Why are insults that refer to a person's personality, lifestyle or hobbies considered more acceptable (or at least less serious) than insults to a person's race, sex or disability? I used to think that it was because personality, lifestyle and hobbies are mutable, whereas race, sex and disability are things a person has no control over - yet there are plenty of examples to the contrary (Many personalities don't change without outside intervention; transsexuals change their physiological sex; disabilities can be the result of one's own voluntary actions; Micheal Jackson went white; etc.). Not only that, but why should it matter whether or not a person has control over the things being made fun of? I only see two possibilities. First, it could be a question of fairness - in which case, why is it fair to insult things that a person can change but that are nevertheless a part of them as human beings? This brings me to the second possibility - maybe we are implicitly endorsing a norm like "If the insults bother you, change yourself." Yet this seems horrendously unfair and authoritarian. So why does society accept insults to or disrespect of a person based on their personality (shyness, clumsiness, taste in the arts, etc.), their lifestyle (polyamorists, hippies, S/M practitioners, etc.) or their hobbies (painting miniature soldiers, playing video games, carrying dogs around in their purses)?