I ran into this horrible attitude just yesterday on Medium. Somebody writing under a pseudonym published an article that has attracted a fair amount of supportive comments — questioning whether women have what it takes to hold high political office.

He brought up all the usual arguments against, like women are too emotional, to the point of being unstable for a few days every month, etc. Then he listed several women leaders he apparently disapproves of as evidence that women can very much be unfit for office simply because they are women.

His conclusion was that women need to to work hard to demonstrate that they actually are fit for leadership.

Of course, he didn't include in his list any of the many women who have led distinguished and highly respected political careers.

I commented to him that his presumptions were false and unacceptably sexist, so he blocked me.

This is the problem, isn't it? The presumption of women's inferiority. That attitude caused this guy to write an article that he doesn't even recognize as sexist. He thinks he's doing good by encouraging women to work harder than men to disprove his own baked-in presumption that women are not as capable or valuable as men.

All of that presumption is baked into the term "chick flick," isn't it? I don't know if that's actually the formal name of a film genre, but if it is it's a toxic name.

No man ever calls a woman a chick out of a sense of respect or dignity. The word "chick" itself presumes the inferiority of women. It means women are trivial and unserious compared to men — cute and maybe attractive, but not smart and powerful, etc.

I couldn't believe that article yesterday, and I'm a little discouraged by yours today. I didn't realize that any contemporary American man would still feel comfortable calling a film a chick flick.