What insults have you received in your life? Which ones were impossible to ignore?

Someone called me an Assbirth once, then I told him his mom couldn’t cook, then it was on…

I’ve heard a lot of foulness directed at me during my young years. The best way to go is just to ignore it even when it makes you really angry. Part of that is hindsight.

Partially relevant:

One day, a friend who intended to express I was really stupid called me an “uit-de-oertijd-aap”, which would translate to something like “from-prehistory-ape”. Using “from-prehistory” as some sort of an adjective.
I could not possibly have ignored that. I’m rubbish at holding in my laughter.

I was heavy for much of my life, and I have a former spouse whose quotidian epithet for me was “You Fat Fuck.” I’m skinny now, and she’s gone.

@Fyrius Whereas if he had called you an “uit de oertijd mongol” you would have had to kick his ass. ;-)

I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to insults. So I just ignore them or laugh. There has only been two that have really affected me:
When I was eight my neighbor accidentally hit me in the face and killed the nerve in my front tooth, which immediately turned purple. The kids on my bus called me “purple tooth” and mercifully teased me until I lost it. (it was a baby tooth) To this day I still cringe when I talk about or hear the phrase.
My freshman year in college there was this horrible girl who came into my friend’s dorm where I was hanging out. I didn’t say a word to her because we didn’t get along, and for no reason she got into my face and said, “You’re an ugly bitch and should f@%king die.” I think because the moment was so intense and what she said was so uncalled for it really bothered me. I spent that night locked in my bathroom crying.

During English class in the 11th grade, the kid sitting behind me said my mother had a penis. I was a goody-two-shoes, best student in the class, never in trouble before… and yet something snapped in me. I stood up, face-palmed him with all my might, then flipped his desk, and consequently him, over. I was overcome with intensity and had to step out of the room to catch my breath. My teacher and classmates were thoroughly stunned.

Speaking to my ex a few weeks ago, she called me a “sexy nerd.” I’m still trying to figure out if I should be insulted or flattered.

This girl I used to work with called me “Squanto”, I had to walk away to contain my rage.

The first time I ever heard the term “White Trash” was when a girl in high school was trying to pick a fight with me. I thought it was so funny!! The funniest thing about it was that this girl was the epitome of white trash. She was hooking on the streets already on the weekends!!
Most of the time when people insult me I don’t realize it. One of my best traits (and worse traits) is that I believe that people don’t set out to be jerks. If someone is mean I want to know what hurt them so badly.
Although a regular flutherer accused me of lying and getting my hormone replacement medications from my trainer instead of my doctor and that was a pretty low blow. I knew I was being insulted that time and it just pissed me off. Haven’t been able to read any of her posts with the same affection since.

A woman called me an “abomination in the sight of God” when I was 7 in 1976 in front of all the city’s TV cameras and the cops conveniently across the street. I was one of the students desegregating an elementary school in Milwaukee, and her point was that if black kids went to school with white kids, obviously there would end up being more kids who looked like me and that was just wrong in God’s eyes, apparently. Nice, huh? And 22 years was ”...all deliberate speed”? Bah! I knew what the word meant because I had heard what it meant in church repeatedly.

I had no real defenses against this woman; I was 7, the woman, I later learned, was a member of the American Nazi Party. If it weren’t for my 2nd grade teacher rushing over to get me away from this sputtering, rage-filled person, Mrs. Nazi might have hit me. I could feel it; she was looking for a reason to do so. I’ve never forgotten it.

Frankly, since then, there’s nothing a peer would have said to me that could rile me as much as that incident and the insults that my guardian, another person from whom I couldn’t defend myself as a child, flung at me over the years. Peers have called me names over the years and I just looked at them and walked off.

@PapaLeo
Then I would probably have considered kicking his ass after laughing my own off.

@aprilsimnel ; I am so sorry you went through that! My heart is aching for the little girl you were. I have a funny feeling that it was a defining moment in your life. It seems like you have proved her wrong in a very big way. If I didn’t already have such great admiration and respect for you before, it is amplified now.

My friend called me this once and I have never been able to forget it, nor have I wanted too.

“super steamin’ seamin demon”

My last name starts with an S, has 2 syllables and ends with an N. When my daughter was a Sargent in Civil Air patrol the cadets used to call her Sargent Satan. She loved it!

I used to cry a lot when I got insulted, but since I learned about my Power of Ignore, I just let it be. I have an easier time than most, because I have experienced some very powerful losses in my life, and they have enabled me to know what can really hurt and what is just “white noise”.

on a weekly basis I’m called everything in the book, not a day goes by that I’m not called an asshole at least 5 times, sometimes worse… yay

My twin brother once called me a bastard. Then he paused and we both laughed and forgot what we were fighting about.

