We're very identity politics conscious in modern day life when you think about it. There are all sorts of messages when it comes to things like race, sexuality and ones gender/sex. It's reached into government policy, MSM and society. Increasingly into education now too.

It's very easy for people to take one of those attributes and to create an identity for themselves over it. To take offence because it feels like an attack on themselves when someone is critical or questions that identity. People get very attached. Especially when it is their main value system and they don't have anything else to fall back on. They collectivise themselves, and feel they belong in this group.