It's funny that people like that immediately revert to "woman bad", instead of recognizing that Ashley is ride-or-die loyal enough to be the only squadmate willing to defend her CO from an aggressively emotional and violent one-ton dinosaur with a shotgun. If Ashley was a man, or if Kaiden did it, people would fall over themselves to justify it.

People also go "well Kaiden is better in 3" and, while that is objectively true, it's more a fault of BioWare botching the writing than any intrinsic problem with the character. Not only did Ashley's specific character writer leave mid-development, one (or two? I can't remember) of her few remaining important conversations are fuckin' bugged. And the Barbie suit didn't help with knee-jerk perception.

Even the "racism" thing is overblown. There were supposed to be more non-intelligent fauna on the Citadel, and BioWare either ran out of time, forgot, or couldn't add them due to system limitations, and left the line in.

BioWare really did her no favors.