Because around the times of Occupy Wall Street the Left has been hijacked and redirected from addressing economic issues relevant to the majority (property ownership/retirement perspectives, cost of raising children, medical/education costs) to manufacturing intangible problems and directing the society's passion to solving them. So the fact that <1% of the population feels bad when called with wrong pronouns gets massive attention, and the fact that >50% of the population has massive debts and lives paycheck-to-paycheck is considered unworthy of discussion.

It has nothing to do with self-worth. It's all about the leftist societal subversion of men.