Adding one I've heard: women are capable of granting the gift of life, which is the greatest ability and brings the greatest sense of fulfillment. So it all balances out.

They honestly thought this was a good argument.

Equality is not legally enshrined everywhere.

This is indeed another problem. Successful change tends to be incremental, but when dealing with social issues going "incrementally" basically leaves people in the dust.

There was a lot of bad blood over gay marriages, for example, in some gay/lesbian quarters when that hard-won right was finally achieved (though there's loads of signs of this backsliding now because ... well ... gestures vaguely in the direction of the world). After a major social bloodbath they'd finally accomplished a major goal only to get "sandbagged" (as they called it: their words not mine!) by the trans community basically saying, again from their perspective, "how dare you celebrate your victory when we're still in chains?"

And that's the problem right there. From a strictly analytical point of view, gay marriage was a HUGE victory for the progressive movement and an incremental change in the right direction ... but trans people were also right. Because people aren't statistics, and if the statistics show that things are "better" in some ways, the people who aren't in that "better" crowd are still suffering. And are rightly upset that, again from their perspective, it seems that their allies are ending the battle because they got what they wanted. The numerically smaller group is being asked, in essence, to act as triage. To act as cannon fodder and to be patient as they waited for their turn. This is profoundly unfair; it may also be profoundly necessary. (After all women started to get rights while queer society had to wait, right? Women got the vote before gay marriage was a thing.)

Fortunately that brief period of bad blood ended and we've kept up the pressure, but it highlights another serious problem: that exhaustion you mentioned. The battle is wearying and seems never-ending. Every time a gain is made here, there's either a falling back there, or a new battle to be fought in another place. People have limited energy (and that energy evaporates as they get older on top of that!) and at some point the question starts entering our minds: "What's the point?"

Now add in the fact that men aren't even really in the fight for women's rights. (SOME men are, but men as a whole are not.) They're viewing it as them giving things up. Many of them do it willingly. At first. But then, from their perspective, each time they do so, a new demand for them to give something up rises and ... well ... they get weary too. And unlike women, or LGBTQ+, racial groups, or ... they don't have a vested interest in effecting the change. (They view it as giving things up, remember! It's always been a struggle to present a positive face from progressive change to the dominant sector of society, even without the bad-faith blowback from those opposed to us.)

And I wish I knew how to solve that running out of steam and resentment at the never-ending struggle thing equitably. (I say this who's in the running out of steam stage herself.) I mean, using myself as an example, I could just stop and hand the reins off to the younger generation. But then I'm sitting here and seeing the younger generation make photocopies of every mistake my generation made (who ourselves made Gestetner copies of every mistake social activists made before us, who transcribed in monastic cells every mistake social activists made before them, presumably). This seems counter-productive. But I'm increasingly out of the energy needed to keep going on.¹ Maybe I should just step back and hope the generation after this one uses better quality paper and high quality laser printers to make their mistakes.

¹ Before anybody asks in private, no I'm not in a great place right now. And no I won't be sharing why.

Women’s rights are not even legally enshrined everywhere, including in the U.S.

I have a stronger take. I don't think most people, whatever their social group, cares about the rights of other groups.

In Canada we have the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) as an object lesson. The NAC was a powerful force in politics that forced things like better handling of the Canada Pension Plan for women who left employment to rear children, larger and sharper teeth for the laws against workplace harassment, and the specific inclusion of women's rights in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As it grew in power and influence, it started to grow in diversity as well. Queer women, women of various ethnicities, etc. were brought into the fold ... and then promptly ignored or even steam-rollered over by the white, middle-class majority of the NAC. Their stated policy at one point was that they were working for all women and only policies that impacted all women were worth fighting for. The fact that, say, black, Asian, or most especially, native women had issues that differered from the issues white middle class women faced was ignored or, sometimes, even derided as unimportant. The constant infighting this engendered made the group lose its political impact to the point that when the government pulled the plug on its funding it was really a(n unintentional) mercy killing in disguise. (Unintentional in that the intent was to kill the group; the mercy was unintentional.)

So here we had one of the most powerful voices for women in any country on the planet torn up from within because it was created by and dominated by middle class white women who absolutely did not care (for the most part) about the issues facing, say, native women. Native women were getting killed. White middle class women were getting lower salaries than me. Both are problems, but one seems just a wee tad more important than the other to me. (But what do I know? I'm not white so my opinion didn't count. Yes there is lingering bitterness. Does it show?)

You can find this story again and again all over the place. The strongest anti-immigration voices in Canada with each wave of new immigrants was ... ... the previous waves of immigrants. Ukrainians didn't want Italian immigrants. Italian immigrants didn't want the Russian Jews. Russian Jews didn't want the Ethiopians. Ethiopians didn't want the Iraqi nor the Iranians. And so on and so on and so on. Each group seems to be laser focused on itself only and genuinely doesn't care about other groups.

Men not caring about women's rights is just part and parcel of that same element of terrible humanity. Everybody cares about the in-group. Nobody (statistically speaking) cares about the out-group. Hell, even the so-called "Zoomers" who claim to be anti-bigotry of all kinds ... are intensely ageist. There's always the in-group and the out-group, even among those who most loudly proclaim their universality.

Does this mean we should give up? HELL NO! I'll take a page from The Who here and say "we've launched the revolution, 'history ain't changed', so pick up our guitars again and launch the next!" Human behaviour is a shit stain on morality. But shit stains can be brushed out with effort. The darker elements of human nature can be slowly removed from the fabric of society.