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What I mean by pre shiro is before he became the porn obsessed, bad photo shop making, cg abusing, black cock obsessed, maniac we know today. In GitS we see him slowly, denegrating to the absolute madman we see today harder than in any other work.
And no, I think you're way off the mark. Kusanagi's character is not about promoting female independence. It's quite the opposite, it's her abandoning her femininity in the name of her job so hard she's literally no longer human.
In the manga she's just some sex crazed cyborg who's obsessed with combat and slight web surfing. The anime takes this a notch even further by stripping away her sexuality. They have her treat sex so non-chalantly she even offers her cyborg pussy to some random kid in the war torn slums.
It comes to the point that all she can do is tease Batou, and be awkward and can only genuinely get her puss wet over Kuze. So no GitS is not as feminized as you would think. Whether it was intentional or not can definitely affect the way you percieve the series however, I'll grant you that.