'Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.' The whole point of the old saying is that 'names will never harm me', because I WILL NOT allow them to.
What all the over-sensitive 'victims' in the race to be the most sensitive and the easiest to be 'offended' never seem to realise that you do have to 'take offence' at or with something. That is, 'the offensiveness' is not inherent in the alleged insult, but it is your own reaction to it. This becomes obvious when - for example - it is deemed acceptable for gays to call one another 'queer', but not for a heterosexual to do the same, and many other such examples for each 'victim' group. The word has not changed, the act of uttering it is no different, all that has changed is the context. Therefore, you have to choose the 'offensive' version in order to be offended by it.
That is what the old saying actually means: I will not let words harm me, because I have power over what they mean to me, and I do not let the words have any power over me.
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