Explaining The Selective Vigor Of The Feminist "Woke"
Louise Perry writes at Quillette about what she calls The Aziz Ansari paradox: Why so many feminists go viciously angry over Aziz Ansari not paying attention to or ignoring the emotional discomfort of his date "while the most extreme end of the sexual violence spectrum is comparatively ignored."

Although statistics on sexual violence are notoriously hard to calculate, studies consistently show that, contrary to the picture presented in the media, young women not at university are actually more at risk than those who are. This is probably because of demographic factors, rather than anything peculiar to higher education. Young women who are poor, have an intellectual disability, or are from certain ethnic minorities, are disproportionately likely to be victims of all kinds of violent crime, including rape, and are also less likely to go to university. Campuses are rife with sexism, but they are not uniquely dangerous places when we look at the wider picture across society. Why, then, has the issue of campus rape become such a cause célèbre?

Perry explains:

[Consider] the effect of the Iron Law of Institutions, a term coined by the writer Jon Schwartz. Put simply, the law states that most people care more about their position within an institution than they do about the success of the institution as a whole. The result is behavior that looks bizarre from the outside, but makes perfect sense to those within a particular group. Schwartz initially used the term to describe the internal workings of the Democratic party, but his idea can just as easily be applied to political movements as well as political parties--third wave feminism, for instance.

Within such activist groups, individuals gain status by demonstrating their commitment to the cause--showing themselves to be more pure, more radical, more woke than their rivals. The endlessly updating vocabulary is a manifestation of this: knowing that the correct nomenclature is "trans woman" rather than "transwoman" marks you out as a member of the woke elite, entitled to 'call out' those beneath you in the hierarchy. The website Everyday Feminism is an excellent place to view this ideological arms race. The site regularly publishes articles that are so extreme they're almost beyond parody--for instance, insisting that it's oppressive to expect activists to behave rationally, or scolding well-meaning supporters by telling them "your tears take up too much space." This kind of message does no good for the cause, since it alienates would-be allies. But there is an internal logic to it.

Within the most intense third wave feminist circles, individuals can increase their standing by demonstrating not only that they're purer than their contemporaries, but also purer than feminists who have gone before. I think this is where the perverse attitude towards the sex trade comes from--many young women associate anti-prostitution activism with the Christian Right, or else with older feminists they view as prudish old dinosaurs. Pro-prostitution activism therefore becomes a rational response, even if it is inconsistent with the rest of the worldview. Other horrors are defended for the same reason. Third wave feminists will often minimise the harms of female genital mutilation (the woke term is actually "cutting" rather than "mutilation") because criticism of it is associated with the Right and therefore branded as colonialist. Even though FGM causes unbearable suffering to women and girls of color, sometimes resulting in death, refusing to condemn the practice is seen as anti-racist. Such behavior looks bizarre from the outside, but it makes sense to those within the movement.

It's all about getting standing in the world of the woke. It's basically a fundamentalist religion with the god stuff taken out, run by a mob of virtue-signaling women.