He's talking out his hind. There is no canon, only defaults. Every Sheppard is canon. He's trying to slip in that default = canon.
Those appeared long before Harry Potter (the book series, not fanfiction written for the book series). You can find old Ranma and Sailor Moon fanfics that did it that are more then a decade old at his point, and I doubt they were the 'first' either.
I'm not talking about canon at all. I'm talking about the writing process. Sheppard is, by default, a male character and is written that way. They then tweak, as little as possible, for the female version. By saying he is the default version, you make my case for me. You can't say Femmshep is an example of a strong female character who is uniquely female because she is not uniquely female. ------------ Epsilon And I'm aguing about Sheppard's gender in a Naruto fanfic recommendation thread...
