That "these jokes are sexist or offensive to women" was an axiom (in the logic sense) in my parents' religious household. It's incredibly confusing to see good and respectable people (like your friend) so eager to debase themselves with this humor.
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
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.
(disclaimer i am female)