Uplifting tales or pressing the wrong buttons?

When I worked at BBC TV centre in the late eighties, the lifts were a heavily relied-upon form of transportation. If one arrived, you would run for it. To save a tedious wait for the next.
I remember being one of a crowd that had sardined itself inside one of these capacious boxes. The comic writer Denis Norden leapt in as the doors were closing and found himself facing a crowd of twenty people.
“Now I expect you’re all wondering why I’ve asked you here!” he chortled. He probably used that line habitually but it never failed to please.

I dare say Richard Ned Lebow, the hapless professor, thought he too would get a little chortle, when he found himself in a lift. When asked which floor he required, he answered,  Ladies Lingerie.  He hadn’t reckoned on his audience containing a raging feminist who took exception to this. This feeble joke she believed, was  designed to offend and denigrate women. He has refused to apologise (He should of course, have waded in with, I'm sorry I dropped a bit of a bloomer there...) and it is now being taken to another level. (The Men swear department?) It certainly makes me swear at the supreme idiocy of the situation.

Years ago, when people asked you what you were working on, you’d say the name of the director followed by his show. Like Mike Newell's Mayor's Charity. One day, in a lift at the Beeb I was asked what show I was doing. To which I replied,
“Roland Joffe’s Willy." as the lift doors closed.

I wouldn’t have offended anyone then, and in a similar context I wouldn't be taken to task now,  as seemingly I have a licence to say what I want.  Men, it seems, no longer have that option.
The swing of the pendulum is so weighted in women's favour that  instead of being mesmerised, we  all should be asking questions.
No one seems prepared to stick their heads above the parapet. To ask the right questions.