Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, Or Blind Characters

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

 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.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A Deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between Deaf characters

“The Month I Suddenly Went Deaf”

What It’s Like Going Deaf In Your Thirties

9 Women Share What It Feels Like To Lose Your Hearing

What It’s Like Being a Deaf Teenager (video)

Parenting With Sign Language (video)

Deaf Teen Talks About Losing His Hearing To Meningitis (video)

Things Not To Say To A Deaf Person (video)

Deaf Kids Shining in High School (video)

I recently discovered the youtube channel of the amazing Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, a vintage-loving, lesbian, happily married queen, who talks about her deafness in many of her videos.  I can’t recommend her enough.

Black Deaf Culture Through the Lens of Black Deaf History

Black Deaf History

Video: How to Sign in BASL (Black American Sign Language)

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

Things Not To Say To A Blind Person (video)

What It’s Like to Go Blind (video)

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

As does Molly Burke, “a typical sushi and makeup loving millennial girl who just so happens to be blind.”

And Alyssa Irene, who talks about her experience going blind and life as a blind person.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Deaf and Blind:  Being Me (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

Instead of saying sex isn't real, we really need to put emphasis not only on the spectrum of sex and gender, but on the following:

Human beings have been falsely classified as sexually dymorphic for ages

Approximately 4% of the population is documented intersex and that's just what we have measured. Many people are estimated to be undiagnosed and undetected intersex, because research is coming to find that determining intersexedness or sex morph in humans is far more complicated than looking at the outside and checking chromosomes.

Doctors in majority still actively avoid, omit, and coerce in relation to intersex variations. They also tend to manipulate data to minimize our proportional population size. They will often intentionally avoid, ignore, or deny a person who believes they may be intersex, dismissing it as "rare and detected at birth".

Intersex people are as common as if not more common than people with red hair and green eyes. That is only while acknowledging what is currently measured. Many people have lived entire lives and been found to be intersex posthumously, even when they never knew it in life.

Intersex people have always been here, worldwide cultures pre-Colonialism acknowledged this openly in a variety of ways. Colonial societies also still had intersex people and there is documentation of this fact in multiple convergent cases.

Intersex conditions are not inherently disabling, and even if they have disabling properties they are not "defects" but a variation of human experience.

Intersex people are the masters of our own autonomy and physiology. We make the decisions about whether we alter ourselves or not. Nobody else.

Intersex people are not tokens to further trans liberation, not without mutual aid and real solidarity. While bringing us up to prove that binary sex is a sham IS true, more people need to actually talk about our oppression instead of leaving it at "they exist".

More intersex people are fertile/virile and have children than you think. like. Way more.

You, yes YOU could potentially be intersex and never know it. It's up to you whether that seems likely and is worth pursuing the research and diagnostics needed to ascertain the truth. Intersexedness is not always visible or superficially detectable by the viewer of an individual. Not all intersex people look androgynous or have clearly ambiguous genitalia.

A variation of genitals, gonads, hormones, chromosomes, and similar sex characteristic properties are not innate biological or physiological dysfunction. These represent variations on the scale of natural human sex variations.

There is no default binary of human morphism or sex anatomy.

Intersex people are whole at birth. We must not be altered until we are of age to give informed consent on matters of our autonomous pubarche.

Not all intersex people are detected in childhood.

There are countless ways to be intersex, and we are learning more about human sex variations every day.

The phrase "Disorder of sexual development/DSD" has served a purpose at times, but is largely used in medicalist views of intersex people. These facts coexist. This pathological view perpetuates the idea of these things being inherently defective, and is used by doctors in the pursuit of minimizing and erasing our existence. I would not fault an intersex person for calling their condition a DSD, but dyadics should be wary of how they use this phrasing, or avoid it entirely. Not all intersex people like to refer to their intersex condition as a disorder.

The claims that PCOS can't ever present as "really" intersex are largely claims that come from dyadic bias or medicalism, not from the intersex community. PCOS and NCAH (which is undeniably an intersex condition) are so similar that most late diagnosed NCAH intersex people like myself mistakenly believe or are told they have PCOS first. PCOS that presents with hyperandrogenism is intersex, if the individual wishes to seek such community.

Intersex people would net gain more from normalizing that there's more of us than we realize, and that we are whole as we are born, than we gain from the view of our existence as a pitiable and incomplete disorderly state.

Intersex people choose our own identity and gender, like anyone else.

Intersex people benefit from the normalization of varsexedness, which is why we must show solidarity with the trans community, and the trans community should show the same in return.

If you do not have reason to believe you are intersex but identify with the alignment of intersexedness, you may identify as varsex! Intersex conditions are congenital and one cannot "become intersex", whereas varsexedness is an umbrella that covers intersex people and trans people of various sexes together.

Humans are sexually omnimorphic. Say it with your chest and support intersex people. Happy pride month y'all.

💛💜💛

Want to learn something new in 2022??

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

Russian (pretty good cyrillic guide!)

hey, i need to fix up a hole in a (wool/ knit) sweater. the lady at the store i bought the right sort of yarn for it at said i needed to secure/ „catch“ all the stitches/ loose parts so the sweater doesn‘t end up unravelling over time. can you explain how best to do this or do you have any resources for it? i feel very overwhelmed and i don‘t wanna ruin my sweater by doing it wrong

Mending holes in knit fabric

The thing about knitting is that it's basically a collection of loops. If one loop gives in, the rest of the fabric risks unravelling, too. That's why this person mentioned "catching" all the stitches: if you miss one, your sweater might continue unravelling.

