Well, I certainly agree that a word can have the kind of rhetorical power you describe here, and that “sexism” is such a word in lots of modern cultures.
And while modeling such powerful labels as a fixed resource isn’t quite right, insofar as such labels can be applied to a lot of different things without necessarily being diffused, I would agree with something roughly similar to that… for example, that if you and I assign that label to different things for mutually exclusive ends, then we each benefit by denying the other the ability to control the label.
And I agree with you that if I want to attach the label to thing 1, and you want to attach it to mutually exclusive thing 2, and thing 1 is strictly worse than thing 2, then it’s better if I fail and you succeed.
All of that said, it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is always strictly worse than caring about optimality, and it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is mutually exclusive with caring about optimality.
Edit: I should also say that I do understand now why you say that using “sexism” to refer to unfair systems cuts off the use of “sexism” to refer to suboptimal systems, which was the original question I asked. Thanks for the explanation.
Well, I certainly agree that a word can have the kind of rhetorical power you describe here, and that “sexism” is such a word in lots of modern cultures.
And while modeling such powerful labels as a fixed resource isn’t quite right, insofar as such labels can be applied to a lot of different things without necessarily being diffused, I would agree with something roughly similar to that… for example, that if you and I assign that label to different things for mutually exclusive ends, then we each benefit by denying the other the ability to control the label.
And I agree with you that if I want to attach the label to thing 1, and you want to attach it to mutually exclusive thing 2, and thing 1 is strictly worse than thing 2, then it’s better if I fail and you succeed.
All of that said, it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is always strictly worse than caring about optimality, and it is not clear to me that caring about fairness is mutually exclusive with caring about optimality.
Edit: I should also say that I do understand now why you say that using “sexism” to refer to unfair systems cuts off the use of “sexism” to refer to suboptimal systems, which was the original question I asked. Thanks for the explanation.