Why I hate the terms "white privilege" and "male privilidge"

No, it's not because I am a white male...

Well, it is and it isn't.

I hate the term because it does NOT reflect actual meaning of the word.

priv·i·lege

ˈpriv(ə)lij/

noun

noun: privilege; plural noun: privileges

1.

a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.

"education is a right, not a privilege"

As a middle class, white male with nearly crippling student debt that I am putting off by acquiring more I can tell you that I am NOT awarded any special rights. My life has been a life that I would consider the baseline of what EVERYONE should be able to have: I had two parents that cared for me; I had enough food to eat; I was warm enough in the winter; I was able to get a good public education; I had a dog; etc. These basics are NOT a privileged state in this country: they are the baseline of what SHOULD be.

Tangential side note: EVERYONE in this country is privileged compared to the world baseline.

Is there privilege in this country? Yes, absolutely. But it is NOT tied directly to skin color or gender. It's tied to cash. Is that cash tied to skin color and gender? In most cases it is because it has been accumulated and handed down.

I am NOT among the elite few who have privilege. I am the "zero line."
Therefore, everyone below "my station" is actually something else: they're oppressed.

op·pres·sion

əˈpreSH

noun

noun: oppression; plural noun: oppressions

1. prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control.

   "a region shattered by oppression and killing"

   
   

   synonyms:

   persecution, abuse, maltreatment, ill-treatment, tyranny, despotism, repression, suppression, subjection, subjugation; More cruelty, brutality, injustice, hardship, suffering, misery "the young people in this country have known nothing but oppression"

   antonyms:

   freedom, democracy

   • the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control.

     synonyms:

     persecution, abuse, maltreatment, ill-treatment, tyranny, despotism, repression, suppression, subjection, subjugation; More cruelty, brutality, injustice, hardship, suffering, misery "the young people in this country have known nothing but oppression"

     antonyms:

     freedom, democracy

   • mental pressure or distress.

     "her mood had initially been alarm and a sense of oppression"

This is where my real hatred of the terms comes into play.
By calling ME privileged we, as a society, are actually deemphasizing the true problem; we're taking away from the seriousness of what our society is doing to a rather large segment of the population. We're devaluing them even more by applying a false label to "my station" in life.

Anyone who lacked the meager, but sufficient, financial resources that I had in my youth is being oppressed.
Anyone who gains additional scrutiny from law enforcement because of their skin color is being oppressed.
Anyone who has more trouble finding a job because of their gender or race is being oppressed.

Privilege is not the problem: oppression is.

A lot of white people are uncomfortable with the term "white privilege" because it makes them feel "white guilt" but some feel angry at it for reasons they cannot label. I believe that they see the explanation I am laying out but have not found the words to apply to it. Meanwhile, those who support the term "privilege" would prefer to attack those who dislike the term rather than actually examine the situation as what it really is.

Some minimal research indicates that the term "white privilege" appeared in academia when people where studying the differences in the racial profiles in this country. This, in itself, tells me all I need to know about why the term was selected. Academia is controlled by older white men. The farther back in time you go the more true this is. Everyone likes privileges. To write academic papers that outlines that white men are privileged to be such would, at first, make those in charge of funding and grants very happy. They are, in the eyes of their researchers, the elite of the elite.

Why do we keep the term?
There is no proof on why the term is kept, except that momentum is hard to change.
My thoughts, however, are that keeping the term is beneficial to those who are truly privileged.
The rich are the only ones who carry legitimate privilege and extra rights. They have their way paved for them on a road of money.

I'm not the only one who sees this; there are many comics that highlight this reality. Here is one that does it exceptionally well:

This is a FANTASTIC explanation on how the little things that shape our lives change them. The comic calls it Privilege it partly is; but, it is also highlighting the oppression in our society. Even though I disagree with the terminology being used the way it is I think EVERYONE needs to read it.

But, I will now tear it apart; not for the content but to show where our terminology is terribly misguided. The yellow annotations indicate what I consider to be a regular baseline circumstance that EVERYONE should experience. The green is where actual privilege is being bestowed and, correspondingly, the red demonstrates where oppression is occurring; the orange is partway between active oppression and a normal experience that everyone should have. The blue is clearly labeled.

