Insults depend upon their purpose and their accuracy and are sometimes appropriate and useful

      I have a relative who accuses me, over and over, of feeling hatred towards someone. She bases this upon various nouns and adjectives I use for that person. Yet, every one of these nouns and adjectives can be backed up by history, evidence, and the words moving out of that person’s mouth. If I called someone brown-eyed there would be no problem (assuming that the other person DID have brown-eyes). Why would calling a person a pathological liar be considered inappropriate if there is a long, well documented, list of times when the person lied without personal benefit or any particular reason to do so? Lying compulsively. I have read (no personal knowledge) that a pathological liar can lie quite successfully on a “lie-detector” test because lying is not stressful (which is what the test really measures) for them. In some cases, the liar isn’t even aware that they are saying lies.

Sticks and Stones

     There is an English language children’s “rhyme”, dating from the early 1800s

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

     “Verbal bullying” makes use of words to attack. They may be inaccurate, socially-negative, or words of negative associations. The effects of such words are always highly dependent on the listener. When they are accurate, it may depend on the solidity of the person’s self-image. This is why verbal bullying is such a widely used method of attack within the US school system. It is only a few fortunate people, in the environment of childhood in the US, who have the foundational strength to be unaffected by such attacks. Ugly, fat, skinny, clumsy, wart-face, short are words that may very well be true (according to societal standards or medical descriptions) but they only hurt if the receiver cares. This is the theoretical purpose of the above listed two lines. (But, I confess, I don’t think they often work.)

     Verbal bullying can also make use of inaccurate words. In this case, it is largely a matter of self-esteem of the target (not that different from use of accurate words). An aspect of attacks with inaccurate words to a vulnerable person is that it may shift their self-esteem towards the definition of the words of the attack. If I call you “fat”, even though you have a healthy and strong body, you may either eat more because of “what the heck” or you may become unhealthily thin to try to avoid such attacks. More below.

Reclamation of Slurs

     There are also verbal attacks of true descriptions (or socially-unacceptable variants of true descriptions). These are often based on history — either ethnic, “racial”, income, family groups, geographical origination, physical weakness or irregularities, and so forth. Foundational strength is once again useful but it is also important to recognize such words can be an indication that the person doing the attacks might be quite able, and willing, to follow up with physical or legal assaults. Fortunately, bullies are often unwilling to pursue potentially dangerous actions without lots of others to rely upon.

     Black is Beautiful, I am Woman, Red Power, Love is Love, Born this Way, Love the Skin You’re In. Various slogans can remind the person (remind because it has always been true) that words are only a successful attack if we allow them and that what someone else considers a negative thing may inherently be considered a POSITIVE thing. The object is to turn what the attacker considers to be an insult into a compliment (but not to encourage further use of the words). “Four-eyes. Why yes, all the better to see you.”

How about those Accurate Descriptions?

     I started off with a description as to how use of accurate descriptions may be considered to be insults by someone else. Although I have an extensive list of accurate, and historically proven, words about that person, I have no desire to hate the person. Rather I am very sad because that person had the opportunity to follow a different path and they chose otherwise.

     Why bother to say accurate descriptions that must be thoroughly researched to determine appropriateness? Why bother to say them? Largely because they CAN be used as warnings to others. Sex Offender Registries, or Megan’s Law notifications, are an example of this in a formal, legal, manner. A person has been lawfully convicted of something, of which their repetition would be harmful, and the neighborhood is being warned.

     More often, accurate descriptions will be considered warnings by those who have done the appropriate research but be considered to be insults by those who insist on not doing, or believing, such research.

     When not used as active, useful, warnings then it is very important to consider the purpose of your use of such words. Are they meant to be constructive? Are they things that the person may not be aware of, such that calling it to their attention is informative? Are you using the accurate descriptions so that that person can be more easily identified?

     If your intention is to hurt, you should probably not say them. If your intention is to warn, they may be appropriate but useless (as it depends so much on the attitudes of those being warned). If your intention is to help, ask yourself if the use of these words, in this manner, is the most effective way of achieving your goals.

Inaccurate Descriptions Used as Insults

     It would sure be nice if we could let insults just pass us by. To ignore them, to smile upon the other person for wasting such air to produce puffs of nothing. That would sure be nice. Most of us don’t have that kind of rock hard foundation. If we are constantly told we are ugly, we will begin to suspect that we are ugly and, worse, start acting as if we are ugly. Many studies have been done in school environments where students are either called stupid/bright or are separated into stupid/bright subgroups. The grouping makes more difference to final test scores than does any preliminary test score. Capability can be overshadowed by repeated belittling.

     Inaccurate descriptions (call them insults, call them lies) about people can also hurt them via the effect on those surrounding them or aware of them. In the US, we have a leading politician who seems to want to cast away any accurate, provable, descriptions of himself onto others. He constantly fails to accomplish things, he calls OTHER people “losers”. He cheats within business processes and regulations, he tells OTHER people that they are people that they are cheating. He even makes use of socialistic methods of taking control of portions of private businesses and then accuses OTHER people of being “socialist”. It is so blatant and transparent but, apparently, successful at being overlooked by those who support him.

Reader, know thyself

     At root, words are just sequences of letters or symbols or phonemes or sounds. They only have meaning when they are interpreted by the target. A sound foundation can be very important in allowing inaccurate words to just slip on past us. Being proud of who we are in all our aspects make accurate words, meant as insults, cause only a difference in the air volume of the local area. Accurate descriptions used as warnings only make a difference when the listener is open to change or when non-targets are willing to check the information.

Unto thyself be true — and an accurate description is not necessarily an insult.

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