Evil/Bad = After knowing certain act or attitude causes harm to others, you still do that for your own benefit alone.
I agree that most sexism comes from ignorance, but it is also true that some of sexism comes from deliberate bad attitudes. Most people will do bad things in their life because we are not angels, seeking the greater good. Most people will also do good things, as we are not demons, only thinking in ours alone all the time. Now a bad action is subjective, because it depends of the persons knowledge and points of view. We use different methods to know if certain person is doing something for ignorance or evilness, seeking hints and evidence of their thoughts.
Now, as for the ignorance part comes, it is truth that it is impossible to know everything. That is why people uses
beliefs to fill the gaps, for example we tend to believe what we're hearing from our professors and parents, because it is impossible to check everything we're told. Increasing knowledge will reduce the gaps, but it is impossible to fill all the gaps... in fact, it is impossible to fill even the half of them.
What we do then? People uses different rhetorics to make their beliefs, for example at selecting who is trustful and who isn't. To make a strong change that will cover the unavoidable gaps we have to push a change on rhetoric. Now, to what rhetoric? Beliefs are subjective, so it is natural that will exist different positions, and clashes will happen, that is unavoidable. What is not subjective is the
practical effect of certain rhetoric, and that is the tool we use to push changes on it. Even if it is impossible to prove all those effects in scientifically ways, we use and interprets hints with things like polls (and that is what hints us that Finland is importantly more advanced in gender equality than the U.S, and the U.S is importantly more advanced than Greece, that Greece is importantly more advanced than Iran, that Iran is importantly more advanced than Nigeria).
What gives the back is that, though not proven scientifically, most people have actually seen, or experienced those things. Now, most people does not mean everyone, thus disagreements appears. Now some people would have experienced negative things related to it, but they related those experiences to other factors, increasing disagreements. And finally, what we can and do fight for, is that some people beliefs that changes are impossible and status quo is unavoidable (thus relating their experiences as "I should just try to ignore this"): changing that rhetoric from impossible to possible is at our hands and we are archiving success on a myriad of different, small things, slowly changing the big picture.
In the case of other problems, suffered by minorities, then first comes the experiences of the affected people. Then, comes to the rest of the population to believe or not that person. Of course the affected person have higher changes to be believed if it has hints and evidences to back its experiences, but it is impossible to possess them all the time. Actually this also applies to anything % of population who has not experienced the negative things the remaining % has done.
Note: At Kage. You have the right of freedom of actions as long you are not doing things considered evil by our society, and this does not limit to laws alone, and this does not apply to good or bad alone. You also have the freedom of speech, but that is because words themselves are not actions, and laws try to avoid huge % of false positives, a thing impossible when we enter in the world of non-actions. Your freedom of speech is there, but then you are not
morally allowed to say anything you wish as you
can cause unfair damage with your words. Moral is subjective and relative, but then again, we're referring to societies moral pressing on you and we're talking about the constant changes that should or not should be done in that communal moral.
Basically there is a difference between the
you can and
you should not. You can call me a lesbian scum, but you should not, for example. The laws/policy banning certain words and stuff are aimed at pressing the should not, as the punishments are minimal and also almost impossible to pursue (though I still don't agree with them, but that is called empowering). Law works under the base of what is practical.