I was brought up in a different age with a different set of values. For example, my mother taught her four children that “sticks and stones may break my bones but word will never harm me”. This was the outlook even when people called me ‘a dirty f*cking Jew’ or exclaimed ‘go die in a gas chamber’.
I suppose it’s not a coincidence that we don’t often hear that expression anymore about words not harming you. It’s representative of a tyrannical society that proclaims control over the words that people use… Here is a story about college professors that threaten bad grades for saying ‘illegal alien,’ ‘male,’ ‘female’ http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6770