Agency

Agency is the ability for a person, or agent, to act for herself or himself. A person who is not allowed to act for her/himself is lacking in agency, or is said to have been denied agency.

In geek circles, women (real and fictional) often lack agency compared to their male counterparts.

Geeks, often being science fetishists, often begrudgingly admit that it is a biological and categorical fact that females inherently lack agency when compared to males.

Examples

• When men speak on behalf of women, they deny them agency. Instead, men should allow women to speak for themselves.
• Dismissing or lowering the value of a work created by a woman with a Denial of Agency attack, implying or directly stating that she is not truly its author.
• Fictional female characters who act at the behest of male characters, without any will of their own, lack agency. Eg: the Buffy Bot in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Women, stripped of their 1st world luxuries such as contraceptives and abortions on demand, or unable to call upon police with guns and badges ensuring women get hired for jobs, often discover that the illusion of agency stems from their immense social privlieges afforded to them by patriarchal institutions like the pharmaceutical industry and the criminal justice system.