I’ve been hearing screeds about the coarsening of American discourse my whole life, and while I agree that it’s ugly out there, some of the changes have been positive — even liberating. In 1986, I used the word “vagina” in a newspaper column about teaching little girls the names of their body parts. My mother was horrified. When I asked what I should have used instead, she said, “Down there.” https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/01/17/vulgar-language-president-trump-anita-diamant