This statement makes no sense to me. "Being sexist" encompases an absolutely huge range of behaviors. It could mean something as small as making a dumb assumption about what type of aesthetic preferences someone has, to something as large as making hiring decisions that can permanently stunt someone's career growth. It could even mean promulgating laws that legitimize violence against people.
Sexism is thus a category of bad behaviors, some of which are worse than anything I could imagine stemming from being accused of sexism. I am not saying that being falsely accused of sexism is nothing. It certainly would make me angry and frustrated to be so attacked. I just think false accusation of sexism is worse than the least severe forms of sexist behavior, and better than the most severe forms of sexists behavior.
Asserting that false accusations of sexism are always worse than sexism seems obviously false.
Mostly, I agree. Except with the part about (laws that legitimize) violence against people. In this case, the problem, IMO, is not sexism/discrimination, but violence as such.
I wrote the above mostly because I wanted to make a statement, and I wasn't in the mood for writing lengthy arguments. Also, from a purely philosophical point of view, where we analyze not the actions, but the motivations and principles behind them, the statement holds true, because accusing someone of being sexist is both sexism (belief that people of different sex differ in more than their most basic biology (which they maybe do, but that shouldn't be generalized)), and ad-hominem, which is (philosophically) worse than being just sexist.
This. US culture on the whole is overly sensitive to criticism in my view. If someone criticizes another, the typical response is to give a "No way, you're judging my unchangeable characteristics!" rather than "Hey, let me think if this has any merit." Mountains from molehills, methinks.
I think the blog author did a great job handling the ad hominems though.
Accusing a man of sexism just because he doesn't agree with a woman is worse.