Before I get going, I’m 75% deaf, as some of you know, semi-reliant on hearing aids and lip reading. My first languages were Makaton sign and then BSL. I now use spoken English.
There are a lot of issues I find with how deaf people are represented in books, when represented at all. I would love to see more deaf and hard of hearing characters in the books I read- without having to read books specifically about deaf/HoH people- but when I find them, they’re grossly undercharacterized or stereotyped. Authors write them in a way that sets signing language characters apart from speaking characters as if they are inferior, and this makes my blood boil.
Some technicalties
I’ll keep this brief.
You may have heard that “deaf” is a slur and you should use “hearing impaired”. Don’t. I’ve never met a deaf or hard of hearing person who believed that. Use deaf for people who are deaf, and Hard of Hearing (HoH) for people who lack hearing. These can be interchangeable depending on the person. This is why sensitivity readers are a useful part of the beta process.
Sign language is incredibly varied. It developes in the same way as spoken language. Fun fact: in BSL there are at least half a dozen ways to say bullshit, my favourite of which is laying your arms across one another with one hand making a bull’s head sign and the other hand going flat, like a cowpat. It’s beautifully crude, and the face makes the exclamation mark. Wonderful.
There are different sign languages. Knowing more than one would make a character multi or bi-lingual, even if they are non-speaking.
Makaton is basic sign language used by children, and it mirrors the very simple language used by toddlers.
Yes, we swear and talk shit about people around us in sign language sometimes, and no, it isn’t disrespectful to have signing characters do this. Just remember that we also say nice things, and random things, and talk about fandoms and TV shows and what we’re having for dinner, too.
Each signed language is different from another. ASL and BSL? Nothing alike. Just google the two different signs for horse.
Remember that sign language is a language, equal to the spoken word
Therefore, treat it as such. Use quotation speech marks and dialogue
tags. You only need to explicitly state that this character uses signed language once, and then let your modifiers and description do the rest.
It isn’t a form of “sub-speech" or “making hand actions”- sign language is a language all on its own: it has its own grammar rules, syntactical structures, punctuation, patterns, idioms and colloquialisms. For example, “what is your name?” becomes “Your name what?” with the facial expression forming punctuation in the same way that spoken English uses alterations of prosodic tone (inflections). There is even pidgin sign; a language phenomenon usually associated with spoken language.
In the same way that you would describe a spoken-English character’s tone of voice, you would describe a signed-English speaker’s facial expressions and the way that they sign- keeping in mind that these things are our language’s equivalent of verbal inflection.
So please, none of that use of “special speech marks” or italicised
speech for sign. If your viewpoint character doesn’t understand signed
speech, then you take the same approach that would be used for any other
language they don’t understand, like French or Thai. E.g “He said something
in rapid sign language, face wrinkling in obvious disgust.” is a good
way of conveying this. The proof that you’ve done this well is in whether or not you can switch “sign language” for French or something else, and it would read the same.
Don’t be afraid to describe how things are said, either.
Sign language is such a beautiful and expressive way of talking, and to
see a writer do it justice would be truly fabulous. Putting this into practise:
“Oh, I love maths!” She said, fingers sharp and wide with sarcasm. She raised her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry.” He replied and made his face small, but could not keep the grin forming. She was starting to laugh, too.
This is part one of two, for the sake of readability and keeping the information simple as I can. Part two- writing the deaf characters themselves- is coming up over the weekend. See you then and best luck with your writing until that point 😀
This is part of my weekly advice theme. Each week I look at what you’ve asked me to help with, and write a post or series of posts for it. Next week: settings and character development (including heroes, anti-heroes, villains, and every other kind of character).
An overhaul of Ontario’s welfare system, expected Nov. 8 has been delayed until Nov. 22, causing more anxiety for those who rely on it.
Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod announced the 100-day review on July 31 when she scrapped the previous Liberal government’s basic income pilot project, “paused” 19 regulatory reforms, and halved a planned 3-per-cent rate increase to 1.5 per cent. But instead of unveiling the reforms Nov. 8, as promised, MacLeod issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying she looks forward to “sharing our plan” on Nov. 22.
Premier Doug Ford’s government is about to reform social assistance in Ontario, raising fears of the kind of sweeping cuts to welfare made the last time the Progressive Conservatives took power in the province.
More than 960,000 men, women and children receive social assistance from the province’s two welfare programs, Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, according to the latest provincial figures. The annual social assistance tab, including drug benefits, now tops $10 billion.