No one has ever called me anything that bugged me enough to care about that long.

This is a tough question to answer. My life’s been riddled with insults day in and day out. When I was in elementary school, I had a lazy eye. I wore glasses (and still do, just not in public) but they didn’t help it, and provided just another thing to tease me about. The lazy eye thing was never let go. No one ever missed an opportunity to make me painfully aware of it. And my glasses got broken alot, in various ways. It’s actually pretty amazing how many ways people could think of it to break them. The most popular was just by slamming my face into lockers repeatedly. My mom was telling me to “ignore bullies and they go away.” If you can’t tell, this was obviously working like a charm…
Then in high school, I had started dating this girl sophomore year. We were together for three years. About 3 or 4 months of that was voluntary. Throughout the course of the relationship, I was called “retard” about 20–30 times a day. It doesn’t help that I pretty much AM a Greatest Hits compilation of mental illness. I don’t mind people calling me psychotic or weird. But when they try to imply that I’m stupid, I do get extremely offended.

@Judi – Thank you. It was one of a few pivotal incidents, to be sure. I feel sad for that little girl, and yet I can’t imagine what it was like for that woman’s children to have her as their mother. I feel sad for them, too. :/

@drClaw oh my god

I’m a tall, big rough lookin’ dude so no one has insulted me to my face since grade school. That is except for relatives. My uncle used to call me ugly fairly frequently, uttering such gems as ”(his young daughter) wow, FutureMem is so tall, he must be the tallest in the family!” (my uncle) “yeah, and he’s the ugliest too”. I always found that quite strange since he’s a really nice guy most of the time. In 7th or 8th grade this kid in my spanish class was walking past me in the hallway, stopped right in front of me and said “you know, you’re very ugly”. I had never even spoken to him before. Yet another time this asshole that went to college with my girlfriend (I was younger, about 16) said to her (in response to her mentioning she was going to take some portraits of me) “I hope you’re going to use a filter”. I overhead an old boss of mine remark that I had a face only a mother could love.

To this day I still find myself avoiding eye contact, not wanting to see any sort of… less-than-thrilled-to-be-looking-in-my-direction expression on peoples faces.

Now that I’m older and have grown from a passive, shy introvert into a confident (with the exception of this one specific area), assertive, take no crap from anyone, always speak my mind without holding back semi-hard ass that brings both barrels to any sort of conflict, I’m afraid the next person that insults me without provocation will wake up in the hospital. Well, not really, I’m actually quite peaceful and tend to be very friendly but I’d probably do some fucked up shit like intimidate them both verbally and physically then end it by spitting in their face.

I’m multiracial. I’m guessing from the moment anyone lays eyes on me that this is evident because I’m always asked, “What are you?” I always reply that I’m human, the last time I checked. Of course, they’re referring to my racial heritage. To say the least, I’m mixed with several different ethnicities. Which brings me to the worst insult I’ve ever received, which is “mutt.” Astoundingly, I’ve been called this by a few teacher’s in elementary and high school, and even by employers. Not to mention, going to a predominantly black high school, it was a favorite slight amongst girls who despised the color of my skin. It wasn’t something I could ignore, but I didn’t exactly respond either. Sometimes I wish I had.

Honestly, I didn’t get insulted much unless it was by siblings, cousins, or friends. And those insults were usually dished out in a joking or teasing manner that I would reciprocate. I suspect I block everything else out, and maybe that’s why don’t recall any other insults.

@SuckaFreeCitizen; I am whiter than white and call myself a mutt all the time. I have a blend of many European ethnicities with a splash of Native American (Comanche) for flavor. I wonder if some of the people who used that term with you might use it with tbemselves as well. My “muttness” makes me a living American melting pot.

I’m a mutt, too. I don’t get offended by it, though. “Mutts”, scientifically, are prone to being more attractive, and I think I heard something about genetic benefits concerning health, too. But it probably has a lot to do with what your particular chex mix is.

@Judi I look at myself the way you do, but I assure you the context in which they used the word was unmistakably insulting. This might be a good topic for different post, but in my experience, sometimes light-brown skin and multiple races get you unwanted attention by hateful people.

@Piper_Brianmind I like that: chex mix. =)

I was picked on unmercifully in the 8th grade. I had extremely bad acne, glasses, and braces. I was driven to tears nearly every day that year. I was talking to a friend, and asked something like, “Have you taken the test in such’n’such a class yet?” And some jerk over heard me and said, “Have you taken a washcloth to your face?” The whole class heard him, and laughed in unison. It was an insult from about 30 people. It was hard to ignore. I stormed out of the room and to the bathroom, where I could cry by myself.

Now, my skin is beautiful, my teeth are straight, I’ve had LASIK, and they can suck it.

