YOU would think, sometimes, that Twitter, was actually a machine designed to generate new insults, determine whether they are hate speech or not, and then have them struck from the dictionary all together. It’s a way, if you like, of getting rid of words, because surely there are too many of them – around 172,000 of the pesky things in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Last week, for instance – I don’t know if you noticed – we lost the word gammon. Those paying any attention to the media would have seen it slide down the chute, to be relegated to the dictionary of hate, used only by trolls and particularly angry Corbynites. Luckily there are still a lot of other words for pig meat: pork, ham, bacon, lardons. So don’t worry meat-lovers, pig is not off the menu. Nevertheless, it seemed sad to see it go, slipping into the bin of disgraced words, into which snowflake, slug, cuckold and melt had already disappeared.

Gammon, which had a nice olde worlde feel to it, has been lost because of a children’s book author called Ben Davis. Or rather it has been lost because Davis, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, casually tweeted an insult – "This Great Wall of Gammon has had its way long enough" – that stuck and became used by the radical left to describe men who are white, middle-aged, right-wing and Brexit-loving. But most of all it has been lost because these so-called "gammon" and friends didn't like it, and objected to it as being racist, or classist.

Recently Davis wrote about all that happened since his tweet, observing, “Now, I don’t think anyone genuinely believes “gammon” is racist. No one has ever found “Gammons Go Home” daubed across their front door. There were never segregated schools for gammon children. And the fact that many of the commentators claiming to be so offended by the term routinely call millennials “Generation Snowflake” is delicious.”

What happened with "gammon" is familiar. The right, who feel that they are too often being harangued for the use of words that are racist or sexist, seizes upon an insult directed at themselves and seeks to argue that they are the true victims of racism. They do this in spite of the fact that the whole point about “gammon” is that it refers to people who actually have a lot of power and voice – who are far from victims.

One of my biggest issues with the repeated debates we are having around language on social media, is that it feels like, all too often, it is a deliberate deflection from what really matters. Many of the offences that are causing the outrage are trivial. Does anyone really care? Would Donald Trump, Boris Johnson or Eric Pickles, actually mind that they are called gammon?

I doubt I would if I were them. Nor do I even care when problematic language might come closer to home for me. For instance, last week we also almost lost the term “menopause” – which would have been a great pity, because it’s only in the last couple of years that anyone has begun actually mentioning the word at all.

The deputy governor of the Bank of England, Ben Broadbent, had used the word in an attempt to explain what it meant for an economy to be climacteric. Cue a lot of people declaring this an insult to menopausal woman. I am a menopausal woman. I feel no insult. It seems to me one of the great joys of language is in taking words from one part of it and applying them as metaphors to another.

So, let’s stop spending so much energy on making every single word into a battleground. Let’s save our breath for when it matters. As with all things, it’s making the right judgement on that which counts.

ONE of the things when it comes to some of the thorny and emotive questions around rights, is the question of how far and how fast popular attitudes shift. The people of Ireland will this week vote in a referendum on whether to repeal the Eighth Amendment, an abortion law put in place at a time when the country was heavily regulated by Catholicism. It’s a historic moment, and an opportunity which, if lost, would be tragic for the women of Ireland, who currently face the most restrictive laws in all of Europe. There, in Ireland, abortion is only legal if done to save a woman’s life. There, when women take abortion pills, they do so without medical support and with the possible threat of 14 years imprisonment. From there, each year thousands of women are forced to travel to other countries to access abortion, Yet, in the run up to the referendum, polls have shown the No vote, against the repeal, catching up on Yes. This seems astonishing until you learn that this is because while many agree with the repeal, they are also not so sure about the alternative the government are planning should it go through. For what it would put in place would be one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world – with, for instance, no restrictions on abortion up to 12 weeks. If Yes does not win on Friday, it would be a shock – and a massive set-back in terms of the global march of women’s rights. But the jump is a big one. Let’s hope the mood is there.