What Makes Something Sexist?

People can be stupid or harmful to others without something like sexism being part of it, no matter who the victim is or what the act is, and a person can be sexist (or racist, etc.) to people who are like them in the characteristic in question.  For instance, a man can be sexist to another man by assuming he has a certain psychological trait because he is a man, which is a category of the body.  Sexism is still more often socially objected to when someone mistreats people of the opposite gender instead of their own.  What actually makes a given kind of treatment sexist, moreover?  Although it would by default be sexist for a man to strike women because they are women, maybe fallaciously thinking women need it to "remember their place," a man merely striking a woman is not—and this does not mean the behavior is not evil for other reasons!  Conflation of the two on the level of cultural dialogue is easy to see past for the person who looks to reason for his or her worldview.

If a man pays for a woman's meal on a romantic outing, there is not intrinsically anything sexist that has happened: this depends on his philosophical stances and his intentions.  A man who pays simply out of kindness or by chance is not sexist, but if he does so because he thinks he morally has to as a man or that a woman should have little to no financial autonomy so that she depends on male romantic partners for support, he is of course sexist.  The outward act can be exactly the same, even down to the words used in those moments.  It is the philosophical belief(s) and intent that makes the man misogynistic—and obviously misandrist as well, for he thinks men have additional obligations that women do not based on psychological stereotypes, something both false and harmful.

Let us to back to physical harm but with the genders switched.  If a woman hits a man outside of self-defense (or in administrating whatever corporal punishment might be required in justice for something he has done), she has committed assault against him whether or not she, the man, or their culture would acknowledge it as such, but it is only a sexist act if there is a misandrist belief or intention behind it.  She would have to think that men deserve to be hit because they are men, that her deed would not be as severe or immoral as if a man needlessly hit a woman, or something else specifically about gender.  This would add layers to her stupidity or evil beyond the act of assault.  She is not automatically sexist for hitting a man, however unjust such a thing is on its own.  The expression of an irrationally discriminatory worldview, thus a logically erroneous and (if morality exists) morally unjust philosophy, makes her sexist.

These are just two examples of things people could do to someone of the opposite gender.  Whether positive (helping someone financially) or negative (assaulting someone) left to itself, a behavior towards another person is not sexist because of who it is done to, but the worldview and personal motivations it expresses.  The same is true of racism and ageism and other such things.  If a person hurts an elderly individual, they have inflicted harm; if it was done because the victim was elderly, then there is an aspect of ageism and perhaps ableism along with the act itself.  There is a vital difference between an immoral act and an immoral act with inherently irrationalistic, further immoral desires behind it.  At the same time, this means that not everyone who mistreats a person of a particular gender, race, and so on is respectively sexist, racist, or otherwise driven by erroneous discrimination.