The Tyranny of Innocence

How purity of intent quietly erases every boundary we try to draw.

“Just because no harm is intended doesn’t mean no harm is done.”

In my last doctor visit before the c-section, I asked the doctor to describe the c-section and the recovery to me, just so I can mentally prepare for what may come.

It begins with anaesthesia. I’m asked to curl up — still pregnant with the baby inside my belly — such that they can slide a needle between the vertebrae of my spine. Then they’d cut me open. Since my baby is at the 90th percentile in size, I am going to have a bigger cut than the average mom — about 9cm long, to be exact. And they’re going to reach inside my uterus and fetch my baby, clean her up, and pass her to me while I’m awake and still bleeding.

Seeing the color drained from my face, the doctor reassured me that the epidural is really strong and I’d have pain meds after the effect wears off. It’s just that an anesthesia this strong and a cut this deep is going to have a lingering effect on my body. I will basically be confined to my bed in the first 24 hours, where I couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, and couldn’t pee because I’d be too weak to do anything. Yet, after 24 hours, it is mandatory for me to get up, regardless of how uncomfortable it is, and get out of bed to prevent the formation of blood clots — which can kill me.

This whole thing just sounds like a series of torture.

So I made a decision. I texted my parents and asked them not to come within the first 48 hours, because the doctor said I’d be too weak for any engagement.

To my dismay, my dad pushed back and insisted on coming to visit right after the surgery.

*”But I’m really excited to meet my granddaughter. We won’t disturb you.”*

I couldn’t believe what I just read. Since when does someone’s excitement override another person’s recovery? Since when does a grandfather’s joy take precedence over the body of the woman who just made him a grandfather?

I immediately vented to my husband and best friend, but the responses I received were… underwhelming.

“Maybe they’re just too excited. Grandparent is a new identity after all.”

Neither of them said it out loud — but they were basically asking me to let it slide because my dad didn’t mean any harm.

I sat with that for a while. And then I texted back:

“This is not a negotiation.”

I understand there’s this norm to be gracious about transgressions if the intent is pure. I mean, it sounds perfectly reasonable to say, “Yeah, she’s evil, so let’s punish her.“ But it sounds kind of weird to say, “Yeah, she messed up, but she didn’t mean to. Let’s hold her accountable anyway.“

The first sentence sounds like justice. The second sentence sounds like cruelty.

And I think this is where the trap is set. Because once we accept that “no malice = no consequence,” we’ve handed every transgressor a permanent escape hatch. Almost no one believes their own intent is bad. The mother who reads her daughter’s diary and texts because “I was just worried about her.“ The friend who shares your news before you’re ready because “I was just so happy for you.“ If purity of intent is what determines whether a boundary is real, then in practice, no boundary is real. Everyone’s intent is innocent in their own telling.

So let’s get one thing straight: just because no harm is intended doesn’t mean no harm is done. This is why the law punishes not just the malicious, but also the careless. Manslaughter and murder both get you into prison. So do premeditated harm and negligence. The only difference is in the severity of the punishment — obviously a person who hurts with malice is punished more harshly than a person who hurts by accident. But the accident still demands a response. The body is still dead. The family still grieves. The world still has to do something about what happened, even if that something is gentler than it would have been for a deliberate act.

This makes perfect sense. Behavior is what has real-world impact. Intent is something we project onto behavior, based on what we know about the person and the situation. What we actually live inside of is the interaction — the words said, the boundary crossed, the body affected. That means it’s imperative to send clear signals when we feel our boundaries violated or disrespected in any way. This signal comes in many names — consequences, reactions, punishment, but at the end of the day, it is a piece of information for the transgressors as it tells them where the line is. Without it, they have no way of knowing — they’ll assume, reasonably, that what they did was acceptable. So intent should only act as a modifier on the severity of the response. It should not be an eraser that absolves the impact entirely — even though that’s the version most of us have been quietly trained to accept.

You’re probably thinking that it’s cold of me to apply the principle of law to my day-to-day interactions with people, especially my family. But I’d argue the opposite: we need to stop mistaking consequences for cruelty. The real cruelty is letting someone keep crossing a line they don’t know exists, and then resenting them for it years later. Holding the line in the moment is, in fact, an act of kindness. It gives others a chance to know you, to adjust, to do better. Letting it slide isn’t grace, it’s just deferred resentment.

And it is with that resolve that I sent out that text — “This is not a negotiation.” Because some boundaries need to be reiterated in a way that even the purest intent cannot erase.