There's a difference between getting indignant because someone says something that might insult you yourself, and something that seems designed to hurt or diminish someone else, especially someone weaker or more vulnerable.

Here's a link to a song I wrote and posted on the Mudcat about this kind of thing - Poison in Jest:

If I'll call you what I choose, what's that got to do with you?
It's not my problem if the words appall you.
It's how I always speak when I'm talking to a freak,
and it doesn't really matter what I call you.
Yes, I'll speak to you direct, that's what you must expect -
No I never mess around with being "Politically Correct."

Which doesn't mean I don't get suspicious of this kind of thing often enough. It seems to me there are some people who use this kind of issue as a mechanism for exerting power; and there are some who pick out and even manufacture exaggerated examples of it as a way of undermining the whole notion that courtesy to other people requires that we take care what sort of words we use to refer to them and so forth.

And I'm talking about the wide world here, rather than the Mudcat.