Hugh McLachlan: Sexism is nothing to worry about

Attacking people for their beliefs misses the point. It is behaviour that is important

WHAT, when it is wrong, is wrong with "sexism"? Much of the current debate about "sexism" in sport and the supposed "sexism" of the Sky football commentators Andy Gray and Richard Keys is wide of the mark because it does not address, far less properly answer, that question.

It is not unethical to have "sexist" beliefs and attitudes, although it is sometimes wrong to allow such beliefs and attitudes to influence one's behaviour. It is not always wrong to express "sexist" beliefs and attitudes. Apart from anything else, some such beliefs might be true and some such attitudes might be appropriate. It is dogmatism and bigotry to deny this possibility.

Furthermore, although our beliefs and attitudes change, we cannot choose to change them. For instance, if one believes that God exists, one cannot by an act of will choose to become an atheist. An SNP supporter cannot choose, say, to believe that the UK is in the best interests of Scotland. If there is someone who believes, say, that women will not be as good as men at refereeing football matches, he cannot choose to abandon his curious belief.

That people should be blamed and punished for their thoughts and attitudes is far more objectionable and dangerous than the "sexist" beliefs and attitudes that the football commentators in question are accused of having and expressing.

Sexism is sometimes morally wrong because it sometimes involves unjust discrimination and thereby infringes the moral rights of particular people. For instance, in some although not all contexts, particular people have a duty to treat those who they deal with impartially, where discrimination on the basis of sex would be an irrelevant and thereby an unjust basis for meting out different treatment. For instance, it would be unjust if a lecturer marked two essays that were equally good differently because one was submitted by a male and the other by a female student. It would be unjust if, say, universities made a difference in their payment to male and female employees if differences in the sex of employees were irrelevant to their performance of their jobs.

In various, but not all contexts, people should be treated as people and not as members of particular sexes. Not all discrimination on the basis of sex is unethical, since not all such discrimination is unjust. Sometimes it is a relevant basis for discrimination. Sometimes particular people are not under a moral obligation to treat other people impartially.For instance, it is not unjust if someone chooses to have sex only with members of a particular sex, whether it is his own sex or the opposite one. Such sexism is not unjust.

Some professional sports depend on "sexism" in order for women to be likely to win. For instance, if there were no discrimination on the basis of sex in, say, professional tennis or professional golf, there would be no female professional tennis or golf champions. Players such as Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, the Williams sisters, Jiyai Shin and Suzann Pettersen would be far less well known and far less rich than they are were it not the case that men are barred from entering the tournaments they shone or shine in.

Such discrimination is not unjust. We do not have as people or as citizens a moral right to compete in professional tennis and golf tournaments any more than we have a moral right to be invited to attend particular private parties.

Unjust sexism is wrong because it is unjust, not because it is sexist. For instance, as extreme instances of sexist crimes, we could cite the atrocities of Peter Tobin and Peter Sutcliffe. Between them, they raped, assaulted and murdered a large number of women. However, their offences were not morally heinous because they were sexist. If they had raped, assaulted and murdered the same number of men, their actions would have been equally morally wrong. Indeed, if they had made a point of being scrupulously even-handed and had, purposely, chosen their victims at random this would in no way have mitigated their wickedness.

Ethically, sexist or, say, racist assaults and murders are no different from non-sexist, non-racist or anti-sexist and anti-racist assaults and murders. The fact that the law, unwisely in my view, punishes some sorts of specified "aggravated" offences - so-called "hate crimes" - more severely creates the false impression that they might be ethically different.

Motives must be taken into account in order to judge whether particular actions are acts of, say, murder or assault. However, once it is established that an action is, say, a murder or an assault, the law should make no distinction between supposed aggravated hate crimes and other sorts of murders and assaults. The idea that, for instance, a serial "racist", "sexist", "homophobic" or "disabilitist" murderer should be treated, because of his or her motives more seriously than a serial killer who by design or default operates an equal opportunities slaughtering policy seems to me to be obscene.

The wickedness of the actions and the wrongness of their direct effects are the justifications for the punishment of the crimes. The unknown, unpredictable indirect consequences of their actions are irrelevant to the deserved punishment of the criminals concerned. Particular murders can have good indirect consequences, as, say, when the victims might themselves have gone on to commit heinous deeds.That is no reason for treating such murders more leniently than others.

To kill someone because you hate that particular person is no less wrong and no less deserving of punishment than to kill someone because he or she is a member of some category which you hate. To kill someone for fun is no less wrong and no less deserving of punishment than to kill someone out of hatred. It might even be thought to be worse, insofar as it trivialises human life by failing to acknowledge that what the victim was deprived of was profoundly worth having.

Suppose that someone asked a female colleague at work to tuck a microphone into his trousers. This can certainly be seen as inappropriate, boorish, loutish behaviour. It lacks decorum, although whether it is unethical rather than merely bad manners and bad etiquette is disputable.

However, although this is bad behaviour, it is not wrong on account of some sort of "sexism". It is inappropriate and sexually suggestive rather than an inappropriate sexist sort of behaviour.

We should blame him because he treated a female colleague in an improperly different way, not because he treated her differently. It is the particular content of the different treatment rather than the fact that is it different that makes the action wrong. It is wrong sexism. If he had joked in this sort of a way only to his male colleagues, this sort of sexual discrimination might have been less objectionable, and perhaps not objectionable at all in some contexts and circumstances.

If the person concerned went through this routine with every one of his colleagues, indiscriminately, with no regard to their sex, the behaviour would still be inappropriate. It is not the "sexism" that is wrong about it. If sexism means treating people differently because of their sex or having different beliefs about and attitudes towards people of different sexes, there would seem to be nothing ethically wrong with sexism as such.

The term "sexism" is not a helpful one when we are trying to analyse and to ethically evaluate people and their behaviour. We should be very careful how we use it. We should not, thoughtlessly, condemn people or behaviour on the supposed grounds that they are "sexist". I suspect that nothing of importance would be lost were we to eliminate the term from our vocabulary.

• Hugh McLachlan is Professor of Applied Philosophy in the School of Law and Social Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University