Didn't read the whole thread, well, because.

One additional nuance: there are those fminisits who first breached the walls. You are correct that they often do not get enough credit for their courage. Here's why: many more of them either gave up for the reasons you cite or failed to support the second wave.

Accordingly, those of us in the second wave feel not as much kinship as we might otherwise. We think it was up to that first set of landers to try to take the beaches, and instead we had to. That leads to some resentment in the ranks, and some wondering: how exactly can they think they are entitled to something they left ME to fight for? How can they understand if I don't want what they want because they were great theoriticians and lousy practioners?

A more concrete example: When I started my professional career in the 80s, we still had to fight for paid maternity leave. We got surprisingly little support from those who came before either because a) they had dropped out because the fight was such a PIA or b) they felt they had done without and so could we or c) they had taken the benefits in run. Naively, we surmised they had made it more difficult which was wrong. They had made it thinkable, but it was still difficult.