"within the realm of reason" Thats the point I was making.

"Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment

So in my view, if the author would go to another conference, and the same creep would try again, that would be harassment. There should be a pattern of some kind. If you count single incidents as harassment, your going to have serious problems with freedom of speech.

FYI, using "FYI" feels arrogant to me. Please stop, you would not want to FYI-harass me?