[Please pardon my terrible annotation on these graphics.... the only tool I have available as I write this is MS Paint]

The way we're using the term "Privilege" is an illusion. It is a smokescreen that allows those with the real privilege to go unnoticed. It's another tool to pit the "lower classes" against each other rather than having the bottom 99.9% see who the real enemy is. The usage of the word, is a tool to further the "class warfare" that is being applied to all of us; the very process of crushing the middle class and systematically oppressing the poor is a state that keeps the rich in their position (up to the very collapse of a financial society.... but that is another topic).

If you use the term "privilege" in this way you are not only being a foot soldier against the oppressed people but, also, against yourself.
I would love to see us change this pattern and start acknowledging that our system OPPRESSES women and all of the races other than white. The system crushes them systematically.

I am not privileged; I merely escaped the oppression engine so that I can struggle through this life.

If I were privileged I could use this:

To avoid this:

But, given that I had to move home after college and I have a year's salary in student loan debt I'd say I haven't been able to avoid this last picture.

That's NOT privilege; it's merely NOT being totally oppressed.


EDIT / UPDATE:
The more I think about this the more I believe it to be true.
If one examines the roots of culture in European-centric countries (e.g. countries, like the United States of America, which were colonized by Caucasian Europeans) it becomes apparent that there is a base expectation of barely sustainable, almost-poverty among the peasant classes. A level of economic freedom to be able to sustain oneself but not enough to "rise above one's station."
This is the baseline expectation that was brought to the colonies. The idea of an aristocracy that is better than the peasantry was an inherent part of the cultures that the colonists all brought with them.
This also included the idea that women are property rather than people.
Stack onto this the idea of slavery, which existed in much of the "civilized" world into the 19th century (and exists still in some parts of the world) and an idea of property is applied to anyone with a different skin color from those in the aristocracy.
The abject poverty of the minorities reinforces the perception that they are less than human. Their inability to escape the poverty reinforces the idea that they are all criminals because crime and poverty are linked. Desperate people do desperate things JUST TO SURVIVE.
Anyone who is having to turn to crime to survive their society is oppressed by that society.
When entire groups of people are stuck in poverty and the system makes it nearly impossible to escape they are as surely enslaved as if they were still considered property.

To call being recognized as an individual with individual rights and freedoms "privileged" is to declare that being considered property and/or worthless and/or trash is an acceptable NORM.

I reject this idea.

No one is property. No one is trash by default. No one is worthless unless they make themselves that way.

The oppression is systemic and reaches all the way back to indisputable oppression.

So why are we choosing to change the name, and the perspective, of this system now to make the people struggling to barely live the "American Dream" the enemy by calling them privileged when there are people of true privilege sustaining the overall system with their greed?

Over-Active Feminism and Felicia Day

I like Felicia Day.
I like what she is doing and I like how she is doing it.
I like that she seems like a genuinely nice person.
She is someone I think I would like to meet and whom I think I would get along with.

She recently posted on tumblr that she enjoyed Star Trek: Into Darkness but that she feels that there were no strong women in the movie. That women were specifically excluded from all of the high-ranking positions and that JJ should try harder to demonstrate equality in the future that is Star Trek.

While I support the idea of showing women as being completely capable as men I cannot find myself in agreement with Felicia's observations on the movie. I am glad that when I went to see it a second time I did so after having read her post. As such I will address her points in order.
But first I want to remind everyone that this is Star Trek. Star Trek, even the "reboot" has a certain framework that is already established. The creative team that resurrected this franchise and which is bringing us more to enjoy has to work within that framework. At the bare minimum this framework includes the basic archetypes of the main characters:

1. Kirk - Kirk is the center of the show. He IS center screen. He is a womanizing, but brilliant captain. He cares, but more for himself and his "family" than for the people he does not know personally. He breaks rules that don't make sense to do what he feels is the right thing.
2. Spock and McCoy - The two make the second tier of character focus for the show. Their banter and friendship with each other, coupled with their relationship to the captain are reinforcing roles to the show.
3. Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Checkov - The main cast of characters are rounded out by this quad of characters. They are essential and integral to the show for a variety of reasons but they have also been third string.


The characters are what they are and the framework that they fall into is what JJ was handed. Too much radical shift in that three-tier character study would have created a failure rather than a success. Having established that those are the main character roles that JJ was shackled with I will move into Felicia's comments and outline those that I feel are in error and why.

Where are the women? The strong women? The women we’d like to see in 200 years? Where are they in this world? They certainly aren’t around the roundtable when the Starfleet are learning about Khan (there might have been one in that scene, if so that extra was not cut to in any significant manner to be notable.)