So my grandmother and I went into town today to hit up the Walmart for corn meal. She warned me that a lot of brands mix a little wheat flour in, so we’d have to check the ingredients. Since Deacon doesn’t have any experience with corn meal, I figured I’d give him a little test and have him check the bags before we looked at the ingredients. He alerted to every bag on the shelf.
My grandmother thought this was the Best. Thing. Ever. She was so delighted to have him alert and then she’d look at the bag and say “yes! he’s right! check the next one!” (video is him checking the second to last one on the shelf). Because of this we gathered quite a crowd of spectators, one of which was a store employee, who ran a few aisles over and brought back a bag of gluten-free cornbread muffin mix for him to check. He said it was safe, at which point everyone watching collectively lost their shit. You would have thought we’d just won the Stanley cup. Strangers were hugging. It was unreal.
So afterward I held an impromptu Q&A session since none of them had ever seen a service dog before, and then a police officer who was watching told me all about the Malinois their force had, and even got choked up talking about the dog’s passing last year.
Since getting home, my grandmother has proudly told this story to every single person that called the house this afternoon (she’s a very popular lady), whether it be family members, quilting friends, or the preacher, one of which responded, delighted, that her daughter had already heard the story from her husband who was doing the grocery shopping that morning.
Because treating people fairly often means treating them differently.
This is something that I teach my students during the first week of school and they understand it. Eight year olds can understand this and all it costs is a box of band-aids.
I have each students pretend they got hurt and need a band-aid. Children love band-aids. I ask the first one where they are hurt. If he says his finger, I put the band-aid on his finger. Then I ask the second one where they are hurt. No matter what that child says, I put the band-aid on their finger exactly like the first child. I keep doing that through the whole class. No matter where they say their pretend injury is, I do the same thing I did with the first one.
After they all have band-aids in the same spot, I ask if that actually helped any of them other than the first child. I say, “Well, I helped all of you the same! You all have one band-aid!” And they’ll try to get me to understand that they were hurt somewhere else. I act like I’m just now understanding it. Then I explain, “There might be moments this year where some of you get different things because you need them differently, just like you needed a band-aid in a different spot.”
If at any time any of my students ask why one student has a different assignment, or gets taken out of the class for a subject, or gets another teacher to come in and help them throughout the year, I remind my students of the band-aids they got at the start of the school year and they stop complaining. That’s why eight year olds can understand equity.
Spastic Cerebral Palsy has been recognized within professional medical literature since 1860. That’s over seven generations. And all that time, doctors have known that it’s a life-long condition.
But if you try looking up Cerebral Palsy on the U.S. NIH or CDC websites, the only numbers you’ll find track children between the ages of 8 and 10 years old. And there’s hardly any information out there aimed at an audience of adult C.P.ers.; in the medical literature, we’re pretty much dropped as “Subjects of Interest” the moment we turn 18 – a good 50 years short of our life expectancy.
And I think I’ve figured out why:
When we turn 18, we’re legally allowed to say: “No,” to anything a doctor or therapist wants to try on us. The medical professionals can’t get to us through our parents, anymore. And it’s so much easier to get a parent’s consent if you promise: “This will make your child normal” (even when that’s not true).
When they have to get our consent, we’re not as much fun to play with, anymore. So they ignore us from that point on.
And also coincidentally, this makes it very difficult to find things like physiotherapists, or even resources or help, should we need them as an adult with Cerebral Palsy as no one outside of paediatrics seems to have a damn clue what to do with us. Over the past few years I’ve developed lots of chronic pain because of my CP, and going to an adult physio I felt like I had to explain everything to them about my condition and on top of that they still recommended I go on baclofen for my spasticity (lmao no).
I don’t think that’s at all “Coincidental.”
…A few years ago, I came upon a pamphlet called “Living with C.P.,” from
the Ontario Foundation for Cerebral Palsy (the website is still up, but this particular pamphlet no longer is, as far as I can see), that was actually written to people with C.P., instead of their parents. It was quite cheering. Especially when I saw there was a paragraph with the heading: Aging with Cerebral Palsy. It had two sentences:
First (quote):
It can be frustrating for adults to deal with a health care system that
appears to have little knowledge or interest regarding the changing
needs of aging with a disability (end quote).
