Consider all of his other female leading ladies:
--Ophelia is so weak with love for Hamlet that she is driven mad by his taunting, and commits suicide.
--Viola is a strong character, sure, but when it all boils down to it she just wants to be loved by Orsino, not as his equal, but as his mistress, which puts her even lower in his confidence than when she was his page in disguise. We can assume that perhaps they will have a more equal relationship because of the moments they've shared when she was pretending to be a man, but we don't get to see it (of course I love Twelfth Night very dearly, but my analysis still holds true), and of course she was forced to dress as a man to begin with to even gain employment by Orsino or anyone else on the island.
--Miranda is so naive and sheltered she falls in love with the first man she ever lays eyes on, as if a man other than her father really is the most beautiful sight in the world to a young woman, who would have been well educated in other matters. Enough said.
--Lady Macbeth, known to be one of Shakespeare's strongest female characters, goads Macbeth into killing MacDuff's family and brings the whole bloody mess of a play down on everyone's heads, then goes crazy when she realizes her guilt and kills herself because she can't get a figurative spot of blood off of her hand. Then there are the witches, who aren't even considered women but creatures, whom Macbeth treats with scorn and whose warnings he (obviously) ignores.
--Juliet...do I really have to talk about Juliet? Although she could be seen as a strong woman for going against her father's wishes for her to marry Paris and instead fakes her death so she can be with Romeo, obviously ending with a dagger in her chest, but if you think about it, she's going from one man's control to another, even to one who has killed her cousin (is her love for this guy she barely knows really strong enough to warrant blind faith and love even after he's proven to be a murderer?). And even though she's only known Romeo for about three or four days by the end of the play, she chooses to kill herself (for real, this time) when she finds Romeo dead. I realize she wouldn't have had much of a choice otherwise; her father would not have taken her back, even if she explained, because one way she's a ghost and no one would go near her, and the other way, she took an extreme measure and lied in order to defy his wishes, and a woman alone in that world would have gotten nowhere, except for maybe a brothel or a nunnery. I can see why she'd choose suicide, but she's still a tool of men no matter what she does.
--Desdemona...really? Desdemona is just an object. She is married to Othello, who is easily swayed in his trust in her by one small word from Iago, and without even asking her any questions, he kills her and THEN soliloquys about "oh, what have I done." He then kills himself, having been disgraced and undone by his own jealousy, and Iago gets away. Oh yeah. This is a great moral tale for relationships.
--Beatrice is actually pretty strong and independent for a Shakespeare play, but she is still "won" by Benedick, with whom she tries to match wits and suppress her feelings for during the entire play, but I will give her some credit for being one of the more clever women in Shakespeare's repertoire.
--Cordelia refuses to falsely praise her father, like her sisters, because her love is the most true (and her father knows it), but instead of seeing the truth in her words, Lear is insulted and punishes her by marrying her off to some jerk and giving her no part of his kingdom, which his two other stupid and fake daughters destroy by double crossing each other and their father, thus losing the entire kingdom to those he had tried to keep it from in the first place, and Cordelia and both of her sisters all die. Should have listened to Cordelia, Lear, you silly thing.
-All of the women in Richard III are twits, and I hate watching them, even though I love the film version starring Ian McKellan. Lady Anne, whose husband was killed by Richard, agrees to marry him just minutes after Richard confesses to killing her husband, and although she keeps her daughter from him when it becomes clear he means to kill her and marry her daughter, she is still being used completely by men.
--Portia is actually not too bad a character, but again, must disguise herself as a man in order to do the clever things she accomplishes. Then, of course, she marries, because it isn't a Shakespeare comedy without a wedding (or two or three).
--I'm not even touching anyone in A Midsummer Night's Dream, because it's a crazy play that is overdone and although I love many of Puck's speeches, I hate almost everything else going on in it.
I think I've given enough examples. Feel free to contradict me, as I would love to begin discussion on this topic, but also know that I do recognize the strengths and cleverness of many of these characters, especially given the male writer and the sexist time period, but I still see all of them as relying on males to achieve their goals, or as villains, and are therefore not painted as strong and independent on their own or in a good way.
I would love to agree that Shakespeare wrote Katharina's submission speech with his tongue in his cheek, but upon examination of the treatment of all of his other female characters, I have a very hard time accepting that notion, and think that Shakespeare was just following the ideas of the day, which was that women were dominated by men, and even clever women will be won over and married in the end. I would have written The Taming of the Shrew much differently, but then it wouldn't be The Taming of the Shrew and it wouldn't be Shakespeare, so I have to accept it for what it is. 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern, youthful adaptation of Taming of the Shrew, is my favorite movie adaptation of any of Shakespeare's plays, and even though Kat is essentially "tamed" in the end, it doesn't hold the same strong sexist submission that dominates the original Shakespeare, which is one of the reasons I can watch it without many qualms.
Anyone want to challenge me or join in the discussion?
), and I plan to watch the Kenneth Brannagh film version of Hamlet (which spares almost no line and is the most accurate and complete performance of Hamlet ever, as far as I know) again either tomorrow or Tuesday. I just can't get enough Shakespeare these days! 
But I take no offense at your disliking it, so no worries there. To each their own.
