Coffee Date and New Friends

Today I went on a coffee date, which will not be a repeat experience. I also hung out with my ASL classmate and her (Deaf) girlfriend, which hopefully WILL be a repeat experience since they are nice and fun to hang out with and vegan. How often do you meet Deaf queer vegans? Not often enough. I think the highlight of my evening was when they taught me the sign for Donald Trump.

Drawing of how to do the Donald Trump sign. Basically you take your hand and pat it over your head like a combover. The other version is to do the same thing but wriggle your fingers like a combover flapping in the breeze. 

Traveling Day

I'm posting this because I wanted to tell you about the play I just saw called I Was Most Alive With You by the Huntington Theatre Company. Because clearly what I should do when I'm about to get on a plane is go and see a play, right? Right.

Sign says "Huntington Theatre Company: I Was Most Alive With You" with hands signing. 

The play is structured after the book of Job, it stars deaf actor Russell Harvard as a deaf, gay, sober ASL teacher, and it opens with a flashback to the previous year's Thanksgiving dinner when Harvard's character Knox introduces his partner to the family. The story line was really good, the actors were amazing, and setup of the play was really cool. There were seven actors and each of them had a shadow interpreter who translated ASL into spoken English and vice versa as the play was happening. Why don't more plays do this? It'd be a great way to make theater more accessible to deaf people. Universal design? Yes please!

Scene from the play. 

Anyway, by the time you read this I will be in an airplane on my way to France. Woo! Six hours in the sky! I will leave you with this France-themed scene from Salad Fingers...

Salad Fingers wearing a beret and standing outside by a tree saying "I'm going to find France."

Movies!

Today I was super brave. Why, you ask? Because I went on a movie date to see Alice Through The Looking Glass! (It's the sequel to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.)

Movie poster for Alice Through the Looking Glass.

This may not seem like a big thing, but as someone with a hearing loss I can assure you it is. That's because for me to go to the movies I need to call ahead and arrange for a personal closed captioning system. And that closed captioning system is, quite frankly, embarrassing as hell. The last thing I want to do is stand out for having my own personal adaptive sound system.

Comic from That Deaf Guy of a couple of deaf men going to the movies and using the closed captioning system.

Anyway, I've been excited to see the movie and I've wanted to meet up with this gentleman caller so I decided to go for it. And it was fine. Nothing earth shattering but I enjoyed myself and the captioning system worked well and didn't phase my date in the least. Not bad.

Deaf Slam Time

Ok. This is my final slam poetry post. At least, for now.

All of my other slams were videos with speaking and since they weren't captioned they were horridly inaccessible. For today's slam I'm going in the opposite direction and posting a very famous ASL poem by Clayton Valli called "Dandelion":

Basically the poem describes someone removing dandelions, mowing them over, etc but every time they do the seeds scatter and create more dandelions. The dandelion remover in the poem represents the hearing community and dandelions are the Deaf and Deaf culture. Every time the hearing try to mow over them, the Deaf not only come back but spread. The poem echoes attempts to get rid of ASL in deaf residential schools.

This poem reminds me of a Mexican proverb I really love that's used a lot by the Zapatistas: "Quisieron enterrarnos, peru no sabian que somos semillas." In English it translates to "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know that we were seeds."

Black and white photo of a protest sign that says
"Quisieron enterrarnos, peru no sabian sue somos semilla."

Hearing Loss

So you may have noticed something different about my last few Fierce Friday photos. I wear standard tubed behind the ear hearing aids and you can see them in the photos. Before this past Fierce Friday, I took them off for all of my blog photos. Actually, I took them off for all of my photos in general. I really dislike the assumptions I get from other people when I wear them so I often don't - even in situations where I clearly need them. In fact, plenty of people who know me are surprised to discover that I have a hearing loss because I don't wear my hearing aids and I'm really good at faking it. But you know what? My hearing aids make my life easier and it's ridiculous to take them off because of other people's opinions. So I'm not doing that anymore. Besides, hearing aids are totally fierce. Right?

Anyway, about my hearing loss…

I was born with "severe" sensorineural hearing loss. That's the kind of hearing loss that's due to problems of the inner ear and nerves. In my case, demented cochlear hair cells and a cochlear nerve that occasionally decides not to fire. As far as I can tell, my cochlear hair cells make up the bulk of my hearing loss and the nerve leads to occasional moments when the world suddenly goes silent, only to come back a few minutes later when my cochlear nerve decides to start working again. I have several relatives with the same type of hearing loss so it runs in the family.

