Yeah not a fan of the term. In part because I remember back in the 2013-14s the term being used to dismiss works with women leads. I remember on some sites you'd see characters like Star Wars' Rey being dismissed as "Waifu-Bait" (aka how these same people use woke now).
Even outside of that though, on the one hand, I don't think it's bad to find yourself attracted or having crushes with fictional characters. To me that's just healthy and in many cases what many works want, they wouldn't be pushing hyper sexualized characters if they didn't. I doesn't even have to because their physically attractive in the classical sense (see those attracted to aliens) but because they have traits or represent something like say because their caring, a bad ass autistic woman etc. Fiction is meant to get a emotional reaction from you after all and having a fantasy or drawing some fan art or fan fics for yourself, I have no issue. Seeing lesbians gush over Rika from Pokémon? That's been adorable to see to me.
What does bother me when this gets into ownership territory which is often when you see the term Waifu coming out, when people start acting they own that fictional character or starts taking over their lives and stop acting like it's a fantasy; or treat them as nothing more then sex toys for their amusement. Or when it gets to the points where it begins to become hard to talk about women in fiction without men coming in to talk about how hot they find X. As I've mentioned before, Gardevoir used to be one of my favourite Pokémon but I ended up feeling embarrassed saying that and liking them less and less because discussions about them always seemed to encourage men taking about how she's (despite Gardevoir can be male or female) their waifu and being really creepy about them. It felt like saying I like Gardevoir lumped me in with them.
Fighting game discussions can get this way like with Cammy a few years ago with stuff like "Her butt is her character!" and fans getting furious at the very idea of women wearing pants or aging like men or in some cases, having a personality or coming out as a lesbian (for those who don't know, Cammy has been character who WlW fans having been wanting to come out since the 90s and something Capcom has hinted at for years); basically that wreaks their fantasy or having to share their fantasy with other people.
And it gets more frustrating when companies begin pushing and encouraging this like flanderizing women to appeal to these men (like what's happened I feel to Capcom's Morrigan and Tekken's Anna) and sexualizing and sexualizing them more and more. Or when these fandoms attitudes and actions begin to reflect negatively on the character themself.
For example Renamon from Digimon:
This Digimon I've seen heavily sexualized by men (despite being a Child-level Digimon), treated as the ultimate waifu (which has really transphobic vibes which I'll get to) etc etc which I've often seen used to dismiss that Digimon and character; dismissed as nothing more than furry/waifu bait by other fans.
The thing is though, that's not how the character is treated by the actual fiction. While it was obfuscated by the English Dub of Tamers, Renamon in official Digimon games and media have often been used to represent non-binary and trans identies, often seeing themselves as genderless (using watashi instead of gendered pro-nouns) or identity as men or masculine; Digimon Survive having a Renamon who eventually evolves into a Sakuyamon and still prefers to be considered a man and be called by male pronouns. However sadly, so many people don't realize this because when they first experience them, they see the sexualized fan art and "waifu" crap first.
The term or the actual activity because if it's the latter... Nope, it's absolutely not.
But hey, it's typical to shit on the ways in which women like to interact with their fiction. :)
Yeah shipping in itself isn't bad, hell its something a lot of works fiction encourage (games espcially). I really only gets bad like any sort of fan activities if you try to impose it onto others (like demanding people accept say Shep x Garrus as the true canon relationship and get mad or attacking others in the they prefer Shep x Liara or SxTali etc). I feel like it's often dump on like fanfiction because it's a fandom predominantly (from what I've seen) by women and LGBTQ+ people (I've often noticed that same-sex ship are considered "less real" or valid or different-sex ones).
