I think socially liberal movements have made so much progress, at least on paper, that they are running out of things to do. They went from fighting for the vote for women (50%), then Jim Crow for blacks (13%), to marriage equality for gays (2-5%), that now they are on to bathroom equality for transgender people (much less than 1%). So the intensity per oppressed person they are fighting for has to increase to satisfy the market demand for socially progressive activism. Note that the bathroom equality fight is framed in terms of transgender individuals getting “killed” which is the extreme outlier case (and even was in Jim Crow, but less so).
I think the 'on paper' part is crucial. Rather than find new things to fight for, perhaps now is the time to double down and make that 'on paper' more real society-wide. I'm assuming it isn't, but I hope I'm wrong about that.
While personally I support a lot of the even more 'forward-thinking' fights, I do think it's become more and more clear that a lot of people have difficulty accepting all those things we've made progress on, on paper. I worry about that disconnect.
It's a bit like wanting to add new features when perhaps refactoring old code is the better thing to do.
> They went from fighting for the vote for women (50%)
Technically, more like around 30%. It only included white women. Also, Jim Crow didn’t just target blacks but all non-whites, or what was considered not white.
I wouldn’t frame it as “running out of things to do”. It’s more like playing catch up to the ideals America was supposedly founded on.
Just to be clear, the liberal activist community didn't start the bathroom fight. That was something that hadn't been an issue before that conservatives turned into one for easy "they're coming for your children" points.
Well there's "socially liberal" movements, and then there's actually progressive movements. If you think that strikes, unionization, popularity of Sanders or exploding membership of DSA, IWW and other organizations are just about bathroom equality, you're missing the forest among the trees.