are the brains of men and women different? even asking such a question has become blasphemy in today’s hypersensitive world. so it’s no surprise that this discovery has gone largely under the radar…

Mainstream pubs are deathly afraid of joking about sex offenders or religion. So here’s one poking fun at both those touchy subjects.

gone are the days when a harmless dirty joke like this one could be enjoyed without dissecting it to see what it says about gender roles. sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a fleshlight joke is just a fleshlight joke.

Here’s a timely holiday cartoon that was likely rejected because it mentions sex offenders. While it’s not about a real sex offender--or even a real person (sorry, kids, Santa doesn’t have a social security number)--that’s irrelevant. Sex offenders and sex offenses in abstract are knee-jerk enough to be entirely un-joke-about-able.

I’m not sure why the New Yorker rejected this one--it’s a linguistics joke so it should be right up their alley.

Boston is a magical place full of people with “interesting” views. This cartoon pokes fun at the homophobic vibes that are alive and well in that town with a saying that might as well be the motto of Southie, “no homo.” But sensitivities around the ever growing list of words you can’t use—even when pointing out that they are bad—are so high that jokes about the homophobic are called out as homophobic themselves. Hopefully a thinking person can see the difference, but the twitter mob isn’t super fond of thinking.

In his latest book, “Woke Racism,” John McWhorter calls out being woke as a religion for zealots. And for those fanatics, this cartoon is straight up blasphemy. Not only does it poke fun at the woke’s inability to see the forest for the trees, but it also makes light of the grammatical awkwardness of updating the GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS neon sign with non-binary pronouns.

Tiger moms pushing their kids too hard is exactly the kind of joke you’d see in the New Yorker. Unfortunately, the drawing (though absurd and over-the-top and a cartoon) contains images that may require trigger warnings and therefore don’t fly these days. Depictions of violence, even cartoonish ones, have joined the long list of things you aren’t allowed to joke about. Get triggered with the collectible below:

Featuring one of my all time favorite cartoon characters, the dancing air man, this toon was rejected from the Rejection Collection. Despite the editor being fully in favor of running it, the publishers thought it was too risky to put out there, even under the headline of “this was rejected for being too risky.”