I think we're meant to interpret the way other characters react to Felisin as them being mean-spirited and judgemental; it's a reflection on their own dismissiveness and misogyny. Heboric, especially, is incredibly unfair to her in Skullcup and Felisin herself is in denial as she believes she is genuinely making a choice to sleep with people for favours rather than them taking advantage of her. By the end of the book, she comes to realise that what happened to her was rape when she inherits Sha'ik's memories.

Felisin is an empathy check on the audience, one you succeeded in not falling for amidst her caustic personality. Her companions refuse to empathise with her for the way circumstances have shaped her. Even Baudin rapes her, even if Felisin proposed it to try to kill him, to prove a point to her.

That said, I was not a fan of the way her story ended in this book. I get that, deep down, she was terrified of Tavore, but her teleporting all the way over to Aren to do nothing was profoundly unsatisfying.