically, you can give a guy masturbatory material by making something trashy hot or a pandery cardboard cutout, but if you want him to
enduringly obsess over a waifu you're gonna have to put
some effort into making a compelling character. There are a...lot of ways in which this is significantly worse than the western side of things. You could write essays about it. But it
is a pretty distinct and consistent difference and it can be extremely hard to articulate to people who aren't also pretty deep into The Anime.
Basically, neither of you were wrong, in my mind.