@SuckaFreeCitizen; funny story. When my kids were young we lived in a pretty blended neighborhood. One day my daughter came in the house crying. She said, ” they called me a honkey mommy, what’s a honkey?”
I told her, “Sweetie a honkey is a name some people use to call people with white skin.”
my daughter, who had an olive complexion got quite I dignant and said, “I’m not white, I’m brown!

Darn iPhone messed with my punchline! I meant to say “indignant” not I dignant

@Judi LOL. It’s okay. I got the idea. That is funny. Reminds me of my eleven year old little brother. He has blonde hair and blue eyes and claims that his color is peach! I’d have to agree. ;-)

I was verbally abused from the time I was born – or at least as far back as I can remember… Those are hard to ignore, because as you learn language, you learn the labels of ugly, fat, and stupid applied to yourself. That’s why it’s taken over 4 decades to get close to shutting those voices up.

One of my relatives used to blame everything they didn’t like about me or my behavior on my biological father that I’d never even laid eyes on which really got to me. I had the wrong color skin from “that man”, my freckles were seen as blemishes from “that man”, my eyes were the wrong color from “that man”. I grew up feeling seriously ugly and only the intervention of another relative to put me in touch with “that man” helped me grow beyond that feeling.

Someone once told me over Facebook to grow boobs. Didn’t bug me that much to be honest, seeing as they didn’t even have the decency to say it to my face. They wrote it through Honesty Box, it was quite laughable..

I’ve been trolling dark parts of the internet since I was 8.
I’ve seen more insults in the past eleven years than many people will see in a lifetime.
I can’t remember a single one of them.

This has a very “Army commercial” feel doesn’t it?

I’ve been called many a bad name, but my memory isn’t what it used to be. I guess that’s a good thing.

I was once referred to as a type of Northern waterfowl by a Brooklyn native. . .

Someone here just a little while ago decided to pm me with “Go fuck yourself, dickhead.”

To which my response was “Gladly.” Now, where did I put those batteries?

Stupid people will be stupid people. Recognizing that they’re stupid and can’t do any better than foul mouthed comments to try and insult people because they have nothing better to say helps others to ignore their comments. When they go on to demonstrate further stupidity, it only serves to reinforce the point that they really can’t do any better or have an actual discussion.

First, I will start off by saying that probably 98% of the insults I receive are online. They don’t happen in real life because I don’t associate with people who would insult me in real life, whereas online, I am constantly around different people who may be the type who would insult me.

I’ve come to ignore sexual-orientation-based insults. When I was younger and first started coming online, I couldn’t take them, but I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter. These people are nothing. Nothing. If they were something, they wouldn’t be insulting me online. I’ve been called “fag”, “faggot”, “sodomite”, “cocksucker”, the works. I don’t care about those kinds of insults anymore; I’ve been desensitized to the insults themselves. However, the only time I do care is when other people don’t care that it’s happening. Then I get annoyed.

The other group of insults I receive primarily are ageist in nature. “Immature”, “brat”, “stupid kid”, etc. This usually happens when I’m proving to have a stronger or more popular argument in an argument or disagreement with someone who is twice my age or so. Just goes to show you that age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom or maturity. Same with the orientation-based ones, I’m able to ignore these to an extent. I am not able to ignore them when ageism is permitted or simply not cared about.

I’ve also been called things like “effeminate”, “priveleged”, etc. those things are all true and it’s a piss-poor attempt at an insult. Why would I dislike them or deny them? It’s not like I dislike those things about me. ;)

My Dad, during one of his frequent drinking spells, called me a Faggot for playing with a scarf, you know, flying it around with my hand to watch it float in the air. That really hurt, and I’ll never forget it.

I also never cried at his funeral. Saw no need for it. Still don’t.

Asshole. I know, everyone has been called it at one time or another, it was how, when and by whom that made it stick in my mind. Two very slow traffic lines were converging into one coming out of a big parking lot. It was evening, but hot, and the windows were rolled down. I cut him off, and looked him in the eye while doing it. He said, in a very strange tone, “You know you’re an asshole, don’t you?” I guess I knew I was. It stuck.

I try not to cut people off anymore.

Of all the things I’ve ever been called, the only one I feel the need to defend against is “liar”. Honesty is extremely important to me, so to be accused of lying really gets to me.

@Zen, that might have been me, you weren’t driving in IL, were you? I am adamant about people practicing courtesy while driving and am NOT shy about letting people know when they fuck up.

@evelyns_pet_zebra

I always wonder if parents realize how much impact they have when they say things like that. Those are the kinds of things kids will never forget. I have a friend who says that his dad never abused him or anything (he didn’t even spank and never yelled) but he remembers a time when his dad called him “dumb” for not understanding his homework assignment (he was 11 at the time). He’ll never forget that. You just don’t say that kind of thing to your kid.

