Agency: We Meet Again
Not the Feds, just the word
I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, but after my college years there were a handful of words that made me cringe. Fellow English majors will know what I’m talking about. Agency is a word I hoped I’d never use again. But here I am, in the throes of the weirdest election outside of the movie Election thinking about the plight of humankind. And so agency has reared its ugly head. For those non-English Lit geeks that don’t fully grasp what I’m talking about here it is:
Agency
2. the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.
(Be impressed, I used a real, old-fashioned dictionary to get that definition.)
Essentially my entire literary studies career was spent examining the varying degrees to which women in literature have been portrayed to have power over their own lives. Now, however, I’m seeing it in a new light. It all started the other night when I was watching Scarface. It had been a while since I’d seen it, and the last time I was focused on all the Italian actors playing Cuban drug lords. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in that movie has zero agency; she’s just passed around and appropriated by the men in her life. And that got me thinking about people in a broader perspective. Given our current social and political situation, it’s only appropriate. I started thinking about my black friends, my brown friends, my Asian friends, my gay friends, my undecided friends, my friends of differing faiths. I forget that I live in a bubble where the aforementioned groups have a great deal of agency, but that’s so very sadly not the case in most parts of the world. Hell, it’s not even the case in many parts of this country.
I love it that on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, more people than ever cast their votes. I love it even more than on that same anniversary, we elected the first woman to the VP’s office. Even better, a woman of mixed race (from Oakland!). For once in my life, I’m glad I was wrong. When Biden chose Kamala I was skeptical. Don’t get me wrong, I love her, but I know a lot of people in those red states that I didn’t think would be able to look past the fact that she was a mixed-race woman and see her awesomeness. Again, so glad I was wrong. It gave me hope and, more to the point of this particular rant, it gave women a serious boost in pursuit of their own agency. My further hope is that that agency will extend to all who are mis and/or underrepresented in this country.
To that end I think it’s high time we give non-binary individuals a pronoun of their own. One that is not used for the plural and is not often employed when talking about the “other.” Not that the “other” is inherently bad but they and them is often used to describe groups involved in nefarious activities. I don’t personally have any close friends who are non-binary, but I have a friend that does and often when she talks about them, I find myself confused. She insists that it’s something you get used to, but why should we? I realize I tend to be a stickler about grammar, but I’m trying to get over that; what I love about English isn’t grammar, it’s that it is a living, breathing entity, constantly evolving to include ideas — and people — that have not been previously given agency within the previous framework. It’s not about being nit-picky about grammar, it’s about giving a voice to a group of human beings who, until now, have not had a voice. It’s about giving them (plural) agency over how they — as a group and as individuals — wish to express to the world who they really are. Thus far I have no brilliant ideas about what this new pronoun should be, but it’s not really my choice to make. And if they decide that they/them/their is perfectly acceptable, then I will happily get over myself and get used to it.
I realize that this may seem like a small and relatively unimportant part of recognizing an emerging group of individuals who, in most parts of the world, face much greater personal challenges. But language has power. Power for good, power for bad, and power for change. I’ve been blessed with a great amount of agency in my own life, largely from being born a middle class, white girl who has always identified as female. It would be nice if, in my lifetime, I could witness people of all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, and faiths granted that same consideration.
