I’ve noticed an uptick in derision directed toward the disabled. Well, it was directed toward anyone who wasn’t a perfect physical specimen which, in some people’s eyes, is disabled. This is the logical over-correction to years of DEI, mushy men, and forced equity.
But once again, the over-correction is wrong.
About two years ago I stopped listening to many of the conservative talking heads. The women were blonde hotties with a year’s worth of makeup and the men seemed to idolize extreme complementarianism as long as the women folk were packaged in 36-27-38 or some similar ratio. They’d show photos of screaming women with pink hair and weird glasses who were overweight and angry and paint a false dichotomy and anyone who didn’t fit the box need not apply.
I mean, they’ll still take my vote on election day but otherwise take your fat ass and stay home. That’s the vibe from too many conservative talking heads. We old, saggy, round genuinely conservative ladies emerge every four years to do our ballot box duty and then crawl back to our cattery to sit silently as the beautiful conservative people parade around in red clothes of some glittery sort.
But the weird fixation on deaf sign language interpreters, popping up on the platform of two prominent conservative male talking heads (Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec) at the same time, was the last straw.
For the record, both signers in the videos these two know-it-all ignorant chuckleheads referenced were doing a very good job, evidence of years of hard work.
My sign language is like my Spanish: my name, help, where’s the bathroom. But I’ve been around sign language growing up and in Bible college (where deaf culture ministries is a thing), took classes, and it looked legitimate. I recognized some of the signs. Other commenters who worked as signers or had family members they signed with concurred: these interpreters were doing an excellent job.
But, you know, these two Big Boys were annoyed by the presence of the weird signers, their very presence reminding us of imperfection, the very hint that we ain’t all buff beefheads ready to start the next round of the Crusades with hot beauties waving hankies and fresh baked bread from the turrets as they ride of into the sunset, but instead, part of a fallen world where every human is in different stages of their physical body failing them.
Posobiec generally rubs me the wrong way, anyway, serving as a frustrating news source due to his fixation with his assurance that he is the most interesting person on the planet and we need to know what movie he is watching mixed with heavy doses of other self-promotion with the periodic actual blip of news, but this sign language thing with him and Kirk is basically two dumbasses who don’t know much about deaf culture who have, instead, so believed their own PR about how awesome they are and gotten so fixated on banishing woke culture that they’re slicing and dicing things that have nothing to do with woke culture. Be careful where you swing that blade, boys. You might cut off something important.
I grew up north of Devils Lake, North Dakota, which is where the State School for the Deaf is located. This means we frequently were exposed to deaf culture in town, at the stores, at basketball games, and even in some classes. When we played the school in basketball, obviously they couldn’t hear the ref whistle so there were colored towels that the coaches waved and pounding on the floor so they could feel the vibrations. More than once we were told not to lead cheers that got the crowd to stomping.
Drivers ed sticks out, though, because it’s where I finally understood the facial expressions that went with the signing. Two high school guys sat one row up and a just to the right of me during drivers ed classroom instruction. They were deaf and had a sign language interpreter up front next to the instructor.
I wasn’t such a fainty dainty that I was distracted by the weird sign language, but hearing poor Jack Posobiec and little Charlie Kirk whining about how distracting it is to see the sign language is almost comical, given that they are such manly men so tough and masculine and not mushy soft woke dudes. That beautiful gestural language is just so hard to be around, how dare we have to put up with it?
Anyway, we were just used to the sign language stuff. Sure, we were stupid high school kids and made mean jokes sometimes because that’s what stupid high school kids do. THAT’S WHAT HIGH SCHOOL KIDS DO, NOT GROWN ASS MEN WITH A NATIONAL PLATFORM.
In particular, though, I remember the driving instructor showing a video about various driving things—don’t crash, car crashes are bad, stop at stop signs or you’ll crash, which is bad—and while it had closed captions on the bottom, the woman still did the sign language. What woke mind virus had taken over that 1988 classroom?! What devious Soros venture was it?! What tax dollars were being wasted?! What evil plot was underway?!
