Should Writers Distance Themselves From Characters?

I've been thinking recently about that gender swapping exercise for screenwriters. The idea is to write your entire script and then flip the genders of all your characters around, without tweaking dialogue unless it specifies gender, in which case you also swap that. Therefore:

MAN

(entering through door)

Yum yum! What's that you're making, honey?

WOMAN

It's your favorite. You know the one.

MAN

Well, I'm going to go watch television and then, after consuming the dinner you made me, refuse to help with the dishes.

WOMAN

That sounds great! Just like every other time it happens, which is always!

Becomes:

WOMAN

(entering through door)

Yum yum! What's that you're making, honey?

MAN

It's your favorite. You know the one.

WOMAN

Well, I'm going to go watch television and then, after consuming the dinner you made me, refuse to help with the dishes.

MAN

That sounds great! Just like every other time it happens, which is always!

This is supposed to be handy for male writers, who can't write women without putting them in traditional roles that are boring, cliché and aggravating to watch. I can't help but think that you aren't very attached to your characters to be able to simply switch them around like that. Not that I think you shouldn't, but doesn't that say something about how much you care about them?

There's another common phrase: "Kill your darlings." It's a good thing to learn how to do, because it weeds out moments that might otherwise stick out like sore thumbs. For instance, a moment you've been planning for days, where the main character flips coffee cups in the air, doesn't seem to fit anywhere but you simply MUST have it in because it's "flipping cool!" That needs to be cut. But again, isn't the point to care about what you're writing too? This seems like it conflicts with what may be the only thing getting you inspired about your project.

Often I'm faced with boring protagonists that I hate and cannot relate to, don't surprise me, or who suffer from Plothead Syndrome, (that is, they can only take actions that calculatingly help the writer's plans for them instead of themselves. I'm sure there's a TV Tropes page for that already, but I'm lazy so I just made up another term for it). Is this because the writer cared too much about their protagonist, so they took away the things that made them interesting, or because they cared so little that they lazily wrote a bland character?

I think that if you're confident that you can write strong female characters and male characters, swap the genders when you're done. Chances are, you're actually bad at writing them. People who are more unsure of their abilities to preform something tend to be more careful and deliberate when preforming that something. And yes, kill your darlings. But keep surprising yourself while writing, and maybe you'll discover new darlings that fit in better with your story.

Why am I writing all this? Well I just found out that there's an all-female version of the Expendables coming out called the Expendabelles. I really, really want it to be awesome, but I'm terrified that it'll just be another Charlie's Angels, which nobody wants or really needs. I think they should take that script for Expendables 4, (I know they've got it around somewhere), and swap the genders and make THAT the Expendabelles script. Then they'd turn the Expendabelles script into the Expendables 4 script. How hilarious would it be if Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Terry Crews started yodeling? Pretty hilarious, if you ask me.