I understand the injustice of this of course, but there's simply no other way forward. The only other option is to convince people whose sole purpose is to hurt you to stop trying to hurt you. Obviously this is a losing strategy.

Words have exactly as much power as we give them. That's the point I want to drive home here. Of course if somebody says something clearly designed to offend me I might be irritated by it, but we should seriously consider why we care about the opinion of somebody who sets out to offend us in the first place, right?

If they’d been a group of strong threatening men then I’d have responded to the physical threat in the same way I’d respond regardless of what they called me. That might have been fighting back or running or whatever seemed best in the circumstances. The issue still wouldn't be the word, it would be the physical danger.