Dumb Domme, who i think is wonderful, did a delightfully funny post/ rant against the D/s capitalization thing that so many of us s-types use and i guess some Doms too. You can read it here.
And of course she’s right, it is silly and contrived and against all rules of punctuation.
i remember the first time i did it. Wrote “i” instead of “I.”
i don’t think i’d ever done it before. Well, as a typo, sure, but otherwise? Omigosh, no.
My mother was a grammar/punctuation stickler. Really. In my family, growing up, questions like: “When is it correct to say ‘I will’ and when should it be ‘I shall'” might be bandied about at the dinner table.
i not only CAN diagram sentences, i love diagramming sentences. What could be more fun than trying to decide if a word is actually modifying the subject or the predicate? If it’s a direct object or an indirect object? And then placing it in exactly the right configuration? O, yes.
See what i’m saying?
i had to teach myself ~ don’t laugh ~ i had to teach myself to use bad grammar. And it took me til i was in high school to realize that i needed to do it, that if i kept talking like a pedantic bookworm, i was never, ever going to fit in.
i know, i suppose some of youall rose above that, kept your good grammar, and fit in anyhow, or adapted to not fitting in. i’m glad for you. i did too, eventually. In high school, i longed to belong.
Of course, i discovered that even the occasional “Aren’t i?’ instead of “Am i not?” was not going to make me fit in with the high school crowd, and really, really, i’m ok with that. i do think that relaxing my language standards has been helpful at times. i no longer remember the distinction between “will” and “shall” and i’m ok with that.
But i mourn the loss of some grammatical distinctions {i won’t go into them here} so i can sympathize with Dumb Domme’s outrage over the D/s capitalization thing. And i agree that using it ~ capitalizing the pronouns for someone who is not my Dom ~ is not necessary, and may be a little extreme, and even possibly offensive.
In fact, i might say that if one does it repeatedly after being asked not to, then it becomes a rape culture thing, where one’s “no” is not being respected and that’s totally not ok. That’s a different thing and a different blog post, in my mind.
And ~ i have to confess ~ i don’t use W/we or O/our. That just seems too cumbersome and hard to read. And i’ve never been involved with someone who was big on that kind of protocol.
But.
i remember the first time i did it. Wrote “i” instead of “I.”
It was such a symbol.
i was seeing The Man I First Called Sir {otherwise known in these pages as First Sir, or even FS.} Calling him Sir, was HUGE!! Omigosh, it was such an amazing act of submission.
Of course now, it rolls off my tongue as naturally as my Sir’s name ~ maybe even more so. But back then? Yikes.
So when he informed me of the capitalization thing? O, my. Yes, it was another heart-thumping, can-i-make-this-sacrifice moment.
It’s a symbol.
For me, it was a powerful symbol. You cannot imagine how many times i had to backspace and retype that “I.” Redo the “h” in “He.”
Every time i did it, it was a reminder. As potent as taking my panties off in some strange bathroom when instructed to, writing “i” screamed, “This is real. You are really doing this, really agreeing to be submissive to someone else, SO MUCH SO that you’re messing with punctuation.”
Yeah. It was that big a deal.
Ok, it’s not anymore. i rarely have to think about it. When i write as aisha,” i” comes naturally. When i write as my-vanilla-persona, “I” flows easily. It is a head shift that mostly just happens.
Referring to my Sir with a capital “H” is also a reminder of who He is to me. It really is. Just as calling him “Sir” is.
i admit, when i write to Him, i don’t usually do “You.” i don’t think my Sir is particularly invested in this symbol ~ possibly not any more than Dumb Domme is, although He’s never said so.
And i can see why it seems silly and affected and all kinds of foolishness, and it probably is. But it’s symbolic, and part of the value of TTWD, for me, is that it is a life rich in symbolism.
When i sit at my Sir’s feet, that’s symbolic. When i fix his coffee, it’s symbolic. He’s quite capable of fixing His own coffee. i don’t do it because He needs me to, or because it’s my responsibility, or because it’s women’s work. i do it because it expresses my desire to serve Him. It is an act of love ~ and a reminder of our respective places.
When i choose not to capitalize “i,” i may do it easily, but it is still a reminder of my desire to serve Him, to think of Him ~ to hold Him ~ in a different way from others. And it communicates that.
D/S would just not be the same as D/s. M/S? Nah. The distinction communicates. And it is because it breaks the punctuation rule that “He” and “i” serves a purpose. For me, anyhow.