A Bedtime Story
Once upon a time, in the 60s and before, women suffered because of gender expectations. They were not supposed to work outside of the home, could not get credit as men were assumed to be breadwinners, there were few childminders or nurseries, women had to be married to get contraception, they could not join pension schemes, were paid less than men and so on.
So they bravely fought against this, and gradually all of those things improved. Not only that, but girls tended to do better than boys in education, so on a more level playing field they did well in the workplace too, particularly in the professions, where educational attainment mattered. At other levels, men who grew up seeing their grandfathers and fathers as 'head of the household' who doled out housekeeping to their wives found themselves unemployed as the manufacturing base of the UK was decimated in the 80s. Some remained unemployed, and others had to take jobs on zero hours contracts or accept minimum wage when they used to earn a lot more. Their own wives may have done better at school than they did, and in any case women were better in jobs in the service sector, as they had 'female' skills such as communication and hospitality. This meant that the traditional family set up with man as breadwinner and woman as homemaker changed there, too.
Some men were delighted to see their wives become more independent, and encouraged their success. They also enjoyed being able to spend time being 'hands-on' fathers, and husbands who were friends with their wives rather than 'head of household'. Others, however, (and some women who were envious of what they saw their daughters or DILs achieve) objected, and pushed for the Old Order to return. In their view, women were supposed to be the ones who wanted to wear certain clothes and join clubs like the WI, and men who wanted to do so threatened the preferred order, so must be in the wrong body and 'become' women. Women who wanted to do 'manly' things and were good at them also threatened the Old Order, so they must also be in the wrong body and 'become' men. Some young people who were bewildered by the whole thing and didn't buy into either set of stereotypes declared themselves non-binary or gender-neutral, but disappointingly for them this didn't make any real statement, as so was pretty much everyone else.
An side-effect of this was that these new 'women' could make sure that the real ones had nowhere to call their own. No safe places where men could not go, and no female shortlists or positive discrimination - in fact it became impossible for the authorities to even know whether women were being discriminated against as they no longer existed as a sex class. In Sport, where strength often matters, women found it very difficult to win against men, and in areas such as Music, where men had dominated until there were women's award categories, they slipped further down the popularity lists. A Dark Gloom hung over the land.
Then along came some bolshy women who were fed up with all of this, and started to complain. They were called nasty names and threatened in their workplaces and online. The pretend women, the old-fashioned men and their female supporters joined together to stop the bolshy women from having meetings. They called themselves 'allies' and infiltrated workplaces, universities and schools and turned children against parents and colleagues against one another. They refused to allow free speech or any form of debate, and anyone who didn't go along with their rules was 'outed' and not allowed to speak about their views.
One day, however, the allies went too far, and the bolshy women realised that they had support from other people who hadn't realised just how bad things had been getting. Even the government and the Big Bad Leader began to realise that it was unfair. Increasingly, people began to shout that the Emperor had no clothes and they were believed. The worm began to turn, and the Dark Gloom brightened.
People went back to being happy in their own sex, and ignored a lot of gender expectations. Men and women were happy to get along with one another and everyone did the jobs they enjoyed and let others do the ones they didn't - nobody was called nasty names and free speech returned to the land. The bolshy women stopped being called nasty names and could get on with sorting out other inequalities, and they all lived happily ever after.
The End