Why does the fantasy genre have such a bad reputation?

[Farseer]

I'd have to say that I enjoy journeying into 'other worlds' but, as much of what we read within a fantasy plot/story is based on reality, the events and emotions etc are all as 'true' for me as if they had happened at some point in our own history or as if they were happening right now.

Giving elves or wizards or vampires emotions, troubles and pleasures that mirror our own is no different reading material for me, especially as a not-very-well-travelled and isolated Australian, than reading an account of, say, an Inuit, African or Japanese person. Such people live in worlds with totally different cultures, landscapes, languages etc than what I know and thus their worlds are as other-worldly to me as a fantasy world constructed by an imaginative author.

In this, I don't think I could ever say that I read fantasy to flee from reality any more than I attempt to flee from things when I read a non-fiction book about another culture or read a fiction novel based on a true story. All may take me out of my own real world but I am still experiencing the world via another's perspective. As often as not, I might pick up a fantasy book to distract me from my own dramas only to be plunged into the life of a character who is experiencing much the same thing as I am...and their grief or frustration or anguish compounds my own!