I’m not blaming the victims, I’m attempting to understand what’s going on so that something can actually be done to fix it. Also, don’t forget that the oppressed can become oppressors, and repeat the trauma they’ve experienced onto others. But it’s not only victims who are to blame, obviously.

In my mind, there are a few paths forward which are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, telling people to not enforce the lame social expectation is a good thing to do. But it only goes so far, often the people who are enforcing stupid expectations are stubborn and have other traits that prevent them from doing the right thing even if you point it out to them. So another course of action is for the oppressed to work together (and/or work with less-oppressed folks) to disrupt the oppression, take back their power, and force the oppressors to change their ways, if not their views. Being a victim does not always make you powerless, although it does reduce your power and can make you feel even more disempowered than you are. So the next step is to find strategies that overcome and/or work around those limitations.

edit: to put it a bit more concisely: there are people perpetuating the problem and people affected by the problem. It’s not victim blaming to recognize that some of the people affected by a problem are also perpetuating it. Otherwise recognizing toxic masculinity would be victim blaming too, since men are negatively impacted by it and some of those same men perpetuate it