“We”Capitulate

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….to the now de rigeur designation of ”preferred pronouns” in online communications.

Hypatia henceforward may—nay, must— be referred to in the second-person subject and object as “ my lady” or, more formally, ”her grace” (possessives: “my lady’s”, ”her grace’s”—and do not under any circumstances omit the apostrohes; that betrays a woeful lack of education, as well as , well, a well of cultural insensitivity.

Also be advised that Hypatia now finds the first person singular pronoun ”I” to be inadequate to reference her grace’s , ah, multi-faceted (not to say shattered , fragmented, disordered) personality. Hypatia is pleased to use the “royal we”from now on, like in Queen Victoria famous pronouncement, ”We are not amused”.

This has been a public service announcement. We, all of me—or no wait, we reckon that’s now ”all of us….?) wish to thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation. ( Also to announce that we will attempt to get you fired from your job, banned from this and any other sites, and subjected to general obloquy and isolation should you not comply with our eminently reasonable directive; but it is our sincere hope that those purely defensive measures will never be necessary.)

Stay safe!

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27 thoughts on ““We”Capitulate”

    1. Oh that is GOOD, Floridabirne! I’m reminded of the time Whistler in envy of some witticism of Wilde’s, remarked, “I wish I had said that,” and Wilde responded, “You will, James. You will.”
      Rest assured I will find a crevice to insert your bon mot in my conversations!

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  7. It occurs to me that JRR Tolkien anticipated and solved this problem for us. Gollum self-references as”we” but uses the singular verb form, like “Precious! We wants it!” And calls all other sentient beings “it”, like “What has it got in its pocketses?”
    All personses might do worse than follow his (no, ITS, mea culpa!) trailblazing example.

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  8. “And calls all other sentient beings “it”, like “What has it got in its pocketses?”

    I beat Gollum to the punch! I have been known to use “it” to describe certain “beings” for years. 🙂

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    2. One time in the Mischief I wrote about Hypatia and me, how we’re alike, how we’re different— and some devout Lutheran (Liz will know who) began a serious online interrogation to determine whether it was a case of demon possession! O yea, I finally wrote: I asked the spirit, what is thy name? And a voice cried, our name is LEGION! But you can call us “Hypatia”.
      “I see you’re joking”, he eventually responded (which I considered a minor miracle in se…..)

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    1. Just “we”. Because one of the worst, most benighted features of the “I” is the capitalization. That is sooo….Enlightenment. “I” is the only pronoun which is capitalized: how arrogant, how privileged. In fact, we read recently, all capital letters are racist, we shouldn’t even be using them at the beginning of a sentence. It’s like we think a sentence begins when WE say so— just like for so many long, dark years we thought our country began in 1776–now, of course, we know it began in 1619, and ONLY to create an African slave market. Take physic, pomp! Aaaaack: SORRY—we can’t believe we slipped up and referenced the quintessential OWM! OOG ( oh our god) it just goes to show how abysmally hopeless the situation is. We should just off myself—-“ourself”.we do not deserve to live.

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