What do you mean when you say "intent isn't real"? Because it seems obvious to me that people say things with specific intents. Do you mean that it might as well not be real, because it is impossible to know the intent, or is it that it isn't real in a similar way that gender "isn't real" or is there some kind of nuance that I'm missing?
I mean that "intent isn't material".
I could give a neurological argument about the reality of intent. Neuroscience is constantly asking questions like "is intent determined before or after an action is performed." I tend to believe that 'intent' exists as an 'awareness of the actions one is performing' and nothing more. I also tend to believe that humans can pretty freely change their minds about their intents. But most of all, I know that the 'intent' that exists 'entirely within someone's own head' is neither measurable nor relevant. It is not a material part of reality. It is made up.
I guess, then, you could argue that, like 'gender', 'intent' is 'socially determined'. 'Gender' isn't real, but it is 'socially constructed' so it masquerades as real (or at least it will until we finish destroying the material conditions that produce it and then the superstructure finishes decaying). In the current world, 'gender' is meaningfully 'real' even though it isn't 'real'. It matters even though it's made up.
But 'intent' as it is commonly understood is not really socially constructed. It's not determined by experiences or by how someone is treated. It is entirely just "whatever the speaker says it is". It's immaterial in the extreme. Fundamentally analytically useless. Literally just made up on the spot. Half the time it's made up after the fact, too.
Even more, I think that it is useful to analyze "why" people care about intent. There are all kinds of fixations on 'proving intent', that at best seem to be pattern analysis interested in "can we expect a repeat performance" (i strongly believe 'intent' is the worst possible model one could use here. consider behaviorism) but more frequently "is punishment 'correct'" (i don't believe in punitive justice, so trivially i always disagree). It's silly.
In my daily life, the most I run into intent is as a kind of justification. "I didn't mean to hurt you because my intents were good", "Sorry I wasn't trying to be racist", "I intended to do it eventually, I just forgot". In all of these, the place of 'intent' is irrelevant. It's not real, it's made up, it doesn't matter, it doesn't change anything in the material world. What matters is actually doing things. Do something now or change your environment. Or at least give an explanation that isn't immaterial. I would rather intent never came up in all cases. And I hate how I'm expected to bow to it.
Not to even get into how the 'excuse' of intent functions in context of systems of power. Who gets away with using it? Parents, white people, cis ppl, men. People with epistemic authority and systemic power. They're able to wield it and compel it to be accepted. I really, really, really hate that.
It's just useless. It's not real. It doesn't matter.