Since there wasn’t much for the internet and no social media and Charlie Kirk was probably still in diapers, there was no uproar because people weren’t out of their frickin’ heads like they are today.
And I watched those two deaf students. They intently kept an eye on the interpreter. Their eyes would flicker once in a while over to the video when they saw her signing something important, but it was clear they didn’t seem to care about the closed captioning.
Why?
They needed to see her expressions to understand what she was signing.
Sign language mixes gestures and seemingly exaggerated facial expressions to help deliver tone and intent. We all know how people take our written words wrong, and so we try to use emoticons and other things to provide tonal context. Facial expressions are providing additional information.
“Just let them deaf people read the closed captions” or “AI can just generate the closed captions” is the same as “hey you hearing people you can listen to the automated monotone weather voice for the rest of your life, or just read all communication, and never hear the fluctuations and emotions that a human voice delivers and see how you enjoy existence.”
Imagine never having heard the English language.
Imagine trying to learn to read and write a language you’ve never been able to hear.
You’ve never heard the sounds that a human mouth can make. You’ve felt the vibrations of sound, you’ve felt how the sounds are made in someone else’s throat. You try to mimic it, maybe. But you are in silence, trying to be a part of a culture that communicates mostly through the written and spoken word. From my understanding, most of the deaf only read at a third to sixth grade level and prefer sign communication, not because they are stupid, but because they have to almost develop a subset of our spoken language in which the written word is based on sounds they’ll never hear.
It can be difficult for some who were born deaf to use closed captions as well as we can. Heck, when I listen to TV and see what’s scrolling by on the closed captions, I realize there are some people doing the captions that are terrible at their job and other times I can’t even keep up with the pace of the words flying across the screen.
There is an entire deaf culture we don’t understand, one that has formed around the fact that they live in silence, and it’s really rotten to say “just read the AI words and be happy with it because that’s good enough for you.”
Posobiec and Kirk, who have done some good things this past election cycle no doubt, sometimes like to rage bait, I think, maybe because they perceive themselves as being an edgy conservative in the political movement which means poking people and sparking outrage. Maybe they think they’re pretty funny and witty. But what I think is that for two men who claim to be Christians they sure open up opportunities for people to both hate Christians and also make nasty comments. Whatever crowd of people they have surrounded themselves with is one that is poisoning their mind into being mockers and they ought to read Psalm 1 a few thousand times and take a break from those people. Maybe a 100 years break.
Because in those two Telegram posts that I screenshotted, the comments were disgusting. Those two Christian men gave people permission to agree with them and do so in disgusting and petty ways.
There were the usual gross comments too common with conservatives about the weight and appearance of the woman involved.
Hint: whenever you see a smirking frog as an avatar, just block the person. Take my word for it. They have nothing to add.
Others accused the black woman of being “sarcastic” in her tone because her facial expressions were exaggerated. We of course have to do the “why waste tax dollars paying for the sign language people.” And then, as expected, angry “conservatives” will devolve into ranting about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), with one commenter saying it “diminishes the comforts and the freedoms of many to coddle a few” because communication devices, wheelchair ramps, wide doors, and stability bars in the restroom so you can lift yourself up and down are SOOOOOOOO TROUBLESOME for these people who don’t need to use them. Yet.
I found Eric’s quote particularly rich. Having hearing aids has very little to do with being deaf, being born deaf, and deaf culture, but sure, when my knee hurts I can totally understand what it’s like for an amputee.
God forbid that someday Kirk and Posobiec, and these ignorant commenters, suddenly find themselves with a physical body that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to with eyes that don’t see or ears that don’t hear or knees that can’t carry them or hands that shake or a brain that has forgotten the last five minutes and a personality that’s completely changed. I wonder then if they will despise the ADA so much and be so flippant about the basic human decency of providing options so that disabled or injured people can be a part of society like God their Creator intended them to be.
At some point, this comment popped up.
I have to assume it’s a perfect joke, a mastery of language to make a witty point. If it isn’t, I don’t know what to do about America anymore.