I don't see the logic there.

The "benevolent sexism" is in regards to equating women with "nurturing" characteristics. My poor understanding of the subject is that the problem is that you are then saying that woman need to be nurturing or they are failing somehow or not meeting expectations, whereas you might not place the same expectation on a man. But it isn't used as a put down against men, just that people don't have the same expectation that men need to be nurturing.

The stance "men are smarter than women" is just plain old sexism since the statement can easily be written as "women are dumber than men".

> The stance "men are smarter than women" is just plain old sexism since the statement can easily be written as "women are dumber than men".

Let me rewrite 'equating women with "nurturing" characteristics' into "women are more caring than men". Or alternatively "men are less caring than women". Do you see the problem now?

I would say you are adding information that wasn't stated, and you are also missing the important part of the issue. Which is types of issues that result from stances like "women are nurturing".

Such as removing woman from consideration from management positions because you feel that their "nurturing" nature would make them unable to make decisions like firing people or taking a stance that is unpopular with their subordinates.

And honestly, I'm going to be blunt here. I feel like people are reacting defensively to the surface level words rather than what the words actually mean.

Or:

"benevolent for A" = "malevolent for B"

So, it's both "benevolent sexism" and "malevolent sexism" at the same time, just depending on your framing.

Using a logically-equivalent description gives you a different outcome, therefore it's an "absurd" (or meaningless, really) term to use.

How is that any less "problematic" than inverting the above to say that ' men are uncaring or mean'?

Casting all men as uncaring can't possibly be viewed as a good thing.

Can you point out some examples of such usage for men? Any paper I've found so far defines it specifically in terms of women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Smart_(Woman_Smarter)

Look, I love the Dead, but this is a classic calypso tune. I prefer Harry Belefinte's rendition.

It's just like the concept of positive punishment. You can have positive punishment by adding a consequence (ie. an electric shock) and negative punishment by removing but it's still punishment despite being labelled "positive".

Some people get seriously upset with the “pro life” movement and others the “pro choice” because labeling doesn’t actually change anything.

The only impact from a new political spin is when I have no idea what people are talking about.

I suspect that is because you already have a belief about them and can use that belief to make an informed interrogation of the ideas at hand.

If, on the other hand, as I argued above you did not have a belief yet about an idea, that would not be the case and how it is framed to you would matter. I will give two contrived examples to show my point.

A 7-8 year old little girl is told by her (progressive) mother that "reproductive rights" are important to her and that abortion is part of that and they should fight for it to protect those rights related to her body.

vs.

A 7-8 year old little girl is told by her (conservative) mother that abortion is literally people "killing babies" and they should fight against it to protect the innocent babies.

The way those were framed (even though, I agree with you they are talking about the same concept at the end of the day) would obviously make a big difference to the little girl first hearing about this.

Culture is extremely adaptable with little boys being put into dresses less than a hundred years ago for practical reasons and pink being a manly color as a less overt reference to blood. That swap didn’t depend on some new name for dress and colors.

Looks like your morality is all mixed up and prone to manipulation.

Robin hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor - that's going to be seen one way or the other from the rich person being stolen from vs the poor person being given to.

To have a moral system where defining something as unassailably good is also prone to manipulation - once you decide something is truly good you're more than willing to go to any end to defend or enact that good, including committing atrocities.

Some actions are harder to see as being subjective, sure, but there's always going to be gradients and perspectives.

That's certainly not immediately clear. "Benevolent" is not a synonym of "positive", it's a synonym of "good". The former would apply in your definition but the latter very clearly doesn't.

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Edit: I see from sibling commenters that this seems to be a compound term that makes up part of an established theoretical framework. That makes sense but I wouldn't assume everyone is automatically aware of that:

> Benevolent sexism represents evaluations of gender that may appear subjectively positive (subjective to the person who is evaluating), but are actually damaging to people and gender equality more broadly

It also doesn't redefine the word "benevolent" completely - in this context it just means "the misleading appearance of benevolence".

Here, I think, lies the problem. Trying to re-frame a negative idea as positive. Involuntary imported labor force instead of a slavery?

> By that same logic the bias that "men are smarter than women" is benevolent sexism.

Yes. Exactly. That's not the gotcha you think it is.

You can educate yourself on what the term means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism

This is different from the phrase "Armenians are good at Chess." Many peoples exist worldwide, so there is no de-facto loser or relative judgment.

Those confounding issues don't somehow make the statement less of a form of benevolent prejudice toward men. It is just that the statement is also clearly prejudicial toward women. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.