I appreciate you asking respectfully, and I understand the meanings of words like "sexist" and "racist" are changing and subject to opinion.
In my opinion, the nuance is whether the difference is truly because of gender or if gender is just something with a high correlation.
For example, if an average man says to me "give me your wallet or I'll beat you up", I'm likely to do it since I'm on the smaller side. If an average woman did that, I'd say no. So maybe it seems like sexism at first, but then I consider, if a woman threatened me who was the size and build and general risk of an average man, what would I do? I'd hand over my wallet.
I would not say you are acting sexist in your analogy. If we take average male vs average female, yes there is a large strength disparity and your response seems very justified. It is clear that your response is more linked to the danger that you're in. I would contrast this from my analogy (black person walking towards you and crossing the street) because there's not a good justification for thinking that the black person is more likely to mug you than if a white person was walking towards you (there's no justification for increased danger). I'd argue that the priors are different in these situations (I'm sure there are people that would disagree and call your response sexist, but I will say that my thesis is about not binning people to easy little boxes. "us vs them". That responses need to be thoughtful and tempered).
> I understand the meanings of words like "sexist" and "racist" are changing and subject to opinion.
Also on this point, I think this kind of "words having different meanings to different people" is far more common than people realize and requisites more care in how we interpret others' statements. I think this is obviously true for any "ism" (sexism, racism, capitalism, socialism, etc). Pinning a definition to strictly our own interpretation ends up being naive and often leads to fighting because we have basic breakdowns in communication. We can't agree even if philosophically we agree. It should be the other way around, meaning triumphing over diction. Diction over meaning is just looking for a fight.
In my opinion, the nuance is whether the difference is truly because of gender or if gender is just something with a high correlation.
For example, if an average man says to me "give me your wallet or I'll beat you up", I'm likely to do it since I'm on the smaller side. If an average woman did that, I'd say no. So maybe it seems like sexism at first, but then I consider, if a woman threatened me who was the size and build and general risk of an average man, what would I do? I'd hand over my wallet.