"You hit like a girl!"

"[Insert name here] has a man-gina."

"Grow a pair."

"Man up."

"He's such a d*ck!"

Sound familiar? The second "insult" popped up recently on my Facebook newsfeed, and I was immediately enraged. Anyone who has taken a health or sex-ed class should know that female body is pretty darn amazing for the pain it can withstand. So why on Earth do these same people feel the need to make being a girl a taunt? I did an article just last week that offered alternatives to swear words; not a single option contained a term that was derogatory to any gender. Why, you ask? Simply because I don't like it, and I do my best to operate under a "treat others as you would like to be treated" mentality.

Do I slip up? More often than I care to admit. But ever since I realized I didn't like insults about my gender thrown around, I've tried to eliminate similar words about other genders and sexual orientations from my own vocabulary. There's so many other available words and sayings out there; why must we resort to insults based solely on genitalia?

It's a little disheartening sometimes that despite my best efforts to change myself, the people around me have yet to manage a similar transition. However, I have decided to take my inspiration in a paraphrased quote from Ghandi, "Be the change you want to see in the world." (The real quote, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him...We need not wait to see what others do.") Both quotes are encouraging, in their own right.

So too should each and every person make a conscientious effort to take a lesson from Aretha Franklin and R-E-S-P-E-C-T everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, status, or any other defining factors.

In other words: knock it off!