They engage in a form of sexism called benevolent prejudice. Benevolent prejudice is a form of prejudice that involves kindness but still is treating someone based off their identity instead of the content of their character, often in a patronizing way. For example, many people might think conservatives are more racist than liberals towards people of color, but actually, liberals are probably just as racist, but engage in benevolent racism rather than hostile racism. For example, conservatives treated the successes of black and white or female and male athletes comparably, whereas liberals treated the black or female ones more favorably. Liberals also were more likely to dumb down their language when talking to blacks than whites, but conservatives didn't do so. There's more examples.

Social justice advocates often engage in benevolent prejudice, and they only condemn it once it becomes way too overt. Feminists engage in benevolent sexism all the time. They might condemn you for explicitly saying women need to be protected, but feminists do feel this way when you read actions instead of words.

  • Feminists treat women as damsels in distress who will be inevitably raped and killed, often by exaggerating the percentage of women who are raped or abused. They fearmonger constantly about women being helpless damsels in distress who men will hunt and prey on. They dismiss male victims of violence and abuse, and often blame them for what happened by saying "men bring these problems upon themselves", but are immediately responsive when these problems affect women. When you bring up men's problems, they dismiss it as "men need to solve these problems on their own, we don't owe them anything" but insist we all owe women help. They claim they want men to open up more, but in reality, they only condemn that gender role just to portray men as toxic, not to support men. That's why they call gender roles on women "patriarchy or oppression" whereas when it comes to men, its "toxic masculinity", even though men really don't get help because society stigmatizes them or only responds to women's suffering, not because these men want to be "macho".
  • Feminists insist that any woman who commits violence was the victim. She beat her husband? It must've been in self defense! She killed him? She must've been abused! Not only is it a myth that these women were usually abused, but women are actually a considerable percentage of criminals, and the reason why the vast majority are found to be men is because women get away with it more, and the criminal justice system typically doesn't arrest them, and often goes easier on them. Feminists deny that women can be antagonists, and believe most crime is man-against-woman.
  • Feminists infantilize young adult women, and often refer to them as "young girls", "little girls" or even "children" when they date a guy even just 5 hours older, but shrug when a young man dates a middle aged woman. They even cite the "prefrontal cortex is developed by 25" myth as an excuse to infantilize 18-24 year old women and deny them the responsibility to handle making decisions. They basically act like how people acted about white women and black men back in the day. If a black man married a white woman, he must be taking advantage of her and couldn't find someone of his race, and if a 24 year old dates someone just 5 years younger, he's an evil child rapist who can't find someone his age and wants to rape her.
  • Feminists do support traditional gender roles. They just support modern gender roles rather than old ones. Let's be honest, nobody cares if a woman has premarital sex anymore or if she has a career or is unmarried in her mid 20s. Maybe there is a loud minority of redpillers online who say that, but the vast majority of people perceive that as normal these days. Now, feminists view women who marry in her early 20s and have kids as "oppressed", and cite a heavily flawed study proving that unmarried, childless women are happier to normalize women never marrying or having kids. They obviously won't explicitly say: women need to do this or that, but they will imply it by normalizing certain things. They try to normalize women being promiscuous or engaging in casual sex as often as men, and deny the fact that women, regardless of sexual orientation, are not as into casual sex as men. It's also apparently not due to socialization either. They also deny biology playing a role in why women are underrepresented in STEM, and instead of just making STEM more inclusive, they actually just want women to simply become STEM majors without regarding her actual interests just for mere demographics. This is why promoting diversity can be a bit prejudiced itself rather than promoting inclusion, which can help lead to diversity. All in all, feminists are trying to normalize a woman who sleeps around, has an OnlyFans, never marries, doesn't have kids, has a phD, and majors in STEM and wears no bra. They want to normalize being braless instead of having nothing in particular being normalized to begin with. Many of the things they try to normalize often are modern gender roles. It's normal to have premarital sex, hook up or be unmarried at 29. In other words, feminists do support traditional gender roles, they just don't like old gender roles that became mostly irrelevant.
  • Society has always been mostly benevolently sexist towards women, as hostile sexism was found across all countries to be more towards men than women, and the women are wonderful effect was stronger in more traditional countries. More info is on this thread. Feminists take the already existent attitudes towards men and women but highly exaggerates them. They have the same paternalistic attitudes, but with a woke twist.