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I think this example supports my position. Yes, the older brother is trying to rile the younger brother. But there's also common knowledge across the participants that the older brother holds that it's undesirable to be adopted.
It's undesirable to be adopted because it means you aren't as much a part of the family as he is, it means your parents don't love you as much as the children they gave birth too. It wouldn't matter if adopted children were considered heroes by society, it would still be hurtful, because inside your family your status is diminished. When we were little, my parents were very strict about cursing, so we invented our own insults. My little sister (5 or 6 years old) wanted to be a princess, so we called her a puncess. It upset the absolute shit out of her, she cried so much about it that my parents added puncess to the list of curses we had better not say if we valued our hides. Because it didn't matter what the word was, our intention was to hurt her and we put all the venom we could into it.
Words can not hurt you. It is the way words are used, the intentions behind their use which hurts, and then only as much as you let them. And we have set up a system which rewards people for being hurt. Would you be ok with her being expelled for shouting asshole 200 times?
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