Why does the fantasy genre have such a bad reputation?

[Albertosaurus Rex]

Sometimes, I think it's easier to recognize (for example) social problems when they occur in an imagined culture and then contrast to what you leaned from such a story to the ~real~ world. (Good) fantasy still carries in it moral teachings and high values that are so often completely lacking in (modern) literature, the same kind of stuff we used to find in fairy-tales. And I believe many readers take some of those things with them when they close the book after the final page, so that they always carry with them parts of the imagined reality and especially what they learned of themselves and other humans while visiting it. I guess this is actually the very thing that some people find problematic or even dangerous - I just think it shows that we humans still have a hunger for the such things.

I think you hit the nail right on the head there. For example, if you asked me what the Farseer and Tawny Man books (in short, the books about Fitz) were about, I would say that it was (among other things) about taking responsibility.

I have been thinking about what any literature can teach readers. It started when I read an article in a Dutch newpaper about the novel Twee vrouwen (Two Women), centering around a lesbian relationship. "It shows us that, regardless of gender, we can become completely entranced by another person..." No, I thought. It doesn't show anything. Those people have never existed. All a book can ever convey is what the author thinks about a certain matter, and thus, maybe, in a very roundabout way something about the world itself. And whether the author chooses to do so in a real or imagined setting, that which the author wants to tell us will still shine forth. (And who doesn't like some dragons thrown into the mix?)

Of course, this does not apply to those cases in which real-world historical or scientific information is integrated into the story. In fact, good "hard" sf should be a double whammy for this very reason.