I respect your conviction. I do feel it has elements of sexism in it, but that doesn't mean I think you can't have it, or even that you shouldn't hold on to tha

I respect your conviction. I do feel it has elements of sexism in it, but that doesn't mean I think you can't have it, or even that you shouldn't hold on to that conviction. What I think you're conflating or ignoring is who 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. In a free and open social engagement, like meeting at a party, it would be respectful for you to courteously ask an overly 'touchy' woman to stop, and I don't think very many people would find that sexist. (Although consider if you didn't want to touch black people because of your religion..). 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). I don't think it should ever cross someone's mind that the onus would be on the woman to 'fix' this situation. It's just not; there is an outside party trying to impose his beliefs on her. That's why there's such a strong 'liberal' 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.