I think it's just that everyone realised that powerful people can be browbeaten into compliance with almost trivial levels of complaining if it's phrased right.

I think it's just that everyone realised that powerful people can be browbeaten into compliance with almost trivial levels of complaining if it's phrased right. All you have to do is say, "I'm a woman and this is hurtful" (as this article says explicitly is happening in Facebook) and executives, politicians, academics, regulators etc all immediately fall into line. Telling a woman to toughen up is culturally impossible which means all sorts of people have realised they can grab the driving seat of powerful organisations without actually climbing to the top. All the power, none of the responsibility - who can resist such an offer? So we get this cascade of ludicrous complaints, like the senior police officer in the UK who was suspended for saying "our behaviour must be whiter than white" because using a common idiom for 'not corrupt' is now racist. There's no logic to it, but the ability to anonymously exercise power over a huge organisation at will is irresistable to too many. This will end only when strong leaders start firing people who try to claim offence at trivial things. The pendulum will eventually swing back - it has to, organisations that don't let it swing will be destroyed by the constant infighting over power.