I knew that the person was extremely brash and was told that they indulged in "locker-room talk", though I didn't personally observe any harassing behavior. I didn't speak up about what I heard. I wish I had. I wonder, and worry, if anything as bad as what happened at their next company happened at the company I worked at. I'm really uncomfortable with the odds that it did.
And it's labelled "aggressive" because of several centuries of hardcore religious puritanism leaving their mark on all aspects of US culture. Sex is naughty. Sex talk is aggressive.
The parent said "There's some value in being able to talk bluntly with other men. And I'm not sure it's much worse than what I observed groups of women talking about".
And this was immediately taken to mean "aggressive sexual comment".
That's not to say harassment and abuse aren't dealbreakers for the men I've worked with; for most of them, it is. But it has to be spelled out for them. A victim has to speak up about it. It has not been my experience that men surveil each other to ensure that their sexual behavior is appropriate or benign.
I had a similar response to the controversy over the Trump Access Hollywood tapes. Jake Tapper was talking to a Trump surrogate who claimed that the tapes were just "locker room talk". Tapper, aghast, said something to the effect of "not in any locker room I've ever been in". My response (to myself, quietly): Jake Tapper, you are full of shit.
Obviously none of this is good stuff! It's just important that we try to be more self-aware about it.