A story about the creepiness of the Pence position on being alone w/ a woman not his wife

 After a week in which the New Yorker story was so oblique and pretentious as to be impenetrable (which is to say, unreadable), it was great to see a story this week, A for Alone, by Curtis Sittenfeld, a writers who's always been approachable and intelligent and whose style seems to be developing over time (though I admit most or all of what I've read of hers, since Prep, has been short fiction). What I like about this story is that if first I didn't like it at all. The plot such as it is involves a 40-something fabric artist and mother of twin boys college-age, obviously fully supported her husband, embarks on a new project: she reaches out to men she has known across her life, some w/ only a tenuous connection to her, to invite them to lunch w/ her at which time she'll ask them to respond to a questionnaire regarding the "Pence-Graham" question: When was the last time they were alone w/ a woman not their wife?, and other related queries. the first few lunch/responses were pretty bland and predictable, and I was not sure of her point; then, in what becomes the last of the series, the lunch invite leads to further meetings and developments, maybe pretty obvious, but I won't divulge anything. I have to say that, though the Pence/Graham connection seemed like a slender thread for a story, by the end CS did get me to think, in ways I hadn't or wouldn't expect to, about the Pence question and how it in a weird way, even though most progressives find the question condescending at best and sexist and discriminatory at worst, we are all in some way we hadn't, or I hadn't, though about. Though I am and always will be completely faithful to my wife, there would be something a little creepy by an invitation to a one-on-one lunch from a woman (I suspect and believe the same would be true in reverse) without a clear message as to what the invite was about, who else if anyone would be there, and so forth. Is that sexist? Or sensible? And how far does that remove me from the creepiness of Pence/Graham?