Sex-drive is not really as much of a problem with regards to sexism. Sex-drive causes sexual harassment, which is not sexism. If a male were to sexually harass a female, it would not be sexism because he is not giving males special preference over females). If a male were to make a female employee engage is sexual activity for a raise, it would be sexual exploitation, not sexism.

My main gripe here is basically that "sexism" has become an umbrella term to describe many things it does not apply to, and thus, a misnomer.

Well, seeing how he's not sexually harassing the males I'd say there's a noted difference in "special preference".

Anyway, I'd argue that sexism is almost inherent to any sexual harassment, as the male put himself in a position of power/dominance based on little more than gender difference and the perceived inequality/role expectations that go along with that.

If the OP of the article had all those same things done to her (ass grabbing, pillow fight invitations, etc) by gay women, would that still be considered "sexism" or just sexual harassment? People sometimes forget that sexual harassment is not always a "Man on Woman" action. There is a 2x2 matrix of how that can go down.

If this had been done by gay women, the problem would still be that those gay women somehow felt entitled to make such a request of women. The problem is that a woman was, purely due to her sex, "lowered beneath" a baseline of human decency, if you wish. There might be a legitimate question of "what if we lowered the baseline?" but there is no legitimate question of "what if the person who lowered her was a woman?"

If anything, the sexism is in favor of females, as no one would call it sexist if a female groped a man, invited them to a pillow fight party, etc.

Nonetheless, what you are saying is deeply misguided and shows that you don't know what sexism became in the 20th century and looks like today. You are struggling too hard to make some sort of point. In doing this you are failing to come to a common ground and to understand the Other. I know this well; I have been there. I implore you to make one last effort.

Let us start from some common ground: women are granted a great deal of courtesy because they are in some sense 'overvalued'. The question you should ask is, how are they being overvalued, exactly? And the answer I think is, "they are being overvalued as romantic objects." It's a common thread with roots in that Shakespearean sort of ideal, the Quiet, Pure Woman who Knows Her Place and is Walled Away and must be Wooed by her Romeo. It plays forth in all of the behaviours you have insisted upon: that we would pay for dinner, buy them drinks, arrange the wedding, extend them romantic courtesies, forgive them their outbursts, et cetera. It is also the reason that they are discouraged from the club scene and thus can be whisked past the line.

This is our common ground. Now what you must understand is that this position is not merely a position of privilege, but is also deeply dehumanizing. Look at those words again: romantic "object". The same attitude which makes her precious also makes her little more than ornamental. And this is a story played out through most of our history, until several extremely noteworthy women in the Victorian Era decided "hey, screw that--we can be writers and mathematicians and factory workers as well." Of course, this soon after intersected with the Suffragettes, the World Wars and the Sexual Revolution. It was only very recently that women got the right to vote and the right to attend school -- much less the right to wear 'immodest' dress or the right to be a witch. For a long time they simply were not treated as human but rather as subhuman.

Sexism is simply that: it names these social institutions which treat women as a whole as subhuman. There are still many such institutions. Many of them come from this same Romantic Object Past that you are complaining about -- this is presumably why some man drunkenly licked her tattoo; he may well have thought that this might show that he was pursuing her and wooing her, in his drunken state -- in doing so he revealed that he doesn't really think of her as some independent person to be talked to, but rather some skin to be licked. They may also be inverted by the modern pornographic culture, as with the man who burst into a conversation asking for her to come to a pillow-fight essentially did the same, essentially saying "your conversation could not possibly be as important as our idolizing you as a sex object; come on, let's do this."

The bottom line is that the sexism isn't "in favor of" anybody, it's a deeply immature mistake that we've been carrying around from the Dark Ages to the present. It wouldn't be sexist if a female groped a man or invited him to have a pillow-fight because our institutions happen to not be geared to objectify men in this way. They objectify men in other ways though; especially in corporate culture where there is a tendency to emphasize those who neglect their families to work harder, to be cogs in a machine, to follow the orders of management. This may not be sexism -- that is, there is little reason to expect that women who join the corporate circuit are treated much differently -- but it certainly is objectification happening to men today. The pornography industry also objectifies men; in the industry men become little more than muscles, penises, and a bundle of perversions, with their stamina, girth, and virility being the most important qualities.

TL;DR = "rudeness" is not sexism, sexism is again the climate which generates, and is generated by, such rude acts. Key to the climate being "sexist" is that the climate lowers women beneath a baseline of what it is to be human. The examples you've given do not lower men beneath such a baseline, but there are cultural features which do and we should be wary towards those too, even though they tend to not be sexist per se.

However, if you are thinking that it is only sexism if the requester is a male, then I think we'll have to agree to disagree completely because I am not going to buy into such gender based biases.

It is a sexist request in the sense that it was constructed by, and constructs, sexism. It does not directly oppress anyone, that is true -- but that is irrelevant, because that isn't the only mechanism of sexism (and isn't even the dominant mechanism).

If this is true, it is not a proximal cause and amounts to armchair psychology. Like I said, sexism today is generally institutional rather than individual. Since you may or may not be familiar with what that means, I will clarify: social institutions are the things in society which you as a member take for granted as aspects of social order, of norms of behaviour, of the sorts of social relationships which you may form with other people. (I like to think of them as: memes which organize societies.)

So for example, you are maybe technically correct that sexual harassment is not one and the same as sexism: however, a workplace that allows sexual harassment is a sexist institution, and to complain about widespread sexual harassment is to complain about sexism as a whole.

Like I said in the post you are replying to, you are trying to view sexism as an individual's act. But if you look at the way that sexual prejudice and sexual discrimination actually emerge you'll see that it happens because women and men have different role models, different social organizations, different education models, different standards of behaviour, and different norms about what sort of conduct is excusable or inexcusable towards us.

Let us return back to the case at hand: a woman has to fend off many requests for sexual favors and many absurd abuses (like licking her tattoo -- do you really think that this person also licks men's tattoos?) simply by virtue of being a lady at this conference. You may object that the individual requests are not sexism per se, they do not promise any special treatment to a woman if she accepts or any inconvenience to a woman if she declines. What you're missing is that taken as a whole the atmosphere generated by these requests does amount to a special treatment and an inconvenience, and therefore as a whole this is sexism.

In this respect you have been missing the forest for the trees.

This needs to be called out. What is the basis for this statement? All over this thread you have been constructing arguments based on assertions, all which are substantiated entirely by your sheer ability to proclaim things. How do you know what the foremost cause of sexism is, and where are you getting this knowledge? Is it more of your opinion?

Any argument can be forwarded when you have access to a set of private and convenient facts.