You know I see a lot of people on here saying things like “Don’t insult a man’s penis, it contributes to a culture of excessive value placed on penises” and while in some ways this is true, if you’re insulting someone, you are attempting to hurt them and if you are attempting to do that, I’m hoping you have some good reason to want to hurt them, and if you are attempting to hurt someone, you have to attack them based on their values, undermining their value in terms of your own value set won’t work as an insult.  Explaining your value set, and explaining their failures in terms of it is only useful if you think they might be salvageable.  Someone who is intentionally trying to be harmful, or is beyond salvage in those terms is someone who one might need to insult rather than attempt to teach, because you need them to go away.  It is not always sensible to be an emotional pacifist, sometimes you need to hurt somebody’s feelings

In order to effectively insult someone, you need to look at their values.  For example a flasher is excited by your anger, disapproval and emotional upset, they will not feel guilty if they are called immoral, however if he is the type who gets off on feelings of power rather than humiliation, humiliating him, and telling him he is weak and powerless (and inadequate in the terms he uses to measure his manhood) will wound him and may cause him to cease what he is doing, this is often true in cases of non-physical sexual aggression.  In cases where someone gets off on humiliation, adopting a kindly approach is the best way to ruin the dude’s day “are you okay?” “Here let me help you” etc are more effective.

In order to really hurt someone, you have to understand what they value in themselves, what they think of as bad, and what they are insecure about.  Think about who they are frightened of being.  I, who pride myself on being kind, am most easily wounded by telling me I have harmed an innocent, or accusing me of immorality in terms of my own moral system, insulting me based on a moral system that is not my own will obviously be ineffective.  Similarly, it is easy to make me indignant and offended by telling me that I am incapable of making my own choices, and claiming that you understand my choices better than I do.

Insulting my appearance does little because I know that in our culture that’s often the first place people attack people who are perceived as women, and because I look very much the way I want, and have a lot of control over that aspect of myself.  Especially if you tell me I’m scary, trashy, slutty, look “fake” or like a drag queen, as these are traits I value and appreciate, those are things I do on purpose, attempting use “you have achieved the look you were going for” as an insult is a bit ridiculous, it’s a bit like trying to hurt someone who’s just got themselves up in a really hideous zombie makeup by telling them “ew, you look like a rotting corpse” so that’s an important thing to remember, telling the “politically incorrect” “comedian” (ha, I made a funny) he’s offensive, mean spirited or oppressive is just encouraging him.  He does not value kindness, care for other peoples feelings and so on, in fact he thinks those things are bad, when you accuse him of being offensive, you’re complimenting him in his mind. Instead you have to tell him he’s bland, his jokes are old, and he’s only as shocking as your racist grandad.  Tell him he’s derivative and his managed to take the dullest and most hackneyed of recycled material and make it somehow blander.  

The guy who values hypermasculinity and thinks that men are all “pussified” nowadays, doesn’t give a fuck if you think he’s insensitive or misogynistic, in fact he values those traits, instead you have to tell him he’s a wimp compared to the “girly” dudes who he despises (which TBH posturing macho dudes usually are, If you’re a hard motherfucker you don’t have to go around announcing it and putting other’s down to feel good and in my experience visibly GNC dudes tend to get a bit “boy named Sue” and end up tough because every motherfucker feels the need to have a go.)  You need to undermine his masculinity because that’s what he considers valuable.

This is why swefs/tefs and other “rad” scum accuse other feminists of misogyny and rape apologism and similar, because they know that these accusations are way more likely to hit home. They know the terminology, and understand how to use it to harm other feminists, because they have some understanding of the particular shared feminist value set. 

Similarly, reacting with terror, sympathy or awe to mass shooters just encourages them, they’re angry, they want to seem impressive.  You have to mock them afterwards, call them mingy little disappointments if you hope to discourage others. They want to be amoral monsters, they want our awe, they want fear, do not give it to them

If you want an insult to be effective you have to hit them in what they value, not in what you value.