Skinny

@bumwithablackberry I’m sure plenty of people are jealous of you.

@hungryhungryhortence My mom blames every difference of opinion between us on me being off medication. She’s pretty convinced that if I was back on it, apparently I’d be agreeing with everything she says regardless of 95% of it having no validity whatsoever.

No it sucks I can eat whatever I want, all day long, don’t need to exercise and I keep my girlish figure, thing is I’m really not that into food, and I like to exercise.

Me and my dad were fucking the same girl, and I guess she told him some things we did because he called me an “asslicker” for weeks, even in front of my mom, I guess is like an inside joke.

@bumwithablackberry TMI

@bumwithablackberry – big time TMI

WT TMI

There are two things I have never forgot, both in middle school. This boy who I liked in the 6th grade told me that I had a neck like a giraffe (which I laugh about now because my family actually told me this is a trait on one side of my family), and I remember sitting with my head hunched after that so no one would notice it. I still do it without thinking about it unless someone says something haha. In 8th grade, a so called “friend” of mine showed me a three page letter she had wrote about me in 6th grade. She drew mean pictures of me (let’s face it, we all looked like nerds in middle school), made fun of how I looked, talked, smiled, walked, dressed, and studied. I felt less than human that day, and I never forgot it. She showed it to everyone, including me, in our class, commenting how funny it was and it didn’t mean anything mean about me. I was so hurt and humiliated. She was popular and pretty, and I was a shy, nerdy girl in middle school, and it devastated me that people could do something so cruel, especially someone who I thought was my friend for two years. But I think it turned out ok. It taught me that no matter what anybody says, you are a beautiful, fun, wonderful person and to never let anyone make you feel anything different than that.

@DominicX Agreed. Insults (perceived or real) from parents hurt so much more than insults from anyone else in the world. Mostly because they’re the last people you’d expect to hear insults from.

Most of the insults I’ve received have had to do with my physical attributes. Being fat, or having a big butt, or having bad skin (not funny when you have eczema). Still, glad to say that being fat is in the past. As for big butts/thighs, I think it runs in the family. It’s a kind of running joke we have among us.

Insults that have to do with my mind or character are few and far between, probably because I give people no reason to doubt my mental capabilities. Probably also because I can recognise it when it’s not an insult but a fact (still doesn’t stop it from stinging though).

Of course, being the sensitive soul I am, it can be hard to differentiate between jokes and insults.

I have been called the most soul destroying, hair raising, evil and shocking things you can imagine. Long ago, I became inured to anything like that. Now all it takes to hurt my feewings is simple rudeness.

My then bf called me a whore once because I had more guy friends then girl friends. That hurt because I am not a whore. Nor have I done anything remotely whorish. Im 22 and have only slept with 2 people in my life. I just find that for me, it is easier to get along with guys than girls. Most girls are too catty and bitchy behind other girls backs so I dont really get involved with them. I guess it hurt more because it came from someone I cared about.. Now I tend to just let insults go.. Because most of the time the person saying it means nothing.

Every insult I have ever recived, has had one thing in commen,,,they allpied more to the one hurling the insult, than to me.

The only real insult is when a woman says no.

@bumwithablackberry No.

That was horrible of me. Only one way right and every other way wrong.

One racist insult in my whole life. Happened in July 1979 in the Netherlands. It’s interesting that I seem unable to forget this.

@mattbrowne I understand perfectly. On the other hand, when you are subjected to racist comments often and frequently, youi tend to ignore them and forget them. Once – now that I’d remember!

@Zen – I was an isolated incident.

I’ve been told that I can’t cook.The nerve.Here,have a wolfburger!

Me and a group of girls were sitting togather discussing some problems then infront all of them my best friend told me that I don’t deserve to be her friend.

What seems to hurt the most are the insults from those that are closest to me. I don’t let too many people in, you see, so if I do; Theres a phenomenal amount of trust I have with said person.
Otherwise, they might bother me a bit, since I am human and I’m pretty sensitive to criticism (That would root back to my childhood, as do most psychological incidents) But I let them go.
One of the worst, and most recent insults I could think of came from an ex; I am very into drawing and painting etc. I’m nothing out of this world but I’ve been told from quite a lot of people that I have something going for me. It was always nice to hear you know. But this ex, I remember he told me “You wouldn’t be able to live off of a career in art, your drawings just aren’t good enough. They’re OK, they’re repetitive, they all have the same meaning” Etc. Now I didn’t see where this was coming from, he always seemed to like them but no matter, I think there are more people that believe in me and my creativity or whatnot than to really let that belittle me.

It all depends on who says it, or where they’re focusing on (The people that know you the most, know where to hurt you the most)