Upon watching the film a second time I made sure to pay attention to this scene in particular because of the above comment. I payed close scrutiny to the scene and I counter no fewer than 4 women in that room. There may have been a fifth, but I am certain there were four. Were they the focus of attention: no. Were they there: yes. The focus of attention, again, was centered on Kirk and, secondarily, Pike and Marcus. Pike because of the legacy of who Pike is in both the original and the new timelines and Marcus because he was in charge of the room. There was no slighting of any of the other characters as they were ALL ignored. All of them. Kirk was the only one to note the oddity of Khan taking the bag and the only one to say anything because he is the "cowboy" who doesn't know his place and is inflated with a larger sense of self-importance than the rest. Kirk doesn't recognize the hierarchy and, thusly, broke the rules of the meeting. That is why HE spoke up.

In the scene where Kirk gets his ship back and the admiral is having a meeting with “important” people around a table later, I failed to see ONE WOMAN AROUND THAT TABLE, ALL MOSTLY WHITE MEN IMPLIED TO BE MAKING IMPORTANT DECISIONS TOGETHER. Yes, these are just scenes with extras, but seriously, in the future not one woman over 40 is in charge in this world?! How can that happen?

I will give Felicia partial credit on this one. I, too, noticed it the first time. So I paid closer attention the second time. There was one woman around that table and the racial profile of the group was varied. One woman out of approximately 10 people is hardly representative, though. So, while I give her partial credit on this observation, she is still missing the mark in that there was female representation and the woman was older. I also get the implication that this group was comprised of Marcus "yes men" and that they were all hand-picked by Marcus to be his lieutenants and to go along with his decisions. But there is no corroborating evidence for this.

For main characters, Uhura had a FEW nice scenes (as a vehicle to humanize Spock mostly)

I have to point out that Uhura was not "mostly humanizing Spock" when she walked out to confront a group of Klingons without backup.
I have to point out that Uhura was not "mostly humanizing Spock" when she beamed down to engage Khan when he was on the edge of defeating Spock in hand-to-hand combat.
I have to point out that Uhura was not "mostly humanizing Spock" when she initiated the verbal "lover's spat" in Mudd's trade ship on the way to capture Khan. That was all about HER and how SHE felt. That interchange highlighted how strong she is and how she is willing to stand HER ground while still being an effective officer.
I have to point out that Uhura was not "mostly humanizing Spock" when she stated that working with Spock on the away mission wouldn't be a problem and Spock replied "uncertain." To me, in that moment, Uhura commanded the room. She was in charge and both Spock and the Kirk knew it. If ANYONE were to have stayed behind at that point it would have been Spock, not Uhura.

For main characters, Uhura had a FEW nice scenes (as a vehicle to humanize Spock mostly), but that other woman character was the WORST damsel in distress ever. I kept waiting for her turn, waiting for her to not be the victim, to be a bit cleverer, to add to the equation in a “yeah you go girl” way but no, she was there to be sufficiently sexy that Kirk would acknowledge her existence, to be pretty, to serve the plot. I loved her bob. That’s it. What if she had been a less attractive woman, older, overweight? A tomboy? Wouldn’t have that been a tad more interesting choice?

This passage (which has included the Uhura comment again for context) is about Carol Marucs. It saddens me that Felicia missed the point of Carol Marcus in this story. Carol Marcus could NOT have been "a less attractive woman, older, overweight? A tomboy?" as she is already defined. She is the mother of Kirk's son. She HAS to be similar in age and of the type that would attract Kirk. It's continuity. Her physical condition and appearance was already defined in the original timeline. JJ had a limited scope of how he could adjust this character and none of that leeway would let her fall outside of Kirk's taste in women.

Or at least give her a moment where she’s not a princess waiting to be saved.

Like the one where she stood up to Kirk, McCoy and everyone else and refused to be beamed back to the Enterprise so that she could save McCoy?
Like the one where she stood up to her father and told him he would have to kill her, too, if he proceeded to destroy the Enterprise?
Like the one where, upon seeing her father in person, she slapped him in the face and told him she was ashamed to be his daughter?
I think those were all points that outlined strength of character and competency to stand for her convictions and her ability to DO on her own.

I don’t know if I’m extra sensitive about this issue or what, but I don’t think so, it’s a trend in media today.

I hate to say this, Felicia, but I think you are super-sensitive to this. If you watch the film a second time pay attention to the background. There are women EVERYWHERE. The Enterprise bridge is staffed with nearly half women at all points in the film. Engineering has women. Sick bay has women. The hallways have women. They were even equal-opportunity in killing unknown crew members when the ship is being shredded in the firefight and when it is careening out of control on a crash course. The main story is focusing around the main characters and they are predefined. Yes, they were predefined in the 1960s when the role of women was much less acknowledged, but they are the framework that the show is suspended on.

