Another thing to consider: if you are correct, then to speak of one group of people as subjects and one as objects naturally gives the subjects higher status than those that are the objects. In the case of the typical PUA community talk, the male is the subject and the female the object.
This particular problem can be avoided by speaking of both as objects (as in the case of scientific study) and distancing one self from the subject matter.
Compounding this is that when men are subjects and women are objects in a rationalist forum, this draws on some long-standing tropes about men being essentially more rational than women.
There's another piece to offendedness-- it's not just a an attempt to protect one's status, it's an attempt (sometimes successful) to assert status, and it's possible to have a little too much fun with that. Your theory is good, but it leaves out the way many people seek out things they find offensive.
Over at slactivist, there's an effort to distinguish between being offended and righteous anger-- imho, that distinction hasn't been defined yet, but it might be worth discovering.
Of course, that leads to offenders trying to assert status by accusing offendees of status-assertion (because we regard status-protection as more worthy than status-assertion), and round and round we go.
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The neg can simply be more on the teasing side than on the insulting side. I don't think teasing is all that objectionable.
Part of the issue is that, even when the hurt is minimal, it's a decision that one's own self-interest outweighs the harm to someone else, and as humans we're not very good at making that calculation objectively.