In other words, "If we don't talk about it, it will go away".
This is a hostile mischaracterization of my argument for the purpose of setting up the straw man you argue against below. Your interest in rigour does not, it seems, extend to avoiding fallacies on your part.
Who are in no way required to be present at talks that make them uncomfortable.
If you include talks that make a significant number of conference participants uncomfortable, this is counterproductive if your larger goal is to get more of those kind of participants.
whenever there are unattached men of child rearing age the environment will be sexualized.
Only if the men are immature twits incapable of taking their hands off their cocks for a couple days. Which is basically the problem in the geek community, for self-perceived reasons you articulate below.
Men are not going to stop hitting on women at conferences.
Agreed, but whether they do so in a way that respects women at conferences is the issue. And a big part of that is whether the women perceive that the men think, as you seem to below, that the women are there just so geeks can procreate. And whether or not they feel that way depends, in part, on whether the tone of the conference is sexualized. Have talks on using a rape drug as part of sex, and having booth babes and Slave Leias wandering around? They're going to feel like they're there so you can meet someone, not so a bunch of people interested in hacking can discuss hacking.
We have a biological imperitive to procreate.
My urge to procreate does not prevent me from not acting like I'm trying to procreate all the time. I'm an adult. I'm capable of having extended conversations or even work relationships with women that do not involve me trying to procreate with them. I have self-control.
Expecting us to sit on our hands at a con only means we'll be missing out on opportunities to meet women with similar interests.
So the cons are for you to meet someone. When you see women at cons, you're looking at them as targets, not as fellow geeks.
If you don't tell us that, it's not our fault if we accidentally creep out some female attendees.
Geeks wilfully ignore or argue with people trying to tell them how not to creep out women at conferences. Witness our discussion. At this point, more than enough bits have been spilled trying to explain to geeks why their community has absurdly low female participation, and your response is...
sex is a huge motivator for us, and that there is nothing wrong with that. And denying that females enjoy sexual attention from males isn't very respectful towards them either.
To borrow your tactic, in other words, "we're boys, we can't help ourselves, and you want it from us anyway".
I'm actually really offended by your argument, because it denigrates men. It's the old stereotype about how boys will be boys, and we're dominated by our balls. It's the old Victorian characterization of men as barely-contained cauldrons of lust, and women as pure asexual representations of goodness. It's bullshit. Men can have self-control, and women can fail to have self control and treat everyone else as sexual objects for their gratification.
Is there actually more to this argument than "If we don't talk about it, it will go away"?
That was never the argument. The argument is still that we don't need to sexualize everything, that we're adults and have self-control and are more than capable, as is demonstrated by mature men everywhere, of treating women as equal participants in what we do, rather than as receptacles for our urge to procreate. And when we succeed at that, that's when the women start coming around in decent numbers.