I get where your coming from especially with this whole pronoun fiasco.
But on the other side of the coin very real bullying can come from just words.
Unfortunately what is real bullying and just harmless talk exists actually exists on a gradient so we can't really codify it into anything that seems reasonable. Most good judgements are arrived at by just intuition.
That would be interesting to discuss but it's not where I was going and it's a bit off topic.
Investigations should start with the crime and work backwards to find the criminal. If you have to find incriminating statements to tell if a crime has even happened, that is really a different thing.
But on the other side of the coin very real bullying can come from just words.
Unfortunately what is real bullying and just harmless talk exists actually exists on a gradient so we can't really codify it into anything that seems reasonable. Most good judgements are arrived at by just intuition.