There's a survey prompt I've seen mentioned in several write-ups as an example of hostile sexism: "I believe that women are going too far." If the response indicates some level of agreement with this statement, that's a sign not only of sexism, but specifically of hostile sexism.

I took a course in psychological measurement via written tests (psychometrics) in college as part of my psychology degree, so I understand how that question can be useful without being definitive or fully reliable itself. However, every time I encounter that prompt, it gives me pause.

It's clear that an enthusiastic "Yes! Exactly! You said it!" would be unsurprising from a chauvinist. Like all psychological questions, though, this one can be interpreted different ways. Personally, I can see interpretations of that statement that would lead to some tentative level of agreement corresponding to neither hostility nor prejudice. If I were to run into that question myself on a survey, I'd see what it was getting at, and I would put a neutral or a slight or moderate no, depending on how I was feeling and what was at the front of my mind. It's easy to interpret the question along the broad lines of public debate, side myself with fellow progressives, and say, "There's so much more to do! What do you mean going too far?"

At the same time, the question remains... a problem. After all, if any level of agreement with that statement at any time puts you into moral debt, then we are effectively all agreeing that women are above reproach. You might disagree with a woman, but if you disagree with women on anything, you are sexist. (The categorical assumption built into the statement is surely what justified it to the researchers, by the way, along with statistical results when they tried the test on participants, most likely undergraduates.) After all, who are you to disagree with 50.5% of humanity, sight unseen? You must be prejudiced.

Hopefully you can see my qualms with this question already, and I'm not coming across as sexist or defensive for raising the thought.

Ultimately, the tension is between how that statement adds to a hostile sexism score via psychometrics, on the one hand, and how a person might take it at face value when told in approximate terms how the test counts it, on the other hand. Not everyone will have taken a psychometrics course. I can easily see how that prompt, in the wild, might be misconstrued both by chauvinists ("See? You literally can't disagree with them on anything!") and by feminists ("You think women are going too far on this? That's literally a statement on a test for hostile sexism, and it says you're a hostile sexist.")