When I walk into the theater, I see men on posters. Mostly white men, the same men we see over and over in movies. Seth Rogen, Owen Wilson, Brad Pitt etc. Where did the women go? We are telling people that only men are worth centering storytelling around, and that’s just bullshit.

I could provide a few counter examples to this but, on reflection, I realized that there are so few of them that they reinforce the point. This is a problem and I won't try to say otherwise.

And the problem is we unconsciously define the world and our culture through media. These things are subliminal, we absorb them, they formulate the “given” that influences people’s life choices.

Despite my wishing otherwise the media does a great job of programming us. I like to think that I have risen above it to make my own decisions but, even with the conscious effort to do so I find that I am influenced heavily by the norms portrayed by our media. I find this to be problematic for many reasons.

It might be a little thing on the surface, but this stuff is what prevents women from being as interested in math, or business people or tech etc. Where are the examples of women in media to strive for, to make that stuff seem possible?

Both of these are astute observations. The squashing of interest in math and science among the female population is a HUGE problem. And it is a problem that is not perpetrated by the media. It is a problem that is perpetrated by long-lasting gender stereotypes and reinforced by the media. The people who make the media believe it and, thus, they reinforce the message to the younger crowd. This is a meta-problem; a derivative problem; a recursive problem. Hopefully it will continue to recurse itself out of existence.

So, while I agree with Felicia on he thoughts that we should deviate from someone who fits my gender and racial stereotype as the main character I can say that there is a lot of that out there. There is more than she seems ready to see. Not enough, certainly, but more than is readily apparent (look at Will Smith, for example).

I look forward to the introduction of more female characters because I admire and respect strong women. I find them attractive and I would much prefer to have women who know who they are and can assert themselves as people in my life than those who are happy to be the damsel in distress and be walked over by a jerk who will take advantage of that. But there is also a balance. If we swing the culture the other way too heavily we do no one a service. We alienate an equal portion of the population as customers and as developing adults. The only real way to move forward is to reach a point where gender and race have no bearing on story and casting decisions just as they shouldn't have any bearing on hiring practices nor on friendships or anything else.


EDIT: I forgot to mention that in the re-christening sequence near the end of the film the admiralty board that is on stage with Kirk is about half older women.

Second Half of Numbers

I have now listened to the remainder of Numbers.

I have found that it contains more of the same from the first half of the book and a few additional items of note:
First - it is important to note that this part of The Bible reinforces the idea that if the chosen people go against the word of their god that they shall be shunned and condemned to hideous methods of death. Their god is a punitive god with no tolerance for anyone to believe in any other way of doing things.
Second - all casting of idols is extremely prohibited.
Third - if god tells you to commit genocide and take the lands of those you kill it is acceptable to do so.
Fourth - taking virgin women as spoils of war and dividing them among the soldiers is not only acceptable, but encouraged. Women of your enemy are property and not people.
Fifth - livestock are spoils of war.
Sixth - Women are counted in the same manner as livestock when counting spoils of war (this warrants being mentioned twice because of the way in which it was covered).
Seventh - If a man brings a woman from another religious group to his bed then it is permissible, or even encouraged, to slay them both while in the act of fornication.
Eighth - The spoils of the conquering of the promised land shall be contained within the tribe to whom they were initially given. This means that anyone holding those lands is not permitted to marry outside their tribe for fear that those lands may transfer from one tribe to another.
Ninth - Incest is permissible to preserve land ownership.
Tenth - There are rules against murder and a means to seek refuge if you commit manslaughter.
Eleventh - there is a dictated structure for how to divide the spoils of conquering and how to configure cities and the land surrounding them.

Upon completion of the second half of Numbers I am still not seeing anything to change my mind that the god of the old testament is a vindictive god who has created a structure to favor one family and one race of people over all others and whom is teaching that men are the only people who matter - women are property and their worth is less than that of the land that they might inherit and equal to a variety of livestock.
I have yet to encounter anything that seems overtly wise or redeeming in the stories I have listened to. I am still at a loss for how so many people can make this literary work the foundation of their lives and find solace in its contents. I am also at a loss for how so many people can find the rules contained within acceptable when they are such promoters of racism and sexism.

