"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Who in the world thought up that saying? Words do hurt. There are so many kinds of verbal abuse. So many ways of ridiculing others. I'm thinking about racial and ethnic slurs, demeaning names for women and LGBTQ folks, or anyone else deemed different from the speaker. The other.
Children can be quite unkind; bullying and name-calling are an ever-present problem in schools. I must have been very lucky. When I started kindergarten, there was a pretty diverse group of kids in my class. Two of the girls had bright red hair, there were some Japanese and Chinese Americans, one girl had a hearing aid with a big battery box strapped to her chest, a couple wore glasses, one boy had suffered burns over all of his visible body, one girl was "spastic" (she probably suffered from cerebral palsy). There were Jewish kids and Catholic and Protestant. But those differences were barely noticed. We were all Miss Robertson's Morning Class. I don't remember any name calling. I don't remember any bullying. Until....
When I was in sixth grade, the school nurse announced to me that I had flunked my eye test. I needed glasses for distance work. I went home and announced dramatically to my mother that I was going to end up a spinster. I got my glasses. I went to school. The boy at the desk behind me called me four-eyes! I don't know if that was before or after he slammed me over the head with his books. (He must have had a crush on me.) Four-eyes! I was devastated.
As I said, I had it easy, but some of my classmates met with ridicule and bullying when they left our nice cocoon. The boy with the scar tissue moved to another school after second grade. He came back halfway through fourth grade. "Hey, Billy's back!" But Billy had changed. He didn't want to be friends. He beat up the nicest boy in the class. "Okay, if that's the way he wants it," everyone said. Much later, we realized that he must have been bullied at that other school. I wish our teacher had said something to the class so that we would understand.
Another story: Before my parents married, my father sat my mother down and said that he had something he needed to tell her. She wondered what the terrible revelation would be. "My mother's family wasn't French," he said. "They were from Italy." My mother sat there, waiting to hear the terrible revelation.... My father grew up in Garlic Gulch where all the wops, dagos, and Eyeties lived so my grandmother would tell people she was French. (I wonder how many people bought that when the rest of her family were unapologetically Italian.) My aunts also claimed that their family had come from France and were horrified when I told my cousins the truth about thirty years ago. My cousins were thrilled.
I bet you can think of all sorts of demeaning names that are commonly used for various groups of people. I recently reread The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley. It is often cited as having the best opening sentence and is full of philosophical and religious musings. Here the narrator is thinking about names applied to women: "And it is a fact that women get called rude names more than men because it is not expected that they will hit the people who call them names, so they are called old trouts, old bags, cows, tramps, bitches, whores, and many other things, which no one dares to shout after men, though when they are not there men may safely be called sharks, swine, hogs, snakes, curs, and other animals." Unfortunately, it does seem as if there are many more rude names for women, and rude names for men sometimes are just rude names for their mothers (bastard, son of a bitch).
Right now, there are efforts underway to change derogatory place names (in this state, they often start with the word "squaw") or place names that refer to historical personages who were slave owners or engaged in activities that are now seen to be reprehensible. Sports teams' names and mascots have also been changed in recent years. A final, light-hearted story: I went to Franklin High School. Our school mascot was a Quaker. At football games, we would chant:
We are the Quakers
The mighty, mighty Quakers,
And everywhere we go (oh)
People want to know (oh)
Who we (ah) are
So we tell 'em
We are the Quakers
The mighty, mighty Quakers
(Repeat over and over again)
It did seem a little incongruous to have a Quaker as a mascot (especially a mighty, mighty Quaker), and a number of years ago, it was felt that Franklin needed to change so instead of being Quakers, it was decided the teams would be called the Franklin Quakes (as in earthquake). The change did not stick. My Quaker friend did not object to us remaining the mighty, mighty Quakers.
Back to name-calling. It is a way of de-humanising people. The past president of the United States was recorded as having used over 200 demeaning "nicknames" for people he didn't like while in office. People of other races, people from other countries, people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, women, Democrats, Socialists, anyone who disagreed with him. Words have tremendous power to wound, and they are often used quite intentionally to ridicule and marginalize the "other". Yes, sticks and stones may break our bones, but names can cause insidious psychological damage. Their hurt can last longer than physical damage to a body (which, by the way, is never okay, and most people seem to realize that).