Heh, I agree - it all depends on the meaning / intention. If you don't have a honed sense of humor, better not use it, it could be taken the wrong way.
On the other hand, if you are hurt by sarcasm, then it's not really the other person's fault. There is something in you, an open wound, that is already there to be hurt by it.
If someone said your hair is hideous because it's green, you wouldn't care (assuming it isn't green). But if you had some insecurity about your hair, that underneath the blonde or the black or the whatever, it might be green, that's why it hurts.
Find that wound, find that insecurity. Welcome it, love it. Feel it completely, until it no longer hurts. Then everything else just falls of you like the proverbial water off a duck.
The elusive key to emotional mastery: Is it really that simple? » Personal Development - The Urban Monk