So there are literary merits to the book, it does have a certain black humor about it. Well, the night before I wrote this article I saw The Silence of The Lambs , an extremely popular film which has been critically acclaimed. Yet the only protest I've heard about Silence was in its negative portrayal of the skinning character as a homosexual, nothing about the treatment of women. The only difference between American Psycho and The Silence of The Lambs is in the point of view. American Psycho is what Silence would have been like if it had been told from the Buffalo Bill character's point of view.
Silence is acceptable because it is told from the female protagonist's point of view.
Strong female characters exist in American Psycho , they're just seen through the sick mind of Patrick Bateman. Not very well, I'm afraid. Ellis wrote American Psycho to get attention, and he got it. I've never read one of his novels before and probably never will again. It is not a great novel by any standard, but it is occasionally very funny, sometimes quite repugnant, and manages to make a weak but definite point about the 80s.