the idea of police intervening and arresting a male friend for joking around with a female friend

Because so many powerful men got away with doing terrible things to women for decades and the women were both de facto and de jure helpless to stop them, there has been a recent backlash against anything even reminiscent of this.

It's almost as though here in the U.S. we use extreme over-reaction as our way of atoning for past callous indifference.

Here's a real world example you can look up:

Back in the 1950s, mooning someone was considered a harmless prank, and it returned in the 1970s and the 1990s. Similarly, streaking was seen then as a relatively harmless prank done numerous times on college campuses and at various football games -- someone even streaked at the Academy Awards.

Today, in many states, mooning will automatically get your name placed permanently on the Sex Offenders List, and for the rest of your life, because you dropped trou once as a gag, you will have to declare yourself a sex offender on every job interview and in every neighborhood to which you move. If you don't believe this, look it up.

Yes, overreaction seems to be our favorite way of handling things in America, and right now it involves anything sexual or gender-related.