Exploring the Importance of Agency

Uncover the power of personal choice and its impact on our lives.

By Nyxie Noc

As an experienced sex worker, fetish content producer, and kink educator with over twenty years of experience, I’ve had the privilege of working closely with various sex-positive and kink organizations. For the past several years, I’ve focused on handling misconduct reports and consent violations at adult play parties. Through this work, I’ve gathered a wealth of experience and insight into the dynamics that occur in these spaces. One common thread I’ve observed across many of these cases is the absence of awareness around agency.

What Is Agency?

For the purposes of this conversation, agency refers to the capacity of an individual to freely make informed, risk-aware, and conscious choices about what they participate in. Unlike responsibility, which can be accepted or imposed, agency implies that a person has the power to make real choices. Agency is closely tied to the amount of privilege a person has in any given situation. Often, less privilege means less access to agency. Therefore, understanding the equity afforded to a person is essential in determining how much agency they might have.

Why Harm Sometimes Happens Even When Consent Is Present

In many consent violation reports I’ve received, there’s a strong emphasis on whether someone did or did not consent to an action, and how that might have led to harm. Surprisingly, harm can still occur even when all parties involved have given their consent. So, why is this the case? Often, it’s because of a lack of agency or a lack of awareness around agency and social inequities.

Consent means very little if a person does not have the agency to say no. After all, if someone cannot say no due to inequity or a lack of safety, their yes is not a true yes.

FRIES for Consent: A Good Start, But Missing Agency

Many of us are familiar with the "FRIES for Consent" acronym from Planned Parenthood. It’s a fantastic resource for people beginning to learn about consent in their interpersonal relationships:

• Freely given
• Reversible
• Informed
• Enthusiastic
• Specific

While this is an excellent starting point, it misses the crucial component of agency. It’s not anyone’s fault for not knowing more about agency, as our modern societal structure actively enforces responsibility over agency. The institutional power structures we experience in our lives benefit from us being responsible, but not from us having informed choices and the agency to make those choices.

Introducing: BURGERS for Agency

To bridge this gap, I’ve developed a concept called "BURGERS for Agency," which is meant to be paired with "FRIES for Consent." Here’s how it breaks down:

• Boundaries: Do you know them, can you state them, and will you hold them?
• Understanding: Do you understand yourself, your limitations, and your desires?
• Responsibility: Can you take ownership of your choices?
• Good Faith Communication: Are you communicating actively and with integrity?
• Equity: Even within power exchange, is there still space for making true, empowered choices?
• Resilience: Are you practicing regular self-care, taking meds, talking to trusted friends or professionals, addressing any shame or triggers?
• Self-Awareness: Are you practicing frequent self-check-ins, gut-checks, and listening to your intuition?

How Agency Ties into Privilege

The more privilege a person experiences in a space, the more agency they can hold. Consider the privileges you have and don’t have in the places you exist and the relationships you maintain. Your agency is affected by:

• Your gender
• Your race
• Your educational resources
• Your culture
• Your body’s size, shape, abilities, and health (including mental health)
• Your relationship status
• Your sexuality
• Your socioeconomic status
• And more...

It’s important to recognize that some factors may limit the amount of agency we can exercise. Despite knowing that you don’t want to be taken advantage of, and knowing you can say no, it’s often harder in practice. You might need to develop more agency if you:

• Have a personal history of trauma, abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence
• Are a “people pleaser”
• Are marginalized because of your age, experience level, race, income, role, gender, size, physical ability, sexuality, first language, or health
• Have present issues with substance abuse, mental health, eating disorders, or are recently in recovery process
• Have little to no experience with kink, BDSM, D/s dynamics, or fetish play, play parties, ENM, etc.

If you fall into any of these categories, it simply means that you may need to develop a stronger sense of agency before you can give full consent. It does not mean that:

• You cannot participate at all
• You have to be perfect before you can consent
• If you do participate, anything that happens is your fault
• You’re to blame if someone violates your consent
• People fitting these criteria automatically lack agency
• People who don’t fit these criteria automatically have agency

Supporting Agency Development in Others

For those of us who are comfortable in our sense of agency, how can we support a partner or potential partner who needs more development in their own agency?

• Acknowledge power imbalances within the dynamic. Are you older, more experienced, or have more resources? How does this show up in your dynamic?
• Hold back on more extreme forms of play, especially TPE (Total Power Exchange) and CNC (Consensual Non-Consent), as well as collaring.
• Check and re-check for consent.
• Encourage and accept any “no.”
• Handle hesitancy and ambiguity as a “no.”
• Negotiate thoroughly.

Personal Responsibility and Agency in sex-positive spaces

When engaging in ethical sexual or kink activities, there is never a loophole for personal responsibility. Simply put, if one has caused harm, one may not point to another’s lack of agency as a reasonable excuse for harmful behavior. It’s unethical and inhumane to say, “It’s not my fault I violated their consent; they don’t have any agency, and that’s their problem, not mine.”

We are responsible for our own agency and consent, as well as for making every effort to ensure that our partner also has agency and consent before engaging. Victim blaming is unethical, inhumane, and in direct opposition to consent culture.

Conclusion: Burgers and Fries – A Perfect Pair

My goal in presenting this information to folks in the sex-positive community is twofold:

1. To emphasize that while consent is crucial, it’s nothing without agency to back it up. They are two sides of the same coin—Burgers and Fries!
2. To highlight how much care goes into engaging in high-risk activities and relationships. Those unwilling to care for and take responsibility for themselves and each other are not well-suited to the sex-positive community.

Sex-positive exploration can involve acts that many would consider contrary to healthy relationships. However, it takes a lot of love and care to include sex and kink in a way that is fulfilling, affirming, and constructive. Play well.

For more information, book a discovery call with me, and lets talk about developing your agency.