Well, 1,2, and 3 are some pretty weak claims to victimization, definitely agree there. Never actually heard any of them posited in a discussion of gender rights and discrimination, but maybe I need to get out more;) Like a commentor below I’m not sure that there is a “patriarchal society” that can think or believe anything. I do see a culture in flux, one that used to be dominated by different values than today, and is now adjusting to new realities.

Cultures are like ecosystems, they develop organically through the response of millions of different players to the conditions at hand, when conditions change ecosystems change, cultures change. When I was in high school parents didn’t divorce, I knew one kid through my school years whose parents had divorced. When I graduated (’69) my parents divorced. Not coincidentally this was shortly after “no-fault” divorces became the legal standard, when neither partner was required to show abuse, cheating, or any reason beyond “irreconcilable differences” to break the marriage.

My mom got the house, the car, some child support for my younger sister. I was emancipated (legally on my own, no further responsibility from either parent for me) my dad, who was recently laid off from a 20 year job at a large corporation, got to move out and start over with a dog, a van, his sporting gear and his clothes.

More than any other factor, economics ruled those cultural changes. “Rosy” showed that women could compete in the workplace, the girls of my generation all expected to some degree to have careers, and most did. The national economy had fully shifted from muscle power to machine and information power, leveling the employment playing field, and given more opportunity to compete economically, women like my mom, who were unhappy in their marriages left those marriages, creating a whole new cultural paradigm.