A Brief History
I think there still might be some disagreement on; the question of “intent” was raised a lot. I don’t think it’s true that “intent” solves everything, and people doubtless hurt others regardless of their intent. But I think the other point is that call-outs that focus, not on what someone did, but on what they are (again, NOT ALL CALL-OUTS; this sort, specifically) often ascribe intent: “This is what [PERSON X] thinks of [MARGINALIZED GROUP X],” “I can see now that you don’t care about [X],” “maybe you really just don’t give a shit about [X].” And then, when someone says “actually, the way I feel about [X] is different,” then they’re accused of invoking “intent.” Which has already been invoked, by the other party. Or the person who does the call-out talks about their feelings — “hurt,” “disappointment,” “anger” — but if the other person mentions their own feelings, that’s wrong. This might not matter to you if you don’t care about “intent” or “my feelings” or whatever, but yeah: I have been severely triggered by this discussion. This isn’t about you; it’s about me.
There’s a very illustrative aphorism, I guess, by Wittgenstein that goes, off the top of my head,
If you want to see intent, watch a cat stalking a mouse.
There’s a related image I have from Wittgenstein. He’s trying to demystify causality and the ways people talk about causality. “This man fell overboard and that caused me to jump in the water to save him.” And “Seeing 2 + 2 caused me to answer 4.” I realize that, on the one hand, going hardcore behaviorist/descriptionist is a pretty hardboiled atavistic way to interpret reality. After all, the fact that there’s a lot of malice toward under-served people just is encoded into the recipe of institutional oppression. Unmasking that is, maybe, everyone’s job in life.
On the other hand, and this may be a good comparison, within a fairly convoluted system of dogma (in Wittgenstein’s case, philosophy; in Doyle’s case, feminism perhaps), there is a lot of obfuscation to cut through, and it’s pretty well cut through by a sort of common sense “looking at.” And in many cases, ascribing intent is fairly clear. Sure, Kant didn’t intend to provide the groundwork for an authoritarian view of totalized modernity, but he kind of did. On the other hand, it’s clear he also intended to develop an elegant system to explain the exact powers and shortcomings of human thinking. Because it’s pretty clear that that’s what he’s doing. It’s right there on the page.
Similarwise, and I’m biased, sure, it seems pretty clear that Doyle does never intend to undercut or aid the oppression of people. Look at the mice—Olbermann, Moore, Roethlisberger—and it’s pretty clear the cat’s stalking worthy prey.
