Thanks for writing this interesting article. Doubtless you’ll be excoriated by people who can’t see past the memes they’re trapped inside, but your perspective is a useful one nevertheless.

Personally I’m always intrigued by the way we crave the freedom to do something and then find that resulting freedom scary because the vista it creates is too large for comfort. We humans have small brains and primate group hardwiring that together tend to make us want to be part of a big safe group. Freedom implies, to some degree, foregoing that security. Hence there will be those who embrace artifacts that in some way provide a surrogate return to certainties, even if those certainties are somewhat repellent.

So, ironically, the better conditions become for any particular group within society, the more some members of that group will feel the need for a framework that appears to restore boundaries, even if those boundaries are not particularly desirable. The nice thing about fiction is that it is usually fairly harmless. Unfortunately the level of hyperbole (which is itself a form of fiction) is these days becoming sufficiently extreme that many are emotionally self-harming as a result and some may one day seek to harm others in conformance with the memes they’ve embraced.

Ironically the “we’re all the victims of the patriarchy/rape culture/etc.” is no different from the mentality of emotionally immature adolescent males who believe “society” has condemned them to perpetual celibacy, or the white racists who think “society” is stripping away their natural rights.

In the end, victim mentality is never a road to real progress but merely a self-indulgent avoidance of a reality too complex to be easily encompassed.