4 ms·

This hits home for me and my experiences. People often believe what they see and first impressions are strong. I seem like a perfectly functional hearing perso

This hits home for me and my experiences. People often believe what they see and first impressions are strong. I seem like a perfectly functional hearing person 97% of the time, but the 3% of the time when I can't cover the gap, people tend to react with incredulity because they can't believe I have an actual disability. Some days I just don't want to deal with it because it's exhausting. I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The best approach I've found is to be up-front from the start about my deafness and then to just "lie" about not being able to hear periodically to reinforce the "he's got a hearing problem" memory. In the past, I used to try to be explicit and say things like "I'm sorry, but the air conditioning or something is droning and I can't hear you well," but that generally derails as people try to explain my own hearing to me with things like "that's so quiet, how it is louder than me" or "if you can hear THAT you should be able to hear me," etc.

rosser 8y ago
> I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.
- 1996 8y ago
  The amount of complaining and self indulgence and SJW-coded keywords like "emotional labour" are suprisingly high for HN. Maybe I'm callous, but more often I see people here bickering about how sick people/minorities/whatever just can't stop complaining and must secretly enjoy to be victims - yet when it's time to talk about Asperger and the like, suddenly "woe-is-me" is fine! I think I will never fully understand how this very fine veneer of introspection works.
  - rosser 8y ago
    It means that, despite being the one with the brain that processes human emotion and social cues radically less efficiently than other people, I'm the one who, e.g., has to explain to the "emotionally competent" not to rageface at me for not understanding (or, more likely, even perceiving) the cues they probably aren't even aware they're emitting. Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.) How about, "It's fucking hard to have a brain that the overwhelming majority of people fail utterly to understand, recognize, or allow for in their behavior; who, more often than not, act like I'm the one malingering, or attention-seeking, or whatever; and that it is the utter antithesis of 'self-indulgence' to be piqued by that." If you saw "crying victim" in my comment, you must have been looking for it, because I'm damned sure there wasn't any when I wrote it. I was offering a token voice of solidarity to someone who thinks it's bullshit that he should have to justify how his own hearing works to people. Because it is.
    - 1996 8y ago
      I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. The remark was more general, and directed at the overall response to the topic. However, your comment stood out by the use of the word "emotional labour". Whether you like it or not, some words are associated with concepts. It is like using some shibboleth, or lingo words. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So it stands out quite a lot when it's not the case. It's even quite the opposite: everyone seem support something in some specific case that apply to them (Asperger, Autism) while they strongly oppose that when it doesn't apply to them. I call this a fine veneer of introspection, because I fear it translates to an impossibility of analyzing other people concerns when they are deemed not directly applicable. A less benevolent interpretation would be calling that egotism.
      - bravura 8y ago
        I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. You literally replied to their comment. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". It's name-calling, so yeah. For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So I see what you're saying, because a lot of people use this term in political ways. But I think politics aside, it's a pretty important psychological and cultural concept. I don't know if there's a better term for it that doesn't feel politically coded. Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe read over my thoughts and let me know what you think. Basically, there are many things people do to keep society polite and orderly. In most cases, for most people, being polite is just a normal part of doing business with the world. But just imagine---for the sake of argument---that you have an obvious physical deformity, and strangers constantly stop and make you feel weird in a way that is not really socially acceptable. Yet you are expected constantly to maintain the social order and respond to these gawking and obtrusive strangers in a polite way. Wouldn't that be a little exhausting? Particularly if you were having a shitty day, and weren't feeling particularly polite? This is the phenomenon people are talking about when they use the term "emotional labor". It means that people are being shitty to you, but they don't understand that, so for that reason it would be impolite for you to point out they're being shitty to you, so you just eat shit and move on with your life. We could call this "politeness", but that terms elides the nuance that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to be polite and maintain social order all the time.
candiodari 8y ago
I'm not even sure what I've got. I can hear very well. With enough focus I can follow people and animals around at pretty sizeable distances. I practice that. Or perhaps I should say I enjoy doing that, in the dark in the small pieces of forest that still remain where I live. I can easily follow a conversation from 30 meters distance, with sufficient focus. But I cannot process, and sometimes not focus on multiple people talking, even when they're not talking through one another. I can tell you a lot generally about their speech, just not what it says. Where they're standing, tone of voice, are they moving, what their intentions are. But if there are 2 conversations in earshot of me I cannot tell you what anybody is saying even if they're shouting to me. If 3 people are standing around and talking I can only participate if I totally ignore one of them and just blindly shut them out, whatever they're saying. Sometimes it gets worse and even with little disturbance I just cannot tell anymore what people are saying to me. People don't understand. In a 1:1 conversation I'm warm, open, attentive and so on. In a 3 way or more conversation, I'm cold, absent, distracted, annoying (because: very bored) ... Worse, often suddenly, from their perspective, I no longer understand them. I've learned to just hide this, and guess, and find some other excuse to turn the conversation back into a 1:1 conversation.
- joker3 8y ago
  That sounds like auditory processing disorder.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Reading it, it seems not to fit very well. I can process speech just fine, I just don't seem to be able to switch from one person to another without a long time to make it happen.

rosser 8y ago

> I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.

