time for a talk

I've been reading a lot of discussions about sexism and racism and authorial intent in fandom (yes, reading through a series of meta posts seems like an excellent idea when I am halfway knocked out by a cold), and if I weren't utterly exhausted, this post would contain links. As it is, I'm going to keep to what I know, and tell you a story. It happened to me, though I'm fudging a name for the other person. I'm not using it to air a personal grievance, I'm just using myself as text to demonstrate why intent sometimes doesn't matter. I've been thinking about this post for a long time, actually, because the intent argument comes up a lot.

( an illustrative example, if you will )