Does intent matter?

[feuervogel]

If you say words that are known to be hurtful, be they the traditional slurs starting with n or c, among others, or words that people who are hurt by words like "lame" are telling you directly that they are hurtful words, your intent doesn't fucking matter.

You are willfully and directly causing harm because you refuse to understand their point of view and accept that your continued usage of those words is harmful.

That's an asshole thing to do.

Genderbitch has a post that's extremely on point: Intent! It's fucking magic!

Today, someone said a slur. It actually doesn’t matter what slur it was, because you see, he didn’t intend to hurt anyone and therefore it couldn’t possibly be a slur. Much like how intent magically protects the actions of all privileged fuckjobs, intent means that anything you say, no matter how many groups it hurts, what awful views it enables, no matter what systemic bigotries it props up through the usage of language that enforces social concepts that crush a marginalized group, it mystically negates all of that.

So if you out a trans woman? Your uncanny intent wraps around her and protects her from murder, harassment, degendering and objectification by the people you just outed her to! If you say something ableist, you’re not actually contributing to the system that demeans PWD because your intent will gird your words with alchemical shields, made of eldritch power themselves, that prevent the words from creating and furthering social associations between disability and being bad, wrong, broken or unwanted! I know? Isn’t it grand? I love magic!

Go read the rest.

Comments

[feuervogel]

In general, or me specifically? I apparently am too mean, but trying the polite way didn't get through anyone's heads, so I'm unconvinced that if I were just nicer people would listen.

In the post where I linked to sohotrightnow's post, throughout the comments, leora says that yes, there are people in the disabled community who refer to themselves as lame, and they are hurt when they hear people casually throwing around that word as a pejorative, so please stop it. Which was rejected by various people, because "it doesn't mean that when I use it. You're misinterpreting and overreacting."

Some people will be swayed by reasoned argument. They're the people who actually care about the effects of their actions/words, and who say that if they know that X term is hurtful, they'll stop using it. Other people won't be swayed by any argument, polite or "rude."

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

I think it got through a couple people's heads. There was one commenter who thanked you for posting the 101 links, and thegreyghost said that he'd think about things. So I think that's a success, even if you didn't convince everyone.

[feuervogel]

The one I didn't convince will never be convinced.