People seek confirmation that their negative traits are positive ones. Why put in effort to win, when you can just get an echo chamber to explain to you that you already won because of XYZ reason.
This isn't limited to the manosphere stuff but it certainly is a big part of it. Any group that uses that other people are full of shit though as evidence that they are the good guys is also trying to pull the same trick.
There is value in feminisim because women's rights are "new" and that is to say that there are people alive who grew up in a time where women's rights were considered a joke. Women received the ability to have their own bank account without a man co signing in 1974. That means MOST Gen X people, when they were born, their mothers were not legally allowed to have a bank account. That isn't ancient history like some folks like to act it is.
It was significantly harder as a writer to research a subject before the 2000s than it is today. This is before Wikipedia and Google where researching a topic like this could take months and misinformation was harder to refute. Look at how they did poor Chakotay.
Writers used personal experience, cliches and stereotypes to inform their characters. I find the Institute characters to be extreme representations of kids that grew up with parents that would go too far to make their kids the smartest.
I think Bashir is "lucky" not because the surgery didn't have extreme side effects. He is lucky because his parents pushing him resulted in him being the type of person that society could accept. His trauma made him a people pleaser rather than a recluse or a hedonist or neurotic.