Earlier this week, I wrote a post laying out two limits to the phrase ‘impact over intent.’ In short, people tend to use the phrase ironically to subvert the very reasons activists invented it in the first place. To that list, I’d like to briefly add a third limit.
What’s the third limit? In short, people simply discard the phrase when they find it inconvenient.
When a person an activist doesn’t like deflects from the impact of something they’ve said or done by appealing to their intentions, the activist will point this out and use it against them. But when someone they do like pulls the same move, they’ll join with them and defend the behavior.
And so, hardly anyone applies ‘impact over intent’ consistently.
