I respect your conviction. I do feel it has elements of sexism in it, but that doesn&#x27;t mean I think you can&#x27;t have it, or even that you shouldn&#x27;t hold on to that conviction.<p>What I think you&#x27;re conflating or ignoring is <i>who</i> should be responsible for respecting it. You are responsible for respecting it; businesses like airlines are not, and members of society who conform to our general norms are not.<p>In a free and open social engagement, like meeting at a party, it would be respectful for you to courteously ask an overly &#x27;touchy&#x27; woman to stop, and I don&#x27;t think very many people would find that sexist. (Although consider if you didn&#x27;t want to touch black people because of your religion..).<p>In this case though, a member of society is participating in not only a normalized way (sitting in an assigned seat), but in a restricted way (she is not allowed to move without airline consent, and similarly she is not required to move without an airline directive).<p>I don&#x27;t think it should ever cross someone&#x27;s mind that the onus would be on the woman to &#x27;fix&#x27; this situation. It&#x27;s just not; there is an outside party trying to impose his beliefs on her.<p>That&#x27;s why there&#x27;s such a strong &#x27;liberal&#x27; societal response to situations like this -- much of liberalism has been concerned with removing these impositions on members of society with less personal power. It feels like a regression to have educated people argue otherwise.