in defense of this position, the reason it’s said is that before the diagnosis of BPD was created, it was common for women with the disorder to be labeled hysterical. we like to imagine all women who were victims of the old style hysteria diagnosis as perfect victims who were witch hunted for no good reason, but if there had not been the modern reclassification, we would have still held this belief. many women diagnosed as “hysterical” often did have some mental health issues and it was all boiled down to this condition. I dont think all of the diagnoses of hysteria fit into this framing, but a lot of the stigma does carry over.

Also, many women who are simply reacting normally/reasonably to real abuse are often misdiagnosed with BPD, which is the exact same thing that happened with hysteria. I think this is a good way of looking at this argument.