Sure, I agree, society and law are not often in sync. Sometimes the law changes first, other times society changes first.
Going back to the voting rights, prior to ~1830 no women had the right to vote, but nor did more than 90% of men. By 1928 all men and all women had the right to vote. So in that 100 year period men went from <10% to 100% and women from 0 to 100%.
We all know about women's suffrage, but nobody seems to mention that it took men about 100 years to achieve it. For women it came almost in one fell swoop starting in 1918 and ending in 1928.
So the assumption is that in the past 100 years men must have achieved "true" equality, but somehow women have not. I say that's rubbish. I think the natural order of things - the order that gave us the pre-1830 laws - has prevailed despite the law. That is to say, a few men have a vastly disproportionate amount of power. Everything else is trivia happening amongst the lower classes.
I'm in general agreement. But that doesn't mean that we should stop talking about feminism. Women's issues continue to be relevant, for example 1 in 4 women has been raped or sexually abused compared to 1 in 20 men. Men's issues are also relevant, for example suicide is three times more common in men than in women in the UK. But neither has to be a distraction from class struggle.
1 in 4 women report having been raped or sexually assaulted compared to 1 in 20 men. I'm not saying it's not a bigger problem for more women, I'm sure it is (after all, there is an entire section of men that get off on making people, especially women, feel vulnerable). But it's easy to get carried away with a subset of a larger problem.
I feel like a lot of feminism nowadays is confused with real issues (like what you mentioned) and the fake "patriarchy" shit which is a distraction from problems unrelated to feminism, namely oligarchy.
No doubt there are some feminists that focus on trivial things, and who get a lot of negative air time especially on TV shows that like to send up progressive ideas.
That said I think patriarchal gender norms are still an issue. It doesn't mean that all women suffer more than all men. But there are social expectations stemming from gender roles where men are perceived as leaders and providers, and women are seen as carers and sex objects. And men and women both suffer as a result. I suspect sexual assault against women is so prevalent precisely because of those patriarchal gender norms. Men are often not guided in how to process difficult emotions, and are conditioned to see sexual conquest as something that makes them powerful. On top of which, pornography consistenly associates sex with a certain level of violence and male dominance. The result is such an explosive cocktail of messages that it's almost predictable that sexual assault and domestic violence is an outcome.
Going back to the voting rights, prior to ~1830 no women had the right to vote, but nor did more than 90% of men. By 1928 all men and all women had the right to vote. So in that 100 year period men went from <10% to 100% and women from 0 to 100%.
We all know about women's suffrage, but nobody seems to mention that it took men about 100 years to achieve it. For women it came almost in one fell swoop starting in 1918 and ending in 1928.
So the assumption is that in the past 100 years men must have achieved "true" equality, but somehow women have not. I say that's rubbish. I think the natural order of things - the order that gave us the pre-1830 laws - has prevailed despite the law. That is to say, a few men have a vastly disproportionate amount of power. Everything else is trivia happening amongst the lower classes.