Interesting question, that. I'd never really thought too hard about what offends me. It's more, I know it when I see it, kind of thing.

Chick lit doesn't offend me. It is what it is. It's sad that there are real women around who seem exactly like they've walked out of a chicklit novel, but the chicklit I have read parodies these lifestyles so I don't take it seriously enough to be offended. But I haven't read much of the genre. I grew out of it, I guess.

Women's fiction on the other hand... That this category exists in some bookshops offends me. I don't like that we live in such a segregated society that books about family matters are marketed solely at women, as if men are not family members too. It offends me when a book written by a woman about a woman is labelled women's fiction, regardless of its plot, or when it's given a pastel cover with cake on it of the kind that a typical man has been conditioned to avoid, even though he might get something out of it had it been marketed in a less gender sterotypical way. Actually I could go on and on about this (and have done elsewhere) but you get the idea.

You can probably also assume the reason why I'm saddened at the Smurfs comeback.

I'm also getting a little weary of the fictional abuse of interesting young women in a way that's purely for entertainment. I think our society is obsessed with it. It's no single piece of literature that causes this imbalance but the total corpus. I therefore don't enjoy reading fictional accounts of horrible things happening to young people, and I could add to that list a new True Australian Crime series which presents horrific tales of abuse in Whodunnit style, in which the audience is expected to guess who the perpetrator was. These are retellings of recent crimes, in which families of the mutilated and deceased are still alive. That offends me.

South Park doesn't offend me, but I think I only get about half the jokes. A funny thing happens when something is consciously offensive. It ends up not being offensive at all.

Have you been reading my latest manuscript?

'Stay away from your potential. It's like your bank balance. There's never as much of it as you think.'

I think Lin's right: most things that set out to shock fail precisely because they try too hard.

However, I always enjoy it when people 'push the envelope' and get it right. Most of Chris Morris's comedy is a case in point.

I find it interesting the things that different people take offence to. The stuff that pushes buttons. For some it seems to be swearing and references to religion (although I have to say organised religion is something that deeply offends me). Others seem to get upset about anything relating to children (so for God's sake don't mention incest).

Films and books which depict women being killed in horrific ways don't so much offend me as bore me with their tedious predictability. Although, as I said, when I first read American Pyscho I found it quite hard to stomach. Was this the first 'torture porn' book?

Anyway, I posed the question because I was kinda curious . . . but probably more because I'd consumed two bottles of wine over the course of Sunday afternoon and evening. At a friend's Birthday party, not me sat on a park bench on my own. Honest.

x
'Stay away from your potential. It's like your bank balance. There's never as much of it as you think.'

Considering we're all pretty much alone inside our heads, is there a line anywhere - or is it the nanny superego which berates us when it gauges we should really be offended lest other people talk about us?
In the same way, is there really organised religion - or just a big bluff to chuck criticism at when it is we who have the problem?
Oh shit - fucking psychological social sciences again! Forget I asked.