Power, Agency, and Subjectification

Women, famously, are objectified sometimes. Objectification renders us passive and helpless in our life stories; things are done to us or happen to us, and all our actions are futile because we are weak against the forces of the world. And on top of that we are sometimes treated like slot machines for sex. Contrast this with the subjectification of men, and of the highly agentic. People who are subjectified don't get to be broken by the world. If they are churlish or unpleasant or abusive, it can only ever be a skill issue, a thing they consciously decided to be. Some of the subjectified like it that way; they actively build that mythos around themselves. I, and many women I know, much prefer to be seen as subjects, and have agentically taken the steps required for this to happen more. Others have no choice: black children are subjectified more than their white peers, and their actions are interpreted with undue malice from a very early age, with lasting consequences.1 Reality is of…