I was thinking the same.
I'm a man an being recently made more aware of how some females friend perceive some so called "un-harmful cheesy jokes" I often advocate to my boss or college that they shouldn't make such jokes because you can never now how they are perceived.
However to escalate the problem up to the HR you need at least some ground. At some point she said than HR asked here to explain what she found was offensive. And she suggest that asking what was offensive was itself offensive. This is pretty meta.
I don't see how HR acted badly they needed to known exactly what happened in order to act. I mean you cannot pretend to be a whistleblower but kept being shy or vague about words used. And you can't say it was edited by the press, it's a blog.
So if OP is here please be clear did the manager say something like:
"Guys please don't be to hard on my sweet little girl, you know she can't handle it"
And then colleges could have gone "Hey here come the boss's bitch!"
This I can understand, not vague and redacted sentences. Because unless you are precise (and sometimes graphic) sincere skeptical people will always wonder if it was your colleagues attitude or you perception that was flawed.