Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up

Its treating people different based on gender. It depends very much on semantics whether you call that sexism. It is certainly not the form of sexism that people these days are most worried about.

That would be discrimination based on sex, but no it would not be sexist in this case. Now if, for example, he treated people based on gender because he felt women belong in the kitchen, then that would be both sexist and discriminatory.

The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.

> The words sexism/racism often get confused with discrimination.

Oxford definition of “sexism” via Google:

> prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex

The definition of sexism seems to include discrimination. What definition are you using?

There's no confusion, just a difference in upbringing. I was raised being told that racism was discrimination due to race and sexism was discrimination due to sex. I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes in a professional setting. There were many in my age group that were raised the same.

The problem is how politically charged the word 'sexist' is. I'm aware that the boring unemotional dictionary definition is treating someone differently on the basis of gender, but in reality if a guy is hanging out in a women's toilet its not generally seen as sexist/sexism to ask him to leave (even though this is discrimination on the basis of sex).

So labelling anything where two genders are treated differently as 'sexism' or 'sexist' I don't think actually matches the modern usage of the word. I think the difference is it's usually used in a negative connotation and the type of discrimination is seen as non-acceptable - for instance most people wouldn't call a girl-band or boy-band sexist because they select their members based on gender, while most would call an employer sexist if they had a generic business and tried to segregate their teams into single-gender teams. Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.

> if a guy is hanging out in a women's toilet its not generally seen as sexist/sexism to ask him to leave (even though this is discrimination on the basis of sex)

Enforcing a rule isn’t discrimination. The rule itself may or may not be discrimination.

> Most people still don't have a problem with boy bands (i.e. a male-only-team in a music workplace), thus not sexist, but do have a problem with male-only-teams in other workplaces, thus sexist.

They get the label “boy band” after they form. If they were a mixed gender group (like a workplace) and kicked out a talented female musician because they wanted to be male-only, that would be sexist.

It isn't directly treating people different based on gender.

It is treating people differently based on the damage that they can do to you. Generally a woman accusing you of being sexist is will do more damage than a man doing the same (not universally, but usually). So while the outcome is equivalent the decision is based on the very real threat, not the gender.

Not answering for GP, but some people believe you cannot be sexist against men, or racist against white people.

I don’t remember seeing rules in the dictionary definition, and I also struggle to believe that something can’t be sexist/sexism if the laws allow it. I think in the western world we would say that another country banning women from driving would be an example of sexism, albeit within the laws of the country.

Also, I hate to break the illusion for you, but boy bands are often planned as such and are manufactured by the record labels. It’s not a coincidence, for example, that the spice girls are all girls - that’s because they only auditioned girls because they were making the spice girls.

I see this move towards redefining sexism and racism to be the prevalent form of negative sex or race based discrimination, instead of all forms of discrimination.

That's why I stated it is a semantic discussion.

On the one hand, I think this redefining is good. Because when we talk about the problems of racism and sexism, the prevalent form of negative discrimination (so in the west, racism by white people, and sexism by males) are what we tend to mean.

On the other hand, other forms of discrimination also happen, and we need words to describe them. Racism and sexism used to describe that, but by now such describing tends to feel bad. It tends to feel like drawing an equivalence between e.g. a white person not being able to use the N-word being 'just as bad' as the oppression faced by black people in America.

I feel we need separate words for both the systemic (non intentional) oppression of people by sex and gender. And discrimination based on sex and gender in general. Originally racism and sexism used to describe the latter. Slowly we are moving towards having it mean the former, without having new words for the latter. Ideally wish we had just come up with new words for the latter. But that would have lost some of the power that comes from calling someone a racist or a sexist.

In conclusion, semantics matter, and are hard.

> a white person not being able to use the N-word being

If that is what comes to mind when people talk about white discrimination, then there is a large disconnect in the discussion when talking about the semantic meaning of sexism and racism.

If two people apply to a university and the critical distinction why one got excluded is race, then that is a negative discrimination. If two people are accused of identifical crime and the the critical distinction why one got a harsher sentence is race, then that is negative discrimination. If two people are illegally demonstrating on the street and one get violently assaulted for doing so, and the critical distinction is race, then that is negative discrimination.

Some of that negative discrimination harms white people, some black people, some both in different circumstances, and there is many more situation where such discrimination occurs. Same in regard to gender.

> I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes

The woke reactions would be like: It’s really saying, "I don’t really see what makes you you". We want you to see the benefit of the diversity people bring to the table. Being colour-blind used to be woke, now it's whitewashing.

My comment: apparently they need the attributes to define the identity they rally around. You can't not see them anymore because it is interpreted as ignoring their identity.