My reaction: No S~~~, Sherlock! Did you figure that out all by yourself? You must be so proud! (BTW, here’s the subtext translation: “Doctors don’t know, and don’t care, about adults with C.P. This is so obvious, there’s no point in pretending otherwise.”)
Second (quote):
A positive attitude makes a
big difference, and developing relaxation techniques and coping skills
can have a beneficial effect on mental and physical health.
(unquote)
My reaction: So – you admit that doctors don’t care about me, and the only advice you have for dealing with this is to Play Nice, and Be Sweet?!
A curse on you, and all of your ableist tribe! May every cookie turn to ashes and hair in your mouth!
I was reminded of this post by seeing this one, the other day, from @butterflyinthewell, about how Anthony Hopkins wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until he was 60.
And how maybe one reason we don’t hear as much about autistic adults is just the same reason you don’t hear much about adults with C.P.: “authorities” who have the power to write about us lose interest in us as soon as we gain the legal clout to say: “No.”
And I was struck, again, by how much autistic folk and C.P. folk have in common, despite the fact that the symptoms we deal with are often very different. “Developmental Disability” solidarity!
(Boy, that’s a mouthful!)
PS: I first made this post when I was new to Tumblr, and didn’t understand how reblogs worked. The middle comment in this thread was in reply to this response from @lion-hearted-girl-.
Doctor’s have no fucking idea what to do with most chronically ill and disabled adults and it’s the actual worst
I got a book on aging with autism from my local autistic charity (which was actually a pretty good one, since they HAD an adult program, unlike the town I moved to a few months back) and it was THE BIGGEST CROCK OF ABLEIST BULLSHIT. It was 10 years out of date. It used functioning labels A LOT.
And it was geared almost entirely towards parents, specifically parents of autistic adults with very high support needs (and even then, it assumed that they had been getting full support out of high school). It also predated an alteration to the provincial disability support program that capped supports if you had an IQ over 70.
But the book itself assumed that PARENTS were going to be the ones making the decisions for the autistic adult in question. And this was being handed out TO ADULTS by the local autism charity.
And yet…that was one of the ONLY resources I could find published for autistic adults. *METRIC SHIT TONS* of literature for anyone age 0-18. After that? Not much, with significantly more “not much” as one moved away from the 18-20 range (the transition period between school and not-school, after the cutoff from government services).
They REALLY don’t give a shit about us once we grow up.
There is so fucking much wrong with that I don’t even know where to start. Fucking hell. I wish I could say I’m surprised but all that bullshit is just too common
Some eaiser variations of push ups to help you build the strength to do a traditional one!
I was always frustrated how my P.E. teachers wanted all of us to go “all-or-none” and basically hurt ourselves without letting us build up from square-one like in the first gif. Then they’d fuckin yell at us for not doing it right >:|
Knee-pushups is not square-one.
When I got my first personal trainer, she had me doing push ups almost standing upright in the weight lifting bars so that I could do 15 reps and 3 sets of them. It’s more about the technique of the push up, and if you’re pushing too much weight, you can’t exersize the correct muscles within their tolerances. This post is pretty important to know cause of that.
I’m reblogging this here because as someone who spends almost the entire day on bedrest, it is incredibly difficult to find exercises I can do at my strength level.
Please ignore this if it is not for you. I know that exercise is not for everyone or every illness.
Loads of reps of something gentle can work your muscles pretty hardcore if you do enough of them.
Part of intro to P90X (DEATH TRAINING) is just standing, making a fist with each hand, holding your arms perpendicular to your body (like a kid ‘flying’ around as an airplane) and then moving your arms in tight circles for a minute, then reversing direction of the circles for a minute, then doing BIG, slow circles for a minute, then repeating the reversed version that. Like, full ‘60 seconds’ ‘minute’
At first its like ‘lol just my arms whatever I can do this all day’ and then it turns into ‘omg my arms are going to fall off this is terrible gravity plz no’
Also, water bottles can serve as light dumbells for gentle repetitive lifting (bro do you even lift) if you don’t want to dump cash into exercising. Having a bit of air in the bottle will help your forearm no matter what you do, as you try to keep it steady.
Laying on your back and lifting one leg up – just keeping it hovering over the ground with your toe pointed can work your abs. Hovering both legs at the same time is harder. Hovering both legs while making little ‘swimming kicks’ is stupid and i hate ithard.
Hell, even just tensing your abs and keeping them tensed for periods during the day will work them – no need to flail around a ton, or set aside a bunch of time for it.
Queer Fiction Writer 