#agency

How can so many (white, male) writers narratively justify restricting the agency of their female characters on the grounds of sexism = authenticity while simultaneously writing male characters with conveniently modern values? The habit of authors writing Sexism Without Sexists in genre novels is seemingly pathological. Women are stuffed in the fridge under cover of "authenticity" by secondary characters and villains because too many authors flinch from the "authenticity" of sexist male protagonists. Which means the yardstick for "authenticity" in such novels almost always ends up being "how much do the women suffer", instead of - as might also be the case - "how sexist are the heroes". And this bugs me; because if authors can stretch their imaginations far enough to envisage the presence of modern-minded men in the fake Middle Ages, then why can't they stretch them that little bit further to put in modern-minded women, or modern-minded social values? It strikes me as being extremely convenient that the one universally permitted exception to this species of "authenticity" is one that makes the male heroes look noble while still mandating that the women be downtrodden and in need of rescuing. -Comment at Staffer's Book Review 4/18/2012 to "Michael J. Sullivan on Character Agency ↗

— Foz Meadows

#authenticity #fantasy #femlae-agency #genre #male-privledge

Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'. ↗

— Norman Lindsay

#agreed #art #aware #conscious #control

The CIA could not face up to the American people and admit that its former employees had conspired to assassinate the President; so from the moment Kennedy's heart stopped beating, the Agency attempted to sweep the whole conspiracy under the rug. ↗

— Jim Garrison

#agency #american #american people #assassinate #attempted

The head of the CIA, it seems to me, would think long and hard before he admitted that former employees of his had been involved in the murder of the President of the United States-even if they weren't acting on behalf of the Agency when they did it. ↗

— Jim Garrison

#admitted #agency #been #before #behalf

I had brought up from Chile a contract agent whose cover was that of a newspaper publisher in Santiago, a young, very talented man, named Dave Phillips, who later on carved quite a career for himself in the agency. ↗

— E. Howard Hunt

#agent #brought #career #carved #chile

That is, while we believe that cost-benefit analysis is an important tool to inform agency decision making, the results of the cost-benefit analysis do not trump existing law. ↗

— Fred Thompson

#analysis #believe #decision #decision making #existing

I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated. ↗

— Denzel Washington

#before #college #first #got #graduated

There's always the tendency to transform the Church into an ethical agency, and of measuring the Church by the yardstick of social and cultural utility. ↗

— Karl Lehmann

#always #church #cultural #ethical #into

We just ask the agency to make reasonable and honest decisions, and the public deserves no less. ↗

— Fred Thompson

#ask #decisions #deserves #honest #just

I can't help thinking if she - the director of a government agency - is this ignorant about what funding is available and where the money comes from - how often lower-level bureaucrats must give wrong answers when people are looking for help to start a business. ↗

— Matthew Lesko

#agency #answers #available #bureaucrats #business