We’re told that language matters. That sexist slurs degrade all women, not just their target. And that the use of certain words — the worst words — is never acceptable.

Until, apparently, it is.

Last weekend, Sunday Star-Times columnist Andrea Vance used the c-word to describe six female Cabinet ministers. The insult was deliberate. So was the publication. And the justification? A fury of righteousness that these women had supported reform of New Zealand’s convoluted pay equity regime.

There was doubtless a debate to be had. The regime was far from perfect. Any scheme that compares a librarian to a fisheries officer is bound to raise more than an eyebrow. Equally, was rewriting it — however flawed — under urgency and without warning really an example of good governance? There was plenty for Vance to get her teeth into. Instead, she spat out a slur.

Not at all women, of course. Just the ones who hold office on the wrong side of the political aisle. Women who, if they held Green or Labour portfolios, would be feted as principled reformers. Instead, they were cast as traitors — Thatcherite girlbosses in power suits, slicing up the social contract for sport.

“Girl math,” Vance called their budget strategy. Which is ironic, given her own argument that billions in pay equity liabilities were already baked in.

But that doesn’t explain why the response to policy disagreement wasn’t argument, but insult. When the facts get complicated, name-calling is easier.

But the column was only the beginning. The real story was what came after — or rather, what didn’t. No outcry. No editorial walk-back. Just a bland statement from Stuff that the decision to publish the slur had been “carefully considered.” Because in today’s media ecosystem, misogyny isn’t a problem if the woman deserves it.

Even Dame Jenny Shipley, no stranger to political criticism, called the column “repulsive” and “threatening.” She also made the obvious point: when female leaders make hard decisions, they’re often singled out not for their policies, but for their gender. What’s new is seeing that pattern laundered through a newsroom.

To her credit, Nicola Willis declined to respond in kind. She simply noted that she hadn’t expected to be called the c-word by a mainstream journalist on Mother’s Day — a line she no doubt hadn’t rehearsed for media training.

And yet the column remained. No retraction. No apology. Just the steady hum of double standards — the unspoken rule that some women count, and others don’t.

This wasn’t commentary. It was a litmus test. For the media, for feminism, and for the boundaries of basic decency. Vance failed it. Her editors failed it. And the result was a textbook own goal.

In attempting to shame the Government’s female ministers, she turned them into the very thing her column claimed to defend: women on the receiving end of public misogyny. And this time, the smears didn’t come from trolls or Twitter. They came from the press gallery.

There’s a word for that, too. But I won’t print it here.