> call your wife a fat sow everyday in earnest for a year and see if she isn’t granted a divorce for maltreatment.
Is this an appeal to the law or something? It's not a very good argument. Many things which are harmful are not illegal. Many things which are illegal are not harmful.
Also, that's not even how divorce works!
> no one is claiming words are physically harmful
"speech is violence" is a position that some people hold.
> if words had no power, we wouldn’t fight so hard to protect them from government abuse.
People fight hard for all kinds of nonsense. Historically, people have fought hard for things that didn't matter at all.