Yeah, not at all a tangent.
It's actually a really big subject that I would like to see get a lot more attention.
The problem when we think of women's rights, equality, and public perspective on the "feminine" is that we are looking at such a narrow area of history that we are missing the huge, sweeping ways that the feminine has suffered for thousands of years and are instead focusing on a very small number of incidents in recent years to formulate our opinions.
I like your point about feminine associated words: I am actually thinking of a way to discuss that in another post, where I would try to explore how our negative associations with femininity have resulted in an unhealthy definition of masculinity.