You may have noticed that for some time now, my articles have been illustrated with paintings and that I have not posted any artist links in source. The simple reason is that they are mine. Finally from me with a little help, that of an AI: Midjourney. Midjