How the agency gap hurts women

As a general statement of society as a general trend, we tend to hold men to a higher standard of agency than women. Exceptions exist, such as with parental expectations, home economics and being socially conscious meaning we tend to expect men to be the one performing social gaffes. The argument I hold for this women's Wednesday post is that benevolent sexism of in general holding men to a more agentic standard both in practical terms and moral terms hurts women in ways that aren't immediately obvious as the distill effects are further down the chain of causality and are cumulative. Obvious the massive disclaimer of NOT ALL applies throughout this post.

Let's go over some quick definitions:

Agency: the ability to affect you environment

Moral agency: how responsibility moral or otherwise is attributed to actors/agents in a situation.

Locus of control: in very simple terms do you control your self and the environment or does the environment control you.

Power: the ability to impose your will on others and/or have others impose your will on your behalf.

Benevolent 'ism (BS): Developing a positive expectation based on group affiliation. (Eg 'Asians are good at math', 'women are good cooks' )

Hostile 'ism (HS): Developing a negative expectation based on group affiliation. (Eg 'Schrodinger's rapist', '*X* are more violent')

Positive 'ism (PS): treating a person better on the basis of group affiliation.

Negative 'ism (NS): treating a person worse on the basis of group affiliation.

First let's examine the concept of agency and its relation to power, locus of control and morality.

1. The issues of locus of control is intrinsically tied to agency but it's not clear which comes first the sense of locus of control or the environmental effect of agency. That is to say, if you treat some as an agent does that lead to more of an internal locus of control or does the internal locus of control lead to a greater desire to be more agentic.

2. Does power increase or decrease agency? I would argue it decreases agency as you lose direct control over how something is done. If you are having some else do something for you whether that's clean your house or do a job you lose agency over how that job is done (because you aren't the one doing it) but that's not a bad thing unless you have a very specific specification for how something is done. Likewise, if you are having someone affect your will on others for you, you are two steps removed from the actual agent. This gets into the concepts of hyper, hypo, and proxy agency. Hyper agents are acting as the agent on behalf of others, hypo agents have others act on their behalf, and proxy agents are hyper agents that were sought out hypo agents intentionally. None of these are wrong or bad perse but are a way of assessing actors in a given scenario, but this does imply certain power relations such as : a hyper agent probably lacks power in some form or another, a hypo agent either lacks power and is helpless or has power and is using proxy agents to accomplish its goals.

3. Power is to one degree or another a consensual affair between two parties though not treating another's power as legitimate is not free from consequences. The power of government comes from it's citizens agreeing the government is the legitimate sovereign, rejecting the government as legitimate comes with obvious consequence but you can do it at your own peril. Power being a consensual affair is the basis from which we derive voting, liberal values, and the second amendment. 2A is about the people being able to reject the government's legitimacy. Though at the time it was understood to mean the state governments which were closer to sovereign countries and not the federal government as the federal government was meant to negotiate issues between the states and the state have their own armies should the federal government become tyrannical. The way the government was set up was about balancing power and creating mutually assured destruction scenarios to keep everyone in check so they didn't the equilibrium.

4. Based on the praxis laid forth 2) and 3) we can attribute morality based on viewing agents through there roles in a given scenario. For instance, if you hire a hit man to kill someone we hold the person who did the killing responsible but ultimately we view them as a tool and the person paying them as holding the power and moral responsibility.

Ok, I hear saying ok wazz what does this have to do with women and agency? By not treating women as fully agentic we block them from finding there way like we do for men. This means that women are being deprived of the learning that comes from the assumptions of the agency which depending on circumstance can be positively and benevolently sexist or negatively and hostily sexist. I would go so far as to say that BS, PS, NS, and HS all stem from misattributing the agency of women over time in different domains. Take these examples: "Women need special protections so they can more fully compete with men" vs "Women are not as capable as men there for should stay home and be housewives". The first statement implies obviously BS and PS attitudes while the second implies HS and NS attitudes toward women. The root of both statements is an assumption that women are not (as) capable (as men) and the BS and the implied PS are just framing. Let's look at the Aziz Ansari case for example. If we take a group of hostile and negative sexists at r/TRP their praxis is 'women are the most mature teenager in the houses so men have to make all the decisions and take all the actions'. That's obviously a negative framing of women's agency with implication having to do with negative sexism ( though you could frame it positively I guess). To red pillers the Aziz Ansari debacle is further confirmation of the antecedent assumption that women don't want agency and men have to be agents for them to plausible deniability when it comes to being treated like agents. The progressive argument isn't much different at its epistemological root, the arguments I see from many progressives is this: 'She should not have had to voice her non-concent and Ansari should have known better without her telling him or communicating her issues with him in clear and obvious way'. The mentality I see coming out of progressives is not a whole lot different than red pill notion of 'treating her like the most mature teenager in the house'. The only real difference I see is red pill is blunt and rude about it and progressives are mealymouthed and shifting responsibility away from the woman. Both agree expecting her to voice her discontent is unreasonable, both agree that men should not expect women to do so, and both agree men have agency in that scenario. There is experimental data from a few years ago about U of T basically teaching women to say 'no' forcefully which caused a **50% drop in 'rape'**. Which to me says A) the current paradigm of not treating women like agents is A gas lighting women into a mentality of victimhood which I would argue is a form of trauma in and of itself. B) It's putting men in no-win situations. I would further argue by not treating women as agents we hurt them professionally by not letting them rise or fall on their own merits and in order to understand risk you must also enjoy the consequences of that risk for good or ill. Risk is not bad, there is risk in ask for a job, asking for a higher starting wage, and asking for a promotion. By not letting women enjoy the full range of agency we deny them the ability to grow into risk and develop a risk tolerance. (Conversely, men probably have too high a risk tolerance which I would argue stems from treating them as hyperagents.)

Treating women as hypo agent is something both progressives and traditionalists agree on its just a matter how you do it, and framing. Though I would note that traditionalists shift into hyper agency when it comes to parenting, how women dress & their sexual availability and household duties when it comes to women more so than progressives so it's not a perfect bijective mapping.

This isn't exactly new ground, the concept of the Modana whore complex is based all on what I have written, so is slut-shaming writ large. Also Things like objectification in general wash away once either women demand to be treated like agents for better or worse or men treat women like full agents for better or worse. (though objectification around utility is something that affects men and would require men to not be seen as reliable hyper agents or proxy agents.) Now, none of the effects of agency in all its forms or the effects of PS, BS, NS, or HS are 1 to 1, they are all cumulative effects over a lifetime that amplify or erode whatever latent personality traits that were already there, to begin with. And these do imply are mentalities that you can cultivate in terms of having an internal locus of control. So it's not like this state of affair has to be permanent but does require society to agree everyone has agency and act accordingly.  

Originally posted here at /r/Femradebates.