Words don’t leave bruises, but can hurt more than punches
January 5, 2026
When we talk about violence in general, we can agree that it has been omnipresent in today’s media. Every day we watch different types of physical violence happening abroad, but also domestically, and very consciously we condemn and judge what we see.
However, a form of violence which is frequently, almost always disregarded, we can even say normalised, is verbal violence. Social media is filled with videos of arguments from reality TV, on the street and in public transport (…), as well as in the comment sections. Those arguments are almost never productive, but they are deliberately aggressive. Nevertheless, one type of verbal violence is so normalised that many don’t even register it as violence. We’re talking about slurs and pejoratives, derogatory words, which are used against specific groups of people, defined by their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity…
A frequent argument that opposes not using slurs and pejoratives is that they’re “just” words, and words can’t hurt. Even if that were the case, normalising one type of violence will mandatorily lead to the normalisation of others. Verbal violence, especially of this kind, is always done to degrade the targeted victim (or victims). Like in every type of violence, the leading motivator is power, or rather, establishing power over another person and making them feel inferior.
This, on its own, is a way to disrespect and attack the autonomy of another person. The reason why the attack even happens is the fact that the targeted person is a member of a specific social group. In the case we are discussing here, we are talking about slurs and pejoratives against women.
Let’s go back to the arguments that oppose the use of slurs and pejoratives. Along with the already mentioned argument that they’re “just” words, there’s also a school of thought that says that those words become offensive only when they’re used offensively. Although it’s true that derogatory words get a negative connotation when being used, it would be naïve to say that some words on their own carry a negative meaning.
An example of a word that becomes derogatory depending on its use is the word “bitch”. In general, a bitch is a female dog; however, it can be used as a derogatory word for a woman, and its meaning boils down to simply being insulting. We could even say that the second meaning, negative use of the word, is more frequent than in its original meaning.
Lauren Ashwell, in the article “Gendered Slurs”, mentions that gendered slurs like “slut”, “bitch”, and “sissy” aren’t paid much attention even in academic circles (Ashwell 2024: 229). The reason for this, as Ashwell writes, is that these derogatory words don’t have “neutral correlates” (Ashwell 2024: 229), unlike pejoratives for, for example, people of certain races. However, we can’t completely agree with this. Words like “slut”, “bitch”, “sissy” and similar derogatory terms for women are just that, negatively marked nouns which simply say that the object is a woman. Therefore, the “neutral correlate” is “woman”.
Misogyny of this seems to be a universal and socially accepted way to attack a woman. This year (2025), on social media, there were videos in which a Serbian singer Jelena Karleuša is leaving a performance while the audience boos her and yells words like “whore” or “slut” at her. People in the audience who don’t agree with the singer’s actions, stances and statements mostly used those words to verbally assault her.
On the other hand, Dijana Hrka, whose son died on the 1st of November 2024 in Novi Sad during the railway station canopy collapse, and who is now actively fighting for justice, also gets these types of comments and insults from people who disagree with her, most frequently in comments on social media.
These two women, on completely different paths and with almost completely incomparable life experiences, are targets of hate speech from people in Serbia. The best attack against them is, seemingly, the use of derogatory words which don’t mean anything but the fact that they are women. Rather, those words do have a meaning, which isn’t derogatory on its own. However, it would be naïve to pretend that those words in the given contexts were used in non-derogatory ways.
In the last couple of decades, different groups of people from different cultures have started reclaiming slurs. The idea is that these words lose their power, or rather, they lose the derogatory meaning, once the aggressors see that even the victims use them to talk about each other. In theory, it is clear why this doesn’t make sense, and in practice, it has been shown not only as impractical, but it has also done the opposite (read “The Power of Words: Unpacking the Sociolinguistic Impact of Slurs” by Nisreen Mutlak).
Let’s equate the use of slurs to punching (verbal to physical violence). You cannot consciously punch someone and then try to convince that person that they’re not in pain. Furthermore, if the punched person punches another person to show the original aggressor that a punch doesn’t hurt, the violence is not neutralised, but rather, it is continued and expanded.
As one Reddit user wrote, “misogynistic slurs aren’t socially recognised as slurs because misogyny isn’t socially recognised as bigotry”. Another user responded to this by writing: “[slurs are] the words they use when they’re killing us…”
Bibliography:
Ashwell, Lauren. “Gendered Slurs”. Social Theory and Practice, Special Issue: Dominating Speech, 42, 2, (April 2016): 228–239. Web. Jstor. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24871341 (18/11/2025.)
clarauser7890. “Misogynistic slurs aren’t socially recognized as slurs because misogyny isn’t socially recognized as bigotry”. Post on Reddit, in the subreddit r/RadicalFeminism, 2nd of May 2025. Web. https://www.reddit.com/r/RadicalFeminism/comments/1kd7zz4/misogynistic_slurs_arent_socially_recognized_as/ (18/11/2025.)
Mutlak, N. “The Power of Words: Unpacking the Sociolinguistic Impact of Slurs”. Aydın İnsan ve Toplum Dergisi, 10, 2 (2024): 159–182. Web. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/aitdergi/issue/88372/1530111 (17/11/2025.)
nieces-pieces. Comment under a Reddit post by clarauser7890 “Misogynistic slurs aren’t socially recognized as slurs because misogyny isn’t socially recognized as bigotry”, 2nd of May 2025. Web. https://www.reddit.com/r/RadicalFeminism/comments/1kd7zz4/misogynistic_slurs_arent_socially_recognized_as/ (18/11/2025.)
Further reading:
Chaarani, Rokaya. “An Overview of Gendered Violence in Language”. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 4, 3 (2021): 168–170. Web. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.3.19
Popa-Wyatt, Mihaela and Jeremy L. Wyatt. “Slurs, roles and power”. Philos Stud, 175 (2018): 2879–2906. Web. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0986-2
Felmlee, Diane, Paulina Inara Rodis and Amy Zhang. “Sexist Slurs: Reinforcing Feminine Stereotypes Online”. Sex Roles, 83 (2020): 16–28. Web. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-019-01095-z
Author: Uroš Smiljanić