It's not exactly great humor, but I'm confused as to why this is offensive to women specifically (let alone an axiom of sexism). Because it references male organs? They're not referring to females at all. Not to be too reductionist, but that leaves me thinking of two possible conclusions:

1. women are too delicate to handle any references to anatomy

or

2. the "jokes" were simply crude and, while off-putting to anyone with a developed sense of humor, nothing to write (tweet?) home about with regards to being offensive

3. Penis Envy.

I see your point, but I'm really not clear if the joking here was sexist or mere crude humor. By 'crude' I mean body humor - jokes about farts or smelly gym socks etc. are wholly unfunny to me and generally make me want to exist the conversation ASAP. I can't say I find them offensive as such, just stupid and gross - a matter of taste rather than ethics, so to speak.

So I can imagine sexist-seeming jokes about robots with dongles, but I can also imagine stupid ones about robots with butts or whether car exhaust counts as a robot fart. The sad thing is that we have no way to tell whether the remarks in question were sexist or just stupid, and that has encouraged a lot of folk to just project their own preconceptions onto the entire incident.

This sort of thing is exactly why I don't like using Twitter.

How are they "debasing themselves with this humor"?

My reading of stephen's comment was that he probably recognises that it's a matter of cultural difference, rather than absolute truth. In some cultures, for a woman to tell those kinds of jokes would be debasing. In ours, not so much I guess.

I think a lot of it is generational, too.

how is it debasing if i text some stupid dick joke to my friend? i don't' get it.

(disclaimer i am female)

Gee, imagine that people come from different cultures where different behavior is considered acceptable. I imagine a lot of things that are considered bad in religious households are acceptable to other people.