1996 8y ago
The amount of complaining and self indulgence and SJW-coded keywords like "emotional labour" are suprisingly high for HN. Maybe I'm callous, but more often I see people here bickering about how sick people/minorities/whatever just can't stop complaining and must secretly enjoy to be victims - yet when it's time to talk about Asperger and the like, suddenly "woe-is-me" is fine! I think I will never fully understand how this very fine veneer of introspection works.
- rosser 8y ago
  It means that, despite being the one with the brain that processes human emotion and social cues radically less efficiently than other people, I'm the one who, e.g., has to explain to the "emotionally competent" not to rageface at me for not understanding (or, more likely, even perceiving) the cues they probably aren't even aware they're emitting. Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.) How about, "It's fucking hard to have a brain that the overwhelming majority of people fail utterly to understand, recognize, or allow for in their behavior; who, more often than not, act like I'm the one malingering, or attention-seeking, or whatever; and that it is the utter antithesis of 'self-indulgence' to be piqued by that." If you saw "crying victim" in my comment, you must have been looking for it, because I'm damned sure there wasn't any when I wrote it. I was offering a token voice of solidarity to someone who thinks it's bullshit that he should have to justify how his own hearing works to people. Because it is.
  - 1996 8y ago
    I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. The remark was more general, and directed at the overall response to the topic. However, your comment stood out by the use of the word "emotional labour". Whether you like it or not, some words are associated with concepts. It is like using some shibboleth, or lingo words. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So it stands out quite a lot when it's not the case. It's even quite the opposite: everyone seem support something in some specific case that apply to them (Asperger, Autism) while they strongly oppose that when it doesn't apply to them. I call this a fine veneer of introspection, because I fear it translates to an impossibility of analyzing other people concerns when they are deemed not directly applicable. A less benevolent interpretation would be calling that egotism.
    - bravura 8y ago
      I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. You literally replied to their comment. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". It's name-calling, so yeah. For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So I see what you're saying, because a lot of people use this term in political ways. But I think politics aside, it's a pretty important psychological and cultural concept. I don't know if there's a better term for it that doesn't feel politically coded. Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe read over my thoughts and let me know what you think. Basically, there are many things people do to keep society polite and orderly. In most cases, for most people, being polite is just a normal part of doing business with the world. But just imagine---for the sake of argument---that you have an obvious physical deformity, and strangers constantly stop and make you feel weird in a way that is not really socially acceptable. Yet you are expected constantly to maintain the social order and respond to these gawking and obtrusive strangers in a polite way. Wouldn't that be a little exhausting? Particularly if you were having a shitty day, and weren't feeling particularly polite? This is the phenomenon people are talking about when they use the term "emotional labor". It means that people are being shitty to you, but they don't understand that, so for that reason it would be impolite for you to point out they're being shitty to you, so you just eat shit and move on with your life. We could call this "politeness", but that terms elides the nuance that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to be polite and maintain social order all the time.

candiodari 8y ago

I'm not even sure what I've got. I can hear very well. With enough focus I can follow people and animals around at pretty sizeable distances. I practice that. Or perhaps I should say I enjoy doing that, in the dark in the small pieces of forest that still remain where I live. I can easily follow a conversation from 30 meters distance, with sufficient focus. But I cannot process, and sometimes not focus on multiple people talking, even when they're not talking through one another. I can tell you a lot generally about their speech, just not what it says. Where they're standing, tone of voice, are they moving, what their intentions are. But if there are 2 conversations in earshot of me I cannot tell you what anybody is saying even if they're shouting to me. If 3 people are standing around and talking I can only participate if I totally ignore one of them and just blindly shut them out, whatever they're saying. Sometimes it gets worse and even with little disturbance I just cannot tell anymore what people are saying to me. People don't understand. In a 1:1 conversation I'm warm, open, attentive and so on. In a 3 way or more conversation, I'm cold, absent, distracted, annoying (because: very bored) ... Worse, often suddenly, from their perspective, I no longer understand them. I've learned to just hide this, and guess, and find some other excuse to turn the conversation back into a 1:1 conversation.

joker3 8y ago
That sounds like auditory processing disorder.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Reading it, it seems not to fit very well. I can process speech just fine, I just don't seem to be able to switch from one person to another without a long time to make it happen.