Perhaps the remainder of the books of The Bible and the other religions texts will alter my opinion by the time I have finished but I feel that my thoughts will only be reinforced.

The Hunger Games and Feminism

I went and saw The Hunger Games on opening weekend.

I went because I was hearing good things about the story the movie is based on and that I had heard good things about the movie itself from new outlets covering the response it had received starting Thursday night at midnight that week. I also went because the distopian future that is the backdrop of this story is in the vein of fiction that I enjoy absorbing.

I was very surprised when, shortly after seeing the film, I encountered this article (pasted here for completeness, even though it means potentially more traffic for the author of the article).

Just a word of warning. The linked article and the words below contain spoilers for the movie and books.

In addition to the remaining commentary below I want to point out that the author of the linked article is damaging the very core idea of Feminism by insisting that feminist ideal mean that the female character is superior in every way to those around them. This is a flawed idea and will not further the agenda of equality for all of humanity. The way to end the patriarchal society that humanity has created is the same way to end racism: treat everyone as a human regardless of their color or gender (or height or width, etc.). It will take two generations to stamp out the ideas if we treat everyone equally all the time. The ideas that people are different based on their gender or color are taught - if we continue to teach that, even with the idea of teaching to NOT do that, we are perpetuating the idea itself.

At the time that I read the article I created a facebook post to outline my problems with the article itself. Because I am lazy and did not feel like re-working that post for this blog post I am pasting the facebook post, as-is, here.... They're my words, I can re-use them.

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I call BS on the article.
It has facts wrong and it has a skewed point of view to deliberately inflame the situation.
It's being deliberately obstinate and adversarial.

To start - there was a (probably) minor set of commentary among people... who did not like that Rue and Thresh were black. It even appears that their concern was that they had built concern and caring for the character of Rue after having built a picture of the character in their head of a (anything but black) little girl. In their eyes they wasted their caring on a character that they felt they should not have cared for because of her skin color. There are plenty of article out there on this and I like to think that the few twitter examples represent a very small portion of the overall population (sadly, I'm sure what I want that percentage to be is considerably less than it is).
Noting this is a fair point for this author and, to be fair, it is not what they are focusing on so I should not, either.

What this author appears to be focusing on is that the media is making this out to be a feminist story. This author is stating that this can't be a feminist story and then providing reasons.

Their first reason is that the story is not named after the main character, but is, rather, named after what happens to her. The author is making this to be a core reason why this cannot be a feminist story.
This reasoning is plain and complete crap.
Without the games themselves Katniss would continue to be a nobody within the setting. The games are what drive the society and what drive Katniss to here elevated position.
There are many examples of stories with protagonists who are NOT the title of the story. I could start naming them, but I would fill my character limit before I made a dent in the overall list. The reality is that the title has nothing to do with whether a story fairly represents characters as EQUALS. True feminism shouldn't exist because it is really about representing women and men as equals and this story demonstrates clearly that both male and female contestants can, and have, won the games. Each contestant has no alteration in their chances based on their gender. They make what luck they can and make the odds in their favor as much as they can using their skills and the tools at hand. It's that simple. This is not a "feminazi" story and I would argue that any incident of extreme feminism in which all male characters are suppressed. That is no more of a equality situation than the standard patriarchal construct that is abundant everywhere.

Moving on to the next point the author puts out there: that Katniss never kills anyone.
The author is wrong. Katniss is directly responsible for the deaths of at least two of the other contestants and indirectly responsible for at least one other. The author obviously did not pay much attention to the topic that they are writing about to miss these VERY relevant facts.

The author of the article is stating that Katniss and Cinderella are identical and that neither is a strong character.
The author of the article cannot be more wrong.

Anyone who, at age 11, takes over the head-of-household role and illegally trespasses on government land to hunt for food to feed her catatonic mother and sister is a strong character. Anyone who, starting at age 11, deals with the local black market to trade poached game for other goods and services is a strong character.
Anyone who, through their knowledge and acquired experience, can survive in the woods with baking daytime temperatures and sub-freezing nighttime temperatures with only a jacket, a sleeping bag, a water bottle (started empty), a means to sterilize water, a knife and a pack to carry it all in is a strong character.
Anyone who, regardless of how they do it, survives a caged death-match with 23 other contestants is a strong character.
Anyone who, upon finding them in the woods, can have the presence of mind to keep them from dying from their grievous leg injury until medical help can be obtained is a strong character. Anyone who, upon understanding the strategy of their strongest opponents takes an overt military action to obliterate that strategy and all of the advantages that those opponents had is a strong character.
Anyone who, to save the one person they love the most, will willingly step into a life-threatening situation where the odds are certainly NOT in their favor is a strong character.

