Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.
As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.
this one time I ran a red light on mistake and I didn’t notice it was red until it was too late so I just ran the light screeching like an angry pterodactyl the entire time
a cop was at the intersection so he pulled me over and when he came up to my window he was wheezing cause he was laughing so hard and he said
“ok so i know you ran a red light and that’s really bad and you should never do it again but i’m not gonna give you a ticket cause that was the funniest thing i’ve ever seen and my partner can’t get out of the car cause he’s laughing so hard he’s about to pee himself”
i forgot that i’d had my window open when i ran the red light and the cop told me that all he heard from my car was this really high-pitched “screeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
and that’s how i got out of getting a ticket for running a red light
People always joke about the Marauders thinking a stray dog is really Sirius but imagine that the Marauders are exploring the Forbidden Forest and they split up and all of a sudden, a deer comes over and nudges Sirius. And he’s just like, “Oh, hey, mate.” And the deer just nudges him again. And they finally decide to head back to the castle but the deer is having none of it so they literally have to drag him out of the forest. Only they’re panicking because he’s not changing back and come on James, this isn’t funny, you know we can’t get caught. And so they start to worry that something is wrong and he can’t change back. And so they smuggle him back into the castle. And by smuggle I mean, they throw the Invisibility Cloak over him but since he’s a deer, it doesn’t really cover much. And that’s the story of how Professor McGonagall looks up and sees three boys shoving a headless deer past her doorway and she promptly decides that it’s not her problem.
So they get the deer to the common room and it’s only then that they begin to speculate that maybe this deer isn’t James after all. But the deer just keeps doing really vague things that could be James. And they spend the rest of the afternoon having to decide if this really is James and if it is, if he’s messing with them or if something’s wrong, and if he’s not, did they just kidnap a deer?
I often see the suggestion that “lesbians/gay men should analyze their aversion to penises/vaginas”. Now, I am a straight woman (and conveniently never told to analyze that) so maybe this is different for gay people. But here is my experience with attraction to men.
I do not have an aversion to vaginas. I am not repulsed by them, I do not recoil from female bodies. I have one myself after all, so they don’t disgust me. But I also have no interest in them. My attraction to mens bodies is active, whereas my feelings toward womens bodies are neutral.
I often find women beautiful. But in the same way that I find sunsets, or flowers, or exotic birds beautiful. I don’t mean to compare women to objects or animals, but my point is many things in life are aesthetically pleasing. And without having to explain that women are, of course, worth more than their beauty, there is no denying the fact that some women are beautiful, and I can recognize that.
With men, however, it is different. When I see a man that I feel attraction towards, it doesn’t feel like just looking at something beautiful. I want to engage with men I find attractive, romantically and sexually. I WANT to. It’s not about what I could realistically tolerate. I actually have sexual urges when it comes to men.
I could, for example, probably tolerate sex with a woman. The key word is tolerate. I can’t say for sure that it would traumatize me. But WHY should I? What benefit would I have in doing something that doesn’t interest me, doesn’t exite me and doesn’t give me any sort of valuable, life saving resource? What would be the point? If I neither want it nor need it, why should I have it? If neither me nor anyone else will be hurt by it, why? Tell me why I should examine, analyse and expand something that really, truly, does not matter to anyone but myself.
Now, like I mentioned, I am a heterosexual woman. I have never been specifically asked to analyse why I don’t feel attraction to the same sex outside of vauge posts that go “it is wrong to only be interested in one kind of genitals” (which technically applies to me as well, but we all know they mean gay people) but I see it all the time with mostly lesbians.
They are asked, nay, ordered, to think about why they love women only. They are told they can overcome their aversion to penis with therapy and love. And here is the part where I want to tread carefully, as I would never dream of trying to speak for lesbian women.
Many lesbian friends in real life and mutuals on tumblr say they hate dick. They find it disgusting, revolting, they wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. I believe them. Who am I to tell them what they think about the opposite sex. But what it all comes down to for me is this:
If there is a lesbian, or a few, who, like me, have no aversion to any specific genitals. They are neutral. Penis doesn’t interest them, but doesn’t offend them either. But what she is is attracted to female bodies, including vaginas. There is nothing wrong with that. But according to genderists, everything is wrong with that. Women need reasons why they DON’T want men. No one cares that what they DO want, is women.
This is where Trans Rights Activism becomes so sinister to me. By pushing this rhetoric that lesbians should learn to take dick (but never trans lesbians) they prove that they don’t think womens attraction is real. They think women wanting to have sex with women is because they don’t want to have sex with men. It’s like they see it a some sort of spiteful act against them, when in reality, men never enter the picture. Ask yourself, if a man has sex with a woman, is it to spite other men? He hates men and wants some sort of revenge on them? No. A man is allowed attraction to women. He doesn’t need a reason for NOT wanting to have sex with men. We understand that he WANTS. But women don’t want. Women are for men to want. They don’t need desires of their own.
With this mindset it’s not hard to understand why straight male people are offended and confused by female homosexuality. She doesn’t just stop at not having sex with men, she actively sleeps with other women, who also do not stop at just ignoring men. Since women have no desire of their own in their mind, it must have something to do with men, right?
You may ask yourself what this has to do with Trans Rights Activism, so lend me your ear: By telling lesbians they can learn to tolerate dick, you are telling them that what they want does not matter. You focus on them overcoming what they don’t want, and you never give them the option of having desire.
Lesbians WANT women. Weather or not they’re disgusted by male bodies doesn’t matter. It isn’t about if they have trauma or any other “excuse” to avoid male genitals, it’s about what they want. I wouldn’t have sex with a woman. Not because I hate them, or find them disgusting, or ugly, or repulsive. I just don’t want to. No one questions that. So why aren’t lesbians (and many times gay men) given that freedom? The freedom to desire, without it having to do with hate for anything else.
I think we all know why.
“by telling lesbians they can learn to tolerate dick, you are telling them that what they want does not matter.”
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