(Image source) [ID: a woven fabric (plain weave) versus a knit fabric (stockinette stitch).]

That probably sounds super stressful, but don't worry! There's different ways to fix knitting. Some are easier, and some are harder. Let's take a look.

Swiss darning:

The cleanest and most invisible fix is Swiss darning. This type of mending requires you to thread through the loops of the hole, and use those to knit new stitches. Swiss darning is probably the trickiest way to mend knits mentioned in this post.

If you've got a really small hole, you could also try duplicate stitch which doesn't require threading. This technique can also be used to reinforce worn-out spots in knitting, or even for embroidery.

Check out Patty Lyons' written guides on Swiss darning and duplicate stitch to see how it's done, or these YouTube guides on Swiss darning and duplicate stitch by Heather Storta and Stuart Moores Textiles.

(Image source) [ID: a black and white image showing how to do Swiss darning on a piece of knitting with a hole in it. Threads have been threaded between the loose knit loops, and a tapestry needle is weaving new knit stitches along these threads. Text: "Fig.3."]

(Image source) [ID: example of a hole in a gray piece of knitting that's been mended with the duplicate stitch. Six stitches have been mended with yellow yarn. Text: "Ta Da, a brand new section of knitting with no bulk - Swiss Darning Magic. PattyLyons."]

Woven darning:

If you don't feel like recreating knit stitches, you can also do woven darning on knit fabrics. The technique's the same as you would use for a woven item.

Note that a darned patch like this is not stretchy, unlike its surrounding fabric. You can somewhat remediate this by darning diagonally, but it'll still be less stretchy than actual knit fabric.

(Image source) [ID: close-up on a hole in a swatch of beige knitting that's been patched with a woven darn in light blue, dark blue, red, pink, and yellow yarn.]

(Image source) [ID: vintage instructions on how to darn a hole.]

Knitting over the hole:

You can also knit a patch and sew it across the hole, or pick up stitches around your hole and knit over it. Don't forget to finish off the loose stitches at the edge of the hole on the wrong side. Loop your yarn through them, making sure to catch them all, and secure them.

This YouTube video by VeryPink Knits will show you how to knit across a hole. If you're more of a written tutorial person, take a look at this Berroco article on knit patches.

(Image source) [ID: a gray sweater on which a red knit patch has been added to cover up a hole.]

Crochet:

If you're an avid crocheter, crochet's also an option to fix holes in knits.

(Image source) [ID: close-up on the shoulder of a blue knit sleeveless top with a hood. A hole has been mended with crochet, using red and brown thread. Text: "Cucicucicoo".]

Picking up dropped stitches:

If just one line of stitches was damaged, you could try picking up the dropped stitches with a crochet hook.

Fabric patches:

If you'd rather not knit or crochet anything, you could just sew a patch over the hole. First sew around the hole to stabilise the stitches, then sew a piece of fabric over or under the hole. Sandwich the hole between two pieces of fabric for extra security.

Use stretchy fabric and a stitch that allows for stretch to retain the stretch of the original knit material. If you do use a patch of woven fabric, note that this will effect the material's stretchiness.

(Image source) [ID: close-up on the neckline of a gray knit sweater. A hole has been mended with a green patch of fabric and sashiko stitching in yellow thread.]

(Image source) [ID: close-up on the elbow of a black and white knit sweater. The elbow has been patched with a heart-shaped scrap of red fabric with white polkadots and sewn on with a whipstitch.]

Conclusion:

This list is not exhaustive, but will give you some ideas on how to get started. You can go as visible or invisible as you want with these techniques.

Remember to use a yarn that's similar in weight and fibre as your sweater! If you darn a polyester sweater with real wool, you risk the wool patch felting in the wash, for example.

sometimes I get so angry thinking about ‘The Imitation Game’ that I have to go in a little ‘upset big tantrum room’ in my head for a calm down

like, Benisnatch Cumberque played the same character he’s always plays as an asshole genius and we were all supposed to be okay with it, but it’s basically character slander

at different parts of the movie Turing is described as ‘arrogant, “inhuman,” “narcissistic,” and even “a monster,” in the film he goes against those around him and is shown to periodically ignore and belittle his colleagues

And. I. Am. So. Angry.

Alan Turing was described by his friends and people that knew him as “intensely shy and kindly”, he was said to “inspire loyalty and affection among those who appreciated his unusual gifts” and was “unfailingly generous with his time and expertise, especially toward younger recruits”

He was kind, he was kind, HE WAS KIND, he was kind

he was kind and geeky and awkward and gay, I don’t care if the whole of society doesn’t find that compelling, I don’t care if we don’t value kindness as an attribute in men, he deserved to be loved and respected as he was, not as we wish he was

I am so sorry Alan Turing, I am so sorry your story was not told with care and thoughtfulness, I am so sorry you didn’t get to be shown to be deeply in love with the men you loved, I am sorry your great and terrible tragedy was never unfolded as a kind and brilliant man abused by a horrible homophobic system

You are a hero that turned the tides of history like no other and I am so sorry