Her Majesty

So I recently started re-watching the Showtime Series: The Tutors because my wonderful friend gave me her password to Netflicks Instant Watch (which is the greatest thing ever). The main appeal of the show are the costumes (not entirely accurate but amazing) and the sex (b/c Jonathon Reese Myers is hot). For me, the show also highlights the age-old problem of women in history; "using sex to get what she wants." Anne Boleyn uses her feminine wiles and seduces Henry VIII into marrying her but not before he changes the course of history by breaking off from the Catholic Church and creating the Church of England which allows divorce. Anne "bewitches" Henry into doing all of these things (which of course she later dies for). I have two issues with this situation. 1) Henry (of course) never took responsibility for his actions. He never admitted his weakness and his inability to resist Anne. His blatant desire to bang her (especially in the show) made him do everything that she asks. 2) History views Anne Boleyn as a whore and witch when in reality, she affected the history of Western civilization. But I also have a problem with giving her too much credit b/c she did use her body to get what she wanted (to be Queen and lots of bank). It all comes back to agency. Henry gave Anne too much agency by blaming her for the entire thing. Other people deny her agency by saying that she was following her father's orders or was a complete victim of Henry's whims.

To bring this to the present day, most of the posts in the blog have been about agency. Women constantly struggle with issues of agency especially in scholarship. Students of women's history deal with problems of agency everyday. But so do women. As the Albright Sheriff pointed out, the hookup culture highlights this issue b/c some people claim that it is always detrimental to women by assuming that we need an emotional connection to sex at all times. In media, women are portrayed as victims of the sexual needs of men (granted a lot of times they are) but not always especially not in the ways that people assume. So, where is your agency?

Love,

(still in need of a pen-name)