Intent is not magic, but it *does* matter

[swan_tower]

I don’t know why, but recently I’ve been seeing posts around the internet about intent and its role in harassment/discrimination/etc which, to my eye, are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I am 100% on board with the “intent is not magic” message. If you hit me in the face, then my face hurts, regardless of whether you did maliciously or by accident because you turned around to throw something and didn’t realize I was right behind you. Your good intentions don’t erase the pain and give me a magically unbroken nose. And if your intentions were good, then the proper reaction to finding out that you hurt someone else should be to feel horrified and apologize for what happened. If you get defensive? If you bluster on about how you didn’t mean to like that changes what happened? Then you’re doing it wrong.

(This example is actually not theoretical for me. During the karate seminar in Okinawa, I accidentally rammed somebody in the cheekbone with the end of my bo while trying to slide it out of the way for people to sit down on a bench. I felt terrible, to the point where even now, nine months later, I want to apologize to her again. And I wish I spoke more than ten words of German, so a language barrier wouldn’t have gotten in the way of my attempt to make amends.)

But what I am not on board with is an actual sentence I read the other week, which is: intent doesn’t matter.

It does.

Intent doesn’t erase the damage, no. But it goddamned well ought to inform what happens next. If you hit me in the face by accident and were mortified the instant it happened, then I don’t need to lecture you on how hitting people in the face is bad: you already know that, and just need to be a little more careful. If you hit me in the face because you weren’t aware that face-hitting hurts, then somebody needs to explain that basic point to you, and you need to take a good hard look at your habits to figure out what things you’re doing are likely to result in face-hitting. If you hit me in the face because your society says, yeah, face-hitting hurts but it’s totally okay so long as it’s done to the right targets, then you need to rethink not just your habits but your morals, and the change needs to be not just to you, but to the cultural environment that taught you to behave that way. And if you hit me in the face because you hate my guts and want to see me hurt . . . then I need to get the hell away from you, because the odds that any positive change can be effected there are nil.

In all of these cases, my face still hurts, and you should still apologize. And maybe I’ve been hit in the face enough that for my own well-being, I need to get the hell away from you without pausing to find out whether that was just an accident. But to say that intent flat-out does not matter — to say that there’s no point in figuring out the causes behind actions — that, to me, is taking the point waaaaaaaaaaaaay too far. (And both “intent doesn’t matter” and “I don’t see why we should figure out motives” are actual arguments I’ve seen in the last week or two. I’ve debated whether I should include links, but I decided I’d rather keep the focus on the concepts, rather than the people promoting them — especially since one of those posts was not recent, and for all I know the writer has changed their views.)

The minute we give up on intent, we treat every injustice done to us as a nail, to be hit with the exact same hammer. And that’s not going to get you very far with screws or rubber bands.

We should not put intent above the effects of a hurtful action. We should not act like it’s a magic shield against responsibility for your actions, and the person who was hurt should stop whining already. But we shouldn’t throw it out entirely, either, and it disturbs me to see people saying we should.

EDITED TO ADD: From Mrissa in the comments, an excellent link that says this better than I did, including the concept that “intent is data.” And data is useful.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[norah]

I have been spending years trying to convince my partner that intent does and should matter. Most of your examples fit best for strangers - but intent matters more and more strongly in actual relationships, of whatever depth, because paying attention to it is really paying attention to the person you are in the relationship with and how you want to react to them.

[swan_tower]

That's a very good point.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The line I saw this week that really resonated is that intent is data. Not a magic cure or a get-out-of-jail-free card, but useful information about the situation. Ah, here's where that was: this post.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes. This, exactly -- and not just the part about intent, but also the "tone argument" section, which is another issue we as a society and/or community are grappling with.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting that, it's a great article

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. Of course intent matters.

A driver could hit a pedestrian with their car and kill them; the pedestrian is just as dead regardless of the driver's intent, but I'm going to think very differently of the driver depending on whether the reason is that their brakes failed, they were distracted for a crucial fraction of a second because another car's tire blew, they were drunk, or they deliberately murdered the pedestrian. Intent will determine whether the driver will be tried for murder or not, or go to jail or not. It probably matters to the dead person's family, too.

On a more internet-common level, it makes an enormous difference to me whether someone says something hurtful out of ignorance, out of malice, or accidentally because they phrased a non-hurtful meaning in a way that I misread.

Malicious people often use fake claims of good intent to try to weasel out of responsibility for their words and actions. That doesn't mean that intent doesn't matter, any more than the existence of liars means that truth doesn't matter.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Of course, that's part of what makes this hard: you can't necessarily take claims of good intent at face value. But you can't take them all as being in bad faith, either -- you have to weigh them individually, and look at surrounding context to decide how much trust you should extend to that claim.

[teleidoplex]

I'm put in mind of the difference between Chris Evans' apology and Renner's apology for the Black Widow slurs. They were both 'just joking' (badly), but Evan's apology works (for a lot of people) because he doesn't try to use intent as his shield. Renner comes across as not sorry at all, in the old 'can't you people take a joke' gaslighting kind of way.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I missed that one . . . and judging by your description, I'm kind of glad I did.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

if someone tells you that because you are (fill in the blank) and going to hell or wherever, they will pray for you to see the light as it were of their religion, then that is malicious intent.

[carbonel]

It's slightly orthogonal to your post, but I'm exceedingly fond of this comment by Hershele Ostropoler on the subject of damage and intent:

If you step on my foot, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without meaning to, you need to get off my foot.

If you step on my foot without realizing it, you need to get off my foot.

If everyone in your culture steps on feet, your culture is horrible, and you need to get off my foot.

If you have foot-stepping disease, and it makes you unaware you’re stepping on feet, you need to get off my foot. If an event has rules designed to keep people from stepping on feet, you need to follow them. If you think that even with the rules, you won’t be able to avoid stepping on people’s feet, absent yourself from the event until you work something out.

If you’re a serial foot-stepper, and you feel you’re entitled to step on people’s feet because you’re just that awesome and they’re not really people anyway, you’re a bad person and you don’t get to use any of those excuses, limited as they are. And moreover, you need to get off my foot.

See, that’s why I don’t get the focus on classifying harassers and figuring out their motives. The victims are just as harassed either way.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Actually, I feel like that comment is the kind of thing I'm arguing against. Yes: no matter what the reason, you do need to get off my foot. Up to that point, we agree. But if what happens after that is going to be at all on point, then it is vital to figure out the motives. If you have foot-stepping disease, then we need to treat that disease and/or figure out safety precautions that will allow you to enjoy the event without harming others. But that's a bloody useless response for the person who just didn't realize they were stepping on my foot, or the person who think they're just that awesome and I'm not a person anyway.

Without going on to the next question -- "why did this happen?" -- I don't see how we're ever going to solve the underlying problems, because we'll be applying remedies blindly.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

When I'm hurt, I much prefer plain injury to injury plus insult.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

No kidding.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Not exactly the same points, but in a related vein you might also appreciate these:


http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2014/11/everything-problematic/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/theres-nothing-safe-about-silencing-dissent/article23667724/

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- those made for thought-provoking reading.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Yah. I was mostly away from online arguments and had mostly absented myself from a lot of spaces I used to frequent even before I quit having time to read as much as I'd like, and when I started looking around again I was sort of appalled. A sympatico friend sent me both these links, so I can't take credit for finding either.