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I think a part of the issue is that the blinders people put on themselves are precluding them from seeing the reality of the past. And instead always default to ingroup bias. Why is the 'now' better than the 'then'? Well, I perceive that my ingroup is stronger now than then. OK... Is that good, relevant or even true? Is the 'amount' of feminism in the world correlated with the things you like in practice? Or are we just chasing our pathologies and perceptions of what should make us happy whilst actually finding ourselves in situations that don't. Or worse, being so blinded by our perceptions and beliefs that we preclude ourselves from recognizing that they are a part of the problem.
For example, by exalting a mythology of how bad life was for women in the past because they had less feminism and freedom, or how bad life was in the past for blacks because of drinking fountain exclusivity, one is not creating a virtual reality that allows people to experience the reality of the past. One is just creating a victimary narrative that says ones ingroup was being victimized back then. A cogent example of this being the fact that blacks and women today are not modulating their emotional experiences of struggle against the patriarchy or white supremacy based on objectivity. They very much feel put upon. The 'system' is still very much against them. And to any end that it is too obviously not, we just invent new theories and mechanisms to explain and rationalize our victimary disposition. Quite literally, in real time, we invent a new reality. What a 'huge surprise' that it shares total emotional congruity with the alleged old reality...
Part of the observation being made, which I feel a lot of the replies to your post are missing the point of, is that the reason why women weren't choosing to look fondly at the past isn't because it was objectively worse time in the context of what was being discussed. You can still have superior mechanisms and social technology in the past despite not having running water. Pointing to the fact you don't have running water is not a relevant argument against those things. Yet that is what many women are allegedly doing with regards to evaluating everything with regards to 'feminism'. Which, in reality is just serving as a proxy for the perceived interest of the ingroup.
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