Reductionist, yes, reductive, no. I don't take much stock in what people say motivates them to think about things. I think about what environmental factors make thinking about those things a good use of a thinker's time.

"Things are tough all over" is a common refrain when charity is too expensive to practice. People don't say "I LIKE being mean"; they say "I MUST be mean." The urge to not be mean is always there; it is where plus-sum games wait for the opportunity to arise. Then we tell ourselves stories about how bad things were and how we enlightened people are going to make them better. But we can only do what we can do, and it's the doability that matters. There is a tide in the affairs of men....

All rules that oppress serve a purpose. We can argue about whether the rule was ever necessary and, if it was, whether it still is. But enforcement requires energy, and as the benefit of enforcement becomes less evident, the opportunity cost becomes intolerable. So we stop oppressing and pat ourselves on the back. Most straight people don't really care about gay people. But antipathy takes work. Unless there is a population benefit to be derived, indifference is just easier.

Modernists don't "know" what would count as an improvement, but they believe, I submit, that any reduction in arbitrary restriction is progress. If we assume that arbitrary restrictions arose as a response to a given state of technology, then it doesn't seem to me reductive to suggest that any acceptable reduction in such restrictions is made possible by, and, therefore, a response to, a change in the technological environment.