I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human. Never ever ever stepping on someone’s foot is not really achievable, and therefore is not necessary to being a Good Person: what matters is that you do not step on others’ feet deliberately, and – most importantly – that you react kindly and calmly to any inadvertent foot-stepping you have been doing being brought to your attention, so that you can make best use of it as something that will help you reduce the amount of foot-stepping you will do in the future.
What’s funny is that this was actually the exact metaphorical framing that social justice Tumblr adopted ten years ago or so; but back then, the logic progressed from “You still need to apologize for stepping on someone’s foot, regardless of intention” (true) to “intention doesn’t matter” (umm…) to “therefore stepping on someone’s foot by accident is exactly as bad as intentionally stepping on someone’s foot and you’re a terrible person if you do it!” (No!) Anyway, I find it interesting that we’re now using the foot-stepping metaphor to explain the absolute futility of framing this in “terrible person” terms (and I approve)