We Don't Like.

When I was a little girl, my mother drove me crazy by speaking in the royal we. I remember with particular clarity one incident wherein my mother informed my friend's mother that "We don't like fried foods." "Speak for yourself!" thought my indignant five year old self, "You don't cook anything delicious because dad won't let you because he doesn't want you to get fat!" ("Because he's a misogynist jerk," realizes my twenty-five year old self). As a result, since confronting the reality that I too could have children if I so chose, I've become hyper-aware of mothers' tendencies to subsume their identities to those of their children. I am very, very conscious of striving never to speak in majestic plurals. When I talk to my brother, or when I babysit, I am careful not to assume, to overstep, by using the royal we. It does not amuse me. Or as this country's monarch, Queen Victoria, famously said, "We are not amused." I am afraid I will end up as dazed and confused as my mother as to who I am, and worse, crush someone else under a collapsing identity.

Despite this paranoia, I was excessively amused by the following bumper-sticker-sized sign declaring simply that "We Don't Like." I first saw this weeks ago, long before the holidays (probably not long after my last blog post, if that gives you an idea of just how long ago this was), when I went out on Brick Lane with two girlfriends and a guy who, while I love him, doesn't share my friends' and my feminism and can make unfortunate comments that have more in common with my father than I am comfortable with. The four of us were sitting outside of a curry house/bar on a wooden picnic table in the cold when a man handed us each a "We Don't Like" sign. "I don't like the royal we," I told him. "It amuses me not," I said in what I hoped was an amusing way, blowing smoke in his face for good measure. "What is this?" I asked. He informed us that he was part of an improvisational theater group called We Don't Act, and he urged us to come to his show the following week. "We" said we would consider it, and then I asked him coyly, "So what don't you like?" He thought about it for a second and said, "Hrm. I don't like violence. And I don't like having wives." "Wives? You don't like having wives or you don't like having a wife?" "A wife." The three women at the table, well, we were not amused, and we realized that this sign could succintly express our displeasure. In unison we held up the signs towards our solicitor friend and chimed together, "We Don't Like." After this, the signs came up nearly constantly throughout the rest of the night, mostly in response to any borderline misogynist comments from our friend. We joked that we should bring the "We Don't Like" signs to all of our seminars, and hold them up silently whenever a student made a tedious, annoying, or poorly argued point. Just think how amusing this could be during meetings????!!!!!




I was in fits of giggles that entire night, and I don't foresee the "We Don't Like" sign getting any less funny anytime soon. This is probably because "We Don't Like" a lot of things--most notably blogging. I am not a blogger, and I realized why. Not only do I at least attempt to privilege the present over the virtual, I prefer talking to people individually. Its difficult for me to write solipsistically for a wide audience. We also don't like CCTV and constant surveillance of citizens in England. As I was riding the night bus back from Brick Lane that night, I took a photo of this sign that enthusiastically [creepily] declared, "Our new buses are fitted with digital CCTV so that you have a safe and pleasant journey. We have prosecuted over 60 people for vandalism and graffiti on our buses. You are being monitored NOW by cameras fitted to this bus. So just sit back and smile!"


We Don't Like.