A friend told me he’d just been on a rant inspired by his daughter, age 13.

“I can’t think of any worse insult than to be told I’m stupid. Calling someone stupid is just about the worst thing. Don’t you think?”

So, I had to think about it. Being called, truthfully, stupid is pretty bad. I would hate to be stupid.

But the thing about insults, is they so often have little to do with truth.

It reminded me of a book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson. He was a light-skinned black man, and it turned out he could pass as white if he wanted to. The book explored what it meant to be identified as one thing or the other.

It would be what he was called that made the difference.

What became the turning point was when he saw a man called out in the South, called out as ‘Ni***r’. He was then lynched, hung from a tree for no other cause.

The narrator of the book refused to be called black after that. Or, in the word of the day, “coloured”.

I can understand why my friend was not considering those sorts of insults. He was a strong, empowered white man in a society where white men are empowered. It would be an occasion VERY far out on the bell curve to be insulted in a way that would cause him harm or death.

But I know, that there are certain words, certain insults, that mean I am in physical danger. As a woman, if someone called me a “b***h” or a “c**t” in certain contexts, it would be as if they were flashing a permit allowing them to hurt me.

“Because I am this, and you are that, I may now rape, hit or even kill you. It’s part of the way of the world.”

I am not going to say I’m agonized over this fact. I just know that, if I hear certain words in certain settings, I better find a very quick and obsequious way to get OUT of there.

I fear those insults worse than being called stupid