If you agree with Katherine Heigl, who co-starred in Judd Apatow’s hit Knocked-Up, you might say “yes” to this headline. She’s been quoted on the record stating “it was hard for me to love the movie” because of its portrayal of women, for which she’s getting a lot of flack from Apatow & Co. When asked on The View yesterday about sexism, Apatow was clearly annoyed; Rogen too is miffed. They, of course, have reason to be pissed: it’s harder to pull in $150 million-plus in worldwide grosses if no women will see your movie. If women think Apatow is an evil-woman-hater, they’ll tell their husbands and boyfriends to stay home. Not like they have much sway over what movies get watched. Women will go see Sex and the City, but guys don’t want to see that! But girlfriends will compromise and see Transformers. So goes America.

So, does Heigl have a point?

Maybe. It depends on how you define “sexist.” After all, sexist,” like “racist,” is a loaded word and it means different things to different people. For some, a movie basically has to torture women to qualify as sexist. For others, it’s more subtle. That’s where Apatow comes in.

In his films, women are at least no more deplorable than the men. Heigl’s claim that the men are more “lovable” may have some merit, but they are often stoners (Pineapple Express), slackers (Knocked Up) and naifs (40 Year-Old Virgin). Apatow’s “dude” humor paints men as over-grown children. They are not chivalrous, proud or respectable. Funny People, opening today, seems likely to continue this trend.

But the sexism here is about women. And the women have at least one point: women, in Apatow films, are the least developed characters. The most glaring example of this is in Knocked Up. Heigl’s character, a rising star at E!, decides to have a baby, instead of an abortion, and why we have no clue why. The single most important plot point, the one that starts the whole movie, goes unexplained. We have no insight into her psychology. This is especially unforgivable since she is clearly a career woman in an image-obsessed industry, and as fashionable as babies are in Hollywood right now, having a baby as an on-camera personality is still a tough decision.

Which brings us to the problem: Judd Apatow’s movies are about men. That’s their subject. There’s simply no space for women to begin with. The movies are only sexist insofar as they completely ignore the existential concerns of the women who act as comic relief.

How bad is Apatow? He is hardly the sole offender. In fact, the vast majority of Hollywood and independent movies are dude-centric. Of the top 20 movies of the past year, only two can be said to focus on women’s lives in any meaningful way (Twilight, The Proposal). Even indie darlings aimed at women like (500) Days of Summer are mostly about the boys: watching it, we have no idea why Zooey Deschanel’s character disses paramour Joseph Gordon-Levitt (that the first word in the film is “bitch” is the explanation; this is a movie written by a man scorned).

So is Apatow sexist? Only if most movies are. Is it a reason to boycott his films? Only if you stop watching mainstream movies altogether. It’s great to have principles, but if you must, please be consistent.