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Sure, but belief + said decision is still racism, even if there was no desire to harm anyone behind it. And that type of decision making is often what people want to spread awareness about and litigate against.
But the "decision" part is doing all the work here: If someone were to categorically refuse hiring black people, that would generally be considered racism no matter the motivation. If anything, the belief would be the closest candidate to a valid justification.
So it's not about the belief, the belief is a red herring. To conclude racism, you need to observe the decision, which as @FtttG pointed out doesn't automatically follow from the belief. If you equivocate between belief and belief + decision, you'll incorrectly conclude racism.
That's fair. My main point is that malice does not factor into racism either. FtttG claimed that the only way something is racist is if the motivation is to bring harm to the other race. I outlined a different motivation that is not about actively harming anyone, but still leads to a racist decision. My point is that racism is simply discrimination based on race. Whether your motivation for this discrimination is neutral or harmful does not change that.
Fair enough, and I agree this is genuinely not caught by Scotts categorization, which is too narrow in only focusing on hatred.
But I still think categorizing it under "by belief" leads you wrong. Instead I'd suggest amending the definition of "by motivation" such that "didn't hire someone (or treated them different in any other way) because of their race" counts as "by motive": The specific action or rule is motivated by race.
I guess on the object level in this discussion it comes down to "Do the 'sexist' men actually support formally unequal treatment of men and women?"
I can get behind the motivation being the dividing line. And evidently, there does exist sexist men who believe women and men should be treated differently. Just the idea that women should be treated more gently and men more harshly is arguably sexist, although also very accepted as long as you package it right. "Don't hit women!" "You can't say that about a girl!" And so on.
The chuds are doing the more classically sexist thing, where they argue that women are incapable of controlling their emotions and having logical discussions, so they should stay away from careers that require this.
Though to your point, I agree that not every man called sexist is one. There are a good amount of people using the word to discredit people or silence conversations for their own gain, when the accusation is totally unwarranted which in turn waters down the seriousness of the word until it becomes something you can call yourself with little risk.
Aren’t a large segment of women saying hormones mean they can’t make choices rationally l? See Clancy and responses.
Clancy is still getting punished. Spending years in a hospital for the criminally insane is not a good thing.
But I agree that many women seem fine with positive discrimination. When they claim their hormones cause them to be irrational, the purpose is to elicit sympathy. They don't want it to be used as an argument to take away opportunities.
Sure, but this is only "punishment" in the same sense as that she's getting punished by being a mother whose kids are dead, which is also not a good thing. Going to the hospital for the criminally insane is there to help her get over her insanity so that she can be cured and re-enter society as a safe member, not for punishment; the unpleasantness is just a necessary consequence of the treatment, like how some medicine doesn't taste good. We can label any negative consequence of someone's actions as "punishment," but I don't think that's what people are referring to when talking about not being held accountable. If a bank robber with poor impulse control spends all his money on heroin and overdoses to death, one can claim that he was "punished" in some divine sense for his sins, but I don't think it makes sense to claim that he was held accountable in some meaningful, concrete sense.
If she actually is mentally ill, then consenting to treatment is taking responsibility. Agreeing to be locked up until she is cured (which may never happen) is taking accountability for what happened.
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