when is something an insult?

[The Stranger]

The same comment, in the same tone, can be an intended insult, unthoughtful insult, unintended insult and a helpful question (Can I help you?). So evidently, it's the perciever that decides if it's an insult or not.

The justification has to do with the next phase. How do you respond to the insult and how should the (sometimes accidental) insulter respond to that in turn? I don't think there's a good generalisation that doesn't have plenty of exceptions for that.

Edit:
Take a gaming example. Say that you're extra helpful towards a girl in a computer game, because she's a girl and "girls aren't good at computer games". That's an insult and should be treated as "education time" (same thing as you gay example gave, even if it's rather offended than insulted), even if you didn't intend it as such. It's unintentionally demeaning. With a child, that kind of stuff can be both demeaning and correct at the same time.

One symbolic part of friendship is tolerating comments that if said by anyone else is an insult. That also means that the "insulter" needs to know when to not throw that "insult" since it will be taken as an insult at that point.

It basically falls down to what the larger society finds acceptable/tolerable or not.

ofcourse we can never determine effectively what the intention is of the one making the comment (but the same is true about being offended, we can never know if offense is actually taken or people pretend for whatever reason), that is why people misinterpret and sometimes are offended by something that was not intended as an offense (make note, that for those who are offended, intention may not always matter, but it often does).

Your reasoning allows the same to be said about the reception of the comment, because every comment can be perceived in many ways, surely it cannot be left up just to the one interpreting the comment. And if as you say, it cannot also be left up to the one making the comment, there must be another qualifying factor.

But Im not sure if it cannot be left solely up to the one making the comment (lets call him the commentator). The interpretator can make mistakes in interpreting the intent of the commentator (he can however make no mistake in interpreting what the comment means to him at that point in that context). The commentator however cannot mistake his intent (unless we are going to factor in unconsious decisions, which i would leave out for now).

Neither approach is flawless, putting the power to qualify something as an insult in the hands of the interpretor would result as someone else pointed out, in everything possibly being an insult, in a justice analogy, everything you say and do could be a crime and you would always be guilty. If you put the burden soley with the commentator, then to make another justice analogy, everyone could always claim innocence, and nobody could ever prove the contrary.

so what could that other factor be, it could be what society finds acceptable or not, so it would come down to some sort of convention to function as an objective anchor between two subjective points. But there is a problem with that convention, how does society decide what is acceptable and what not?

I have to go now :/ will come back later to finish this post.