Both power as ability and what I call “may” power—power as being allowed—often get expressed in English with the same everyday word: can. That overlap is convenient in conversation, but analytically it blurs an important distinction. Sometimes “I can” points inward to capacity: to what my body, mind, skills, health, training, or tools make possible. At other times “I can” points outward to permission: to what I am allowed to do, say, access, or become in a particular social space, under particular rules, in the presence of particular people. The sentence can look identical while the kind of power at stake is different.
Consider the plain statement “I can speak English.” In one context, it names an ability: I have learned a language and can use it. In another context, it can name permission: I am allowed to use a language here, now, without punishment. This is why an Indigenous child forced into a boarding school where Native languages were forbidden or punished could truthfully think or say something like “I can speak English” while also living under the reality that they could not speak their mother tongue—not because their vocal cords failed them, but because the environment made the act socially and materially unsafe. In that situation, the central fact is not linguistic competence; it is a regime of permission and punishment. The child’s ability may remain intact, but their “may” power has been stripped away.
That difference matters because being allowed is not the same as being able. If I lack ability, I simply cannot do the thing no matter how much I want to. If I cannot lift a heavy stone, my willpower does not move it. If I lack permission, I might still be able to do the thing in a purely physical sense—and precisely that mismatch is where consequence enters. I may be able to lift a particular stone, but if it is understood as sacred and the setting treats my action as a violation, then lifting it becomes a different kind of event: an action that triggers enforcement, retaliation, exclusion, shame, violence, or legal penalty. In other words, “may” power is where a social world turns capacity into risk.
Calling this “may” power raises a necessary question: allowed by whom? In the most literal sense, permission is something people and institutions grant, refuse, negotiate, or enforce. For the purposes of this analysis, “may” power stays grounded in social permission rather than metaphorical “permission” by nature. Gravity does not allow me to fly; it simply describes a physical constraint, which belongs under power as ability (or the lack of it). But a police officer, a parent, a teacher, a manager, a border agent, a landlord, a platform moderator, a licensing board, a hiring committee, a neighborhood culture, an unwritten “how we do things here”—these can all shape what I am allowed to do. “May” power is the permission-structure that determines whether an otherwise possible action remains safe, legitimate, and consequence-free.
This is also why “may” power sits at the junction of power as influence and power as ability. Permission is never purely internal, and it is rarely purely abstract. Somebody’s choices, decisions, or enforcement capacity influence the range of actions that remain available to me in practice. In that sense, their power as influence shapes my “may” power. If someone does not allow me to do something, they are not merely describing the world; they are actively narrowing my field of action by attaching consequences to a behavior. That narrowing may be explicit (a spoken rule, a posted sign, a law) or implicit (a pattern of retaliation, a history of punishment, a shared understanding that “people like you don’t do that here”). Either way, the permission-structure changes what is livable.
Another familiar example makes this visible without requiring a dramatic setting. I may be physically able to walk down a busy city street naked. Nothing about my muscles prevents the movement. Yet I am not allowed to do that. The likely result is arrest or another form of coercive intervention. In this case, the absence of “may” power is not the same as the absence of ability. It is a social prohibition backed by enforcement.
Citizenship and borders provide another clear case. A citizen is allowed to enter their country as a matter of status; that permission is built into a legal and bureaucratic system. A non-citizen may still be physically able to cross a border, but doing so without authorization turns ability into danger. A visa functions as a visible symbol of “may” power: it is formal authorization tied to entry-seeking, documented in papers, databases, and gatekeeping practices. That permission is not created by a single person’s whim; it emerges from a dense network of conventions, laws, institutions, and meanings—especially the meaning of nationhood and the meaning of belonging.
Once “may” power comes into view, powerlessness comes into view with it. Every permission is conditional; every permission system has edges. Nobody is allowed to do absolutely anything, not even the most insulated rulers in history. Constraints can be legal, institutional, economic, reputational, relational, or logistical, and they can be internalized so deeply that they feel like “just how things are.” “May” power therefore tends to be experienced as a shifting boundary rather than as an owned possession: it expands in some rooms and contracts in others; it changes across life stages; it changes when a person’s status changes; it changes when the social meaning of a category changes.
That is where inequality becomes impossible to ignore. One of the sharpest features of “may” power is that it is distributed unevenly. People can occupy the same city, the same school, the same workplace, and still live under different permission systems. Some can bend rules with minimal consequence while others face severe penalties for small deviations. This is the lived logic behind sayings like: a poor person steals and goes to jail; a rich person steals and gets richer. The details vary, and the saying can be overstated, but it points to a recognizable pattern: enforcement is not applied evenly, and “may” power is one of the places where inequality becomes concrete.
“May” power also clarifies why blame often lands in the wrong place. In bureaucratic settings, the person you can reach may not have the permission to do what you want, even if they sympathize. Waiting for an immigration decision can teach this brutally: call-center staff may not be allowed to contact decision-makers, access internal notes, or accelerate a case. Their ability to speak with you is real, but their “may” power inside the institution is limited. Seeing that difference does not make the system fair; it simply improves diagnosis. It helps separate an individual’s choices from the permission-structure they inhabit.
Finally, “may” power helps explain why boundary-testing can feel emotionally rewarding. Being told “you’re not allowed” is experienced by many people as a direct confrontation with powerlessness, and powerlessness tends to sting. This is one reason rules can trigger defiance even when compliance would be easy. Some people—children and adults—push boundaries, flirt with consequences, or break rules partly to feel, even briefly, that they can “do whatever they want.” The reward is not only the act itself; it is the sensation of expanded permission, the felt experience of having “may” power. And because permission is relational, the thrill often comes from doing the act in the face of someone else’s attempt to restrict it.
It is worth noting that the history of the word may supports this conceptual direction. Etymology is not destiny, but it can reveal old semantic gravitational pulls. In Old English, forms such as mæg meant “am able,” and the verb is traced through Germanic roots connected to ability and power, with close ties to might as a related form. This helps explain why everyday English so readily lets can cover both ability and permission, and why may/might still hover between possibility, capacity, and authorization. The language keeps reminding us that these categories interpenetrate in lived experience even when analysis pries them apart.
“May” power, then, is not a separate substance of power. It is an analytical lens that isolates one recurring feature of social life: permission as a power-limiting and power-producing mechanism. It keeps attention on who is allowed, who is not, how those boundaries are enforced, and how unequal permission becomes one of the most ordinary ways power and powerlessness are reproduced.