Sorry we really went from free the nipple, take back the night, slut walks, and ending gender/sex segregation in sports being fucking milquetoast feminism 101 concepts to fucking girl dinner and "I just worry about fairness if we let trans girls play against cis ones" and "it was right of that woman to call the cops on a black man for existing near here in public during the day time because men are all violent monsters" and "radical feminism isn't transphobic we just need to kill all men including trans ones those oppressive traitors" and I will legit never be able to be normal about it. What the FUCK happened. I'd say I wonder what the feminists of my youth would say about this but I'm one and lemme tell ya I want to throw up. Go fucking read bell hooks or do something else useful please because all of this learned helplessness, gender essentialism, and transphobia dressed up as feminism is actively holding us back.
Oppressive forces co-opting the language of progressive politics to mask their conservative agenda because just saying what they literally mean raises red flags even among the centrists they're trying to bring on side?
That, plus masking their intentions has resulted in a lot of self-styled "progressives" also finding themselves believing in and parroting those arguments as well. I've got plenty of friends that consider themselves left wing but would reflexively balk at the idea of women being allowed to go topless in public, or who automatically start to assume there's some validity to trans sport bans (though if you point this out to them they'll often realize their mistake). It's a societally-ingrained habit that's hard to unlearn, and it's even harder when there are folks actively trying to pull the discourse back several decades
