[pbhjpbhj]

> it's the quantity of it that makes the difference //

Surely not, surely it's the reason for the rudeness - if the reason is based [at all] on the sex of the person one is being rude to then it can veritably be called sexism. Otherwise it's just being rude to another person.

[zachwooddoughty]

I think the argument is that if people tend to "just be rude" to women more often than to men, then that is evidence of sexism. Even if there isn't a conscious reason for the rudeness.

There clearly isn't any easy way to measure "aggregate rudeness" to be able to prove that women receive a higher quantity of "just being rude", but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there.

[pbhjpbhj]

Oh indeed, it's possibly impossible to measure objectively - certainly in any given situation, even if sexist epithets are used, it's largely impossible to tell if a person is being sexist.

I wasn't suggesting that it was a necessarily conscious thing either; just that it either is or isn't sexist based on other things than quantity. Aggregate rudeness won't even do, if you happen to see a woman you don't get on with every day and are rude to them then your aggregate rudeness towards women could be huge without you being sexist; equally you could hate and avoid women and so have a very low aggregate rudeness towards them.

[chongli]

You would think so. But the reason for rudeness rarely comes up. To those on the receiving end, the damage has been done and in the case of racism or sexism it is falling into a pattern that screams "You are not welcome here" to the person.

It's like the people who get arrested while walking home from work because they happened to enter a protest area. The reason for their being there is totally unrelated to the protest yet the effect of their being there is to increase the size of the crowd by one.

We can argue until we're blue in the face that this is unjust and the truth is that it is: it's unjust for everyone involved. It creates further entrenchment and higher barriers between people.