Some things can't be said with a knowing smile or impunity. Holocaust jokes, for example, or Zoo Weekly's competition for 'the hottest boat people', clearly cross the line from 'edgy' to plain old bad taste.
The American stand-up who cracked a rape joke then suggested the heckler who yelled 'No rape is funny' was impeding free speech and should be gang-raped found that there are consequences of free speech — namely, free and robust negative feedback.
But neither, it seems, can we use the proper terms for mammalian genitalia. Recently Johnson & Johnson ran 'Carefree' ads that talked unblushingly of women's vaginas, inter-period discharge and daily smells. (We are all somewhat sensitive of intimate smells, from bad breath to sweat and secretions.)
According to some of the complainants, we shouldn't talk about such things. Or not like that. Or not on my television. We would, it seems, prefer be coy about our LadyGardens, or 'monthlies', or secret women's business.
The ad hit the jackpot in the UK, New Zealand and in Australia because it called a vagina exactly what it is, and talked about what their products are meant to do, in plain and simple language. Are we really offended by such frank terminology? Or should we be?
Republican congressmen in the Michigan House of Representatives said as much when a congresswoman (married with three children, Lisa Brown), in opposing their bill to limit access to abortion, concluded her 13 June speech by saying, 'I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.'
The Speaker promptly banned her from voting on not only the bill in question but an unrelated bill on school employee retirement benefits, because of her 'violating the decorum of the House'. One of the offended Republican congressmen exclaimed that what she had said was so offensive that 'I don't even want to say it in front of women. I would not say that in mixed company.'
So even women shouldn't say or hear the word vagina. Such a bad word, vagina.
Vaginas have several purposes, from congress (sexual) to birthing. They may take many shapes, colours and configurations. Their (drawn) artistic images were removed from a Facebook page set up by Spinifex Press just a week