I challenge the article's author to successfully complete any of the seven points above. Most people would fail to complete them. Most people would have died.

The author does, in fairness, have a valid comment about the lack of feminist (or equalist) ideals in fair tales. The Hunger Games is NOTHING like those fairy tales even if that comment is immediately spoiled by stating that Katniss has no ...decisions of her own in the arena.

She does.

She makes the decision the author admits to.
She makes the decision to heed the advice of her mentor when the games begin (the book even outlines how she was contemplating going against that until she lost her chance).
She makes the decisions to be smart about where and when she sleeps.
She makes the decisions about when to, and not to, have a fire.
She makes the decisions to hide and run.
She makes the decisions to stay and fight.
She makes the decision to go offensive and remove the advantages that the bigger, stronger, better-trained and faster contestants had secured for themselves.
She makes decisions constantly in the story. Many of them are what kept her alive in the fight against nature and many of them are what kept her alive in the conflicts against the other contestants.

The "impossible packages" that come from the sky are not. Each contestant clearly knows that they have sponsors and that those sponsors can provide them with gifts if they choose. Each contestant knows that their performance in the arena is what leads to sponsors choosing to invest in them. Bad decisions and bad performance leads to no "impossible packages" where good performance, strategy and decision-making leads to gifts that help you stay alive to make more decisions.

Moving onward through the article the author then states that Katniss DID kill but claims it was reflexive and not a deliberate act?
The answer to that is: so?
She did what she needed to do. She made the right choice. She made that choice without spending time thinking about it. Thinking about it would have cost her her life.
The article's author also conveniently forgets to discuss an earlier situation where Katniss took action knowing that it would likely result in the death of at least one other contestant. She knew it had a high chance of killing and that it might kill up to five other contestants. She took the action knowing that. She did it BECAUSE of that.

The article's author then, conveniently, forgets to correctly identify that the rules change that allows for both Katniss and Peeta to live was announce MUCH earlier. In fact, they tried to revoke that change and Katniss made another decision that was specifically designed to force the game-masters into upholding their earlier rules-change that allowed two victors.
The very next paragraph has the article's author outlining that Katniss was robbed of this decision. She was not. Her decision is what MADE them reverse the rules that forced her to make the decision.
Katniss made the plan. Katniss made the decision. Katniss rebelled against the government and won.

I will freely admit that the author has a solid point about false feminine agency in the beginning of the third part of their article. Society has norms. It pushes them onto people, men and women alike, every day. Society has an inertia and a power and that is precisely what landed Katniss in the arena in the first place. Her choices within the arena were hers. Many of them were partially forced because of the circumstances, but they were still her choices.
When she avenges Rue she could have chosen to run instead. She could have chosen to handle Rue's death differently. She could have chosen to not acknowledge Rue's life to the people of her district. Those were actions that were not coerced by the circumstances and, in fact, were counter to the best tactics of the arena. Katniss chose to dedicate her resources to do those actions explicitly because she WANTED to.
I will also admit that much of the societal influences that remove decisions from women are actions that other women take. Men take some actions, and put forward suggestions but women are the ones who engage in the competition between women (whether it is warranted or not) over appearance, etc.

I particularly like that the author points out The Running Man in the end. The main character of that movie has no greater "agency" than Katniss. That character HAS to kill. That character does not have the option to run and hide. That character is not fighting only the other contestants but also professional killers who deliberately hunt the contestants AND are better equipped. Katniss used strategy and tactics to get where she got; the running man used brute force. I'll take a smart, strategic character over someone who survives by brute force any day. They are, in the end, stronger (because they can use their environment to maximize themselves) and they are much more interesting.

Furthermore, I could easily point out that one can extrapolate that society and environment rob us ALL of all elements of agency all the time. If Katniss' ability to survive in the woods and make the appropriate suvival decisions was a lack of agency because she was forced into the arena in the first place than we're all robbed of agency because we did not deliberately choose to be in the world, nor the society that we live in. We are here and we're making the most of it on a daily basis because that is the greatest level of choice we have available to us.

(I could extrapolate out even further and get into the Newtonian physics of sub-atomic particles and how they affect the chemistry in our brains, thus robbing us of the agency of how we feel, too.... but I won't go into more depth on that than this comment).

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For those who are interested Amazon.com has a whole store for Hunger Games products including a boxed set of the books.