I think it's a different case, but not completely. When a stranger asks me for directions, I feel imposed upon and uncomfortable. In large part this is because I've learned that the frequency of the person using it as a pretext for panhandling is high. Which has a certain similarity to why the greetings make you uncomfortable, I think: both are used as pretexts to start a conversation we'd rather not be involved in.

Clearly there's some context dependency here: if the person is standing on a sidewalk, I feel far more uncomfortable than if they just rolled down their car window in a parking lot. I also recall a time a man on a bike asked me for directions, appeared genuinely thankful, made sure he'd got them right, and then asked me for money. When I refused, he was annoyed (though more polite than is common) and then left in the direction I had indicated.

Anyway, seeing as offering random greetings to strangers along the lines of "how are you doing" is something I (hetero male, in case you hadn't inferred that) do occasionally, I'm trying to ponder what contexts I do it in. I think I'm generally shy and awkward enough that I basically do it a context something like I made eye contact, and then some external cause means the other person isn't just leaving, and now I'm feeling awkward and like I should say something. I'm assuming this basically isn't the sort of context you're talking about? Actually, on further reflection, I suspect I do it in the situation described in the main article of when holding the door for someone, which is not something I had ever really thought of as potentially offensive before. (For the record, I don't follow it up with sexual remarks and slurs.)

I find "source please" only somewhat dismissive, but I would find it similarly so if the claim was a more direct, less empirical one.

I read "source please" as a statement that your interpretive claim is too strong to be supported by the quantity of interpretation you have provided. There is no reason your source could not be an essay instead of a pile of data and statistics. Hopefully such an essay would make use of at least some quantity of data.

Non-obvious interpretations need justification for all the same reasons that non-obvious direct empirical claims do, and I don't think it's more or less dismissive in one case than the other to call for a source. Specifically, what I find dismissive is not the request for a source, but the failure to engage the claim otherwise. That said, I'm not sure I find it inappropriate here.

Don't ask for a source of something that clearly is an interpretation of observation not a study. That's pretty clearly acting dismissively.

I would like to know what evidence you have for your claims. Without evidence, yes, I'm going to dismiss them, because they fit a profile of stereotyping that, in my experience, is tied to factually wrong statements about my gender.

And you know what I mean about claiming ownership too.

I have my suspicions, but that doesn't address my point.

Those comments are said by men to women in a particular way that is more intrusive and different from the way they are said to you. You are being dismissive here too.

I was suggesting that sexual comments and greetings may have different causes. Since I receive greetings that sound similar to the ones described from people who are almost certainly not viewing me as a potential partner, it seems likely that they are received regardless of gender, unlike catcalls.