Spoken like a true first world child who has never experienced the sectarian violence, highly infectious diseases like TB/malaria/hiv, starvation, lack of clean drinking water, and the psychological effects of practically insurmountable poverty. These arent theoretical possibilities but facts of life experienced by billions of humans, the vast majority of whom have practically zero chance of escaping the cycle unless they happened to be born to well educated or wealthy parents.

I apologize for how offensive my comment is to you and your PC Principal, but christ, how can you think a perceived verbal assault on American college students (who are supported to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year by their parents and/or Freddi Mac) can even possibly compare to the life and death situations experienced by billions of people in the world on a daily basis?

You can't dismiss the lived experiences of people simply because someone has it worse.

It doesnt matter if theres a genocide going on in every single country in the world - its still going to hurt when you get dumped, cheated on, fired, break your leg, get in a car accident, suffer a loss in the family, etc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372

[2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/drinking_w...

The pen is mightier than the sword because a pen will move armies with swords. Not because someone might get their feelings hurt.

Addendum: Speech is probably more thoroughly weaponized by calling for censorship that it is by calling someone by offensive phrases.

And that is exactly what the right words will do. If it's seen as socially acceptable to insult someone, then it's not far from that to having it be socially acceptable to commit physical violence against them. Historically, that's the way it's always worked. I've never once seen or read about an instance of a marginalized group where the insults stopped at racial or ethnic slurs.

Adults don't need institutions to protect them from name calling and hurtful words. Children do.

Meh, divorces happen over words, massive conflicts happen because of it, etc. "Just words" is not a great counterargument for anything.

Saying we don't need safe spaces is basically exactly the same as saying reddit doesn't need moderation. Or a community doesn't need a code of conduct. Sure, you don't need it, but the words used end up forming the cultural base of the group, and I really don't need to go to University 4chan.

That's a remarkably naive way of looking at the history of hate speech and hateful rhetoric both in the United States and globally.

(I'm not saying what happened at Yale approaches hate speech, but the idea that "words can't hurt you, and if they do you're just a child" is, well, pretty child-like in its understanding of social forces.)

Conversely, adults don't need assistance to empathise with other people. Children do.

Actually, in contrast to what you're saying, words hardly matter at all. What's important is intention of the communication, not necessarily it's form. You can be the nicest-spoken lady/gentelman and have a vicious effect on the well-being of people or whole communities, by being hypocritical, judgemental or manipulative.

For a concrete example, black people are usually OK with being called "niggers", as long as it's by other black people; I assume that's because they assume different intentions than when a white person says that word (which is quite racist, ironically).

I'd rather lose my arm than here that :)

I understand what you're getting at, but that is hilariously untrue and a perfect representation of the delusion that the social justice movement operates under.