Meme that says "When people yawn do deaf people think they are screaming?" (The answer is no.)

I also have tinnitus, which essentially means I hear a high-pitched ringing noise all of the time. Usually when I tell people about this they assume it must be incredibly annoying, but since it has always been there it just seems normal for me. I really only pay attention to it at night when I take out my hearing aids for bed.

Deaf movie parody "Clash of the Tinnitus" has a man in titans outfit holding his ear
and looking upset while a doctor looks at him with her hand over her mouth. 

My hearing loss was diagnosed when I went to kindergarten at age five. From there it was a brief stint of ASL and years of speech therapy so I could continue to be mainstreamed. Think years of carefully memorizing mouth/lip/tongue positions for sounds you can't distinguish at all, lots of picture cards, and occasional playroom breaks with the severe intellectually disabled kid in the same time slot. Luckily for me I rock at lip reading so I did well in school. I do wish they hadn't dropped the ASL though, since I remember it being way easier than spoken English.

Speech therapy cartoon showing Yoda trying to read "I have an apple" and instead saying "An apple I have."

Basically, a full day of having to hear is exhausting. To cope with it, I've steered myself into jobs with no phone use and few coworkers to minimize the amount of hearing I need to do. I also avoid parties, bars, and other noisy situations because my ability to hear there is essentially zero so there's no point in going. I do best one-on-one in a quiet environment where I can lipread. When I was younger I assumed I was an introvert since socializing is exhausting but now I think that was hearing loss rather than introversion. I keep intending to learn ASL - maybe this summer?

White lips that say "Will it help if I shout" on them in black letters. 

Anyway now you know about my hearing loss. I doubt it'll become a main thing in this blog but I'll probably post about it randomly from time to time.

Friends Don't Let Friends Skip Leg Day

Ok. While looking up leg exercises, I came across this meme:

Silhouette of a man lifting weights with very buff arms and skinny legs,
text says "friends don't let friends skip leg day."

I find it problematic in ways it was obviously not intended. What the meme is trying to say is that you shouldn't neglect half of your body when you're doing your workout, which is apparently something a lot of people do.

Here's why I dislike it, in addition to the fact that it's usually written on a picture of an actual person and I don't condone mocking people for their appearances: it's ableist. Lots of folks who use crutches or wheelchairs have upper bodies that are more muscular than their lower bodies. My brother has cerebral palsy and he has this body shape. This meme makes fun of his body. For the record, my brother also thinks I'm over thinking this. He's also a much more get-along kind of guy than me. I mean, only one of us went through a stridently militant vegan phase (*shrug*). At any rate, I think this meme does a disservice to people with this body type and it could possibly make them feel bad about their bodies.

So for the record, I'm letting you know - there is NOTHING wrong with this body shape. You can be sexy and have this body shape. You can be a total badass and have this body shape. And in case you don't believe me, let me give you a few examples of rather awesome people who will be skipping leg day...

Oracle, from Batman. She is a paraplegic martial artist who is also a librarian and computer genius. What's not to like about this character? She kicks some serious ass:

Oracle comic fighting a super villain.

In real life we have Dergin Tokmak, a paraplegic dancer who was in Cirque du Soleil:

Dergin Tokmak, shirtless, doing a handstand on his crutches. 

Back to fiction we have Professor X, leader of the X-Men. He's a telepathic paraplegic super-genious:

Cover of X-Men comic with Professor X in his wheelchair.

And back to real life again there's Angela Rockwood, a paraplegic and a professional model and actress:

Angela Rockwood sitting in her chair looking good.

There's also Colt Wynn, a paraplegic and professional bodybuilder who I find hot as hell:

Colt Wynn in his wheelchair looking sexy as usual.

There are lots of other awesome disabled folks (FDR, Frida Kahlo, RJ Mitte, Sudha Chandran, Josh Blue, and my brother come to mind) who have this body type. So basically, friends don't let friends skip leg day. But they also don't let ableist memes pass by without comment.

Can you think of some more people I've missed who should be on this list? It would be awesome to fill the comments section with examples of kickass people who will be skipping leg day.