Two variables that may affect speech criticism were studied: the sex of the speaker and the rater's attitude of sexism. An ancillary study concerning the effect of the sex of the teacher was also undertaken. The study included the development of an instrument to measure sexism, which revealed some of the effects of sex and sexism on the criticism of classroom speeches. Sexist speech teachers were classified as those who perceived maximum differences between persons based on sex roles. Four male and four female teachers who perceived maximum differences between male and female sex roles and four male and four female teachers who perceived minimal differences cooperated in the study. The results indicated that in speech critiques, sexist speech teachers wrote a significantly smaller number of comments than did nonsexist teachers. It was also noted that male students received a significantly lower proportion of positive comments than did female students from both sexist and nonsexist teachers. (MKM)