The way that I have always tried to explain this to other people is that it's not a matter of "being sexist" or "not being sexist" (or racist, or whatever). It

The way that I have always tried to explain this to other people is that it's not a matter of "being sexist" or "not being sexist" (or racist, or whatever). It's a matter of what you actually do. Whether or not you "are sexist" on some innate level is between you and God, or your psychologist, or whatever. Nobody at work gives a damn, really. What matters are your actions, and in particular the effect they have on others and on the work environment generally. If you do and say sexist things, then there's a problem. Whether you really are or aren't sexist on some sort of deep level is, for the purposes of maintaining office harmony, irrelevant. It's very rare to find anyone who will actually cop to being racist or sexist, and I'm willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and believe that they probably really aren't. But if someone quacks like a duck and walks like a duck often enough, they're going to get called a duck.