As for the joke itself: I quite agree about the horrid tendency to attempt to shut down speech. On a personal level, I hated the joke, because I found it unfunny, rather nasty, and entirely unnecessary. If I were prone to dying in ditches, I should like to think I would die in one for the right of free expression, but I also believe in utility. That joke added very little to the sum total of human happiness. Chortling over the drugging and raping of females seems to achieve nothing good, and it made me sad and queasy. But if that is what Mr Herring wishes to do in a free society, that is what he must absolutely do.

On the matter of principle: I support anyone’s right to make a cheap joke. I reserve my right to loathe it and not laugh at it. Perhaps where the nannyish element goes wrong is when it blurs boundaries. There is a vast difference between not liking something, and insisting it be stopped. The distinction should be marked.

The gist of your post seems, from the title onwards, to be hankering after some non-existent Golden Age of the Left, and therefore inherently conservative. Anyone on the Left (a usage I personally hate, incidentally: can’t we just call ourselves socialists?) must, by definition, want to see a fundamental shift in existing relations of power. Yet, in your criticisms, as I read them, of positive discrimination and of “political correctness” – and I assume you’re familiar with Richard Herring’s take on all of that – you seem to be arguing for the maintenance of those existing power relations which suit you.

I don’t know your ethnicity, but I’m guessing from your comments that, like me, you are a white male.

The freedom of speech which you claim is under attack from the left is a privilege. And it is a privilege which you would not enjoy to the same extent were you a woman, or for that matter, a person of colour. I remember an occasion when you and I, trapped within patriarchy as we are, went to defend a woman on Twitter who had been attacked as being “fat” by some corpulent Moron. So I know you know what I’m talking about, and I further assume that you are aware of the horrific abuse that women who express opinions no more controversial than yours or mine face when they express those opinions online. You will also be familiar with the fact that people who happen to possess a vagina are subjected daily to ridicule, abuse, unwanted and often disgusting sexual advances, quote apart from more severe forms of abuse and discrimination.

So the freedom to make jokes about rape has to be considered in that context. And, as far as I am aware, no one prevented Richard Herring or anyone else from making such jokes. The simple fact is that they’ve had their freedom of speech. And others have the same freedom to call them out on it, as long as the power relations I have described persist.

Now, if you were to say that there is a tension between a class analysis and what has become known as identity politics, I’d agree with you. As Tom Waits says, human beings are just monkeys with guns and money. We’re all just trying to work our way through this mess. But that is not the same as saying that those who are working, through their daily lives, to confront and change a bewilderingly-complex system of inequitable power relations have suddenly “left” you. As long as those power relations persist, you and I don’t get to make that judgement unless we’ve decided that current power relations are just fine the way they are. And I don’t think you have decided that.

My little bug, and I’m sure I go too far with it sometimes, is that the professional class which makes up the media in all its forms and politics both Left and Right, is drawn from the same small pool of university graduates who in themselves are fine but who have experience of nothing beyond that small internalized world of its own obsessions.

There seems a lack of depth sometimes, for want of a better word. No doubt I could be accused of being a moron for saying that, but though it feels awkward and must seem a little unkind, looking round, I think I’ve got a point.

Not that I should be surprised when watching the amusing tweets from her. One day I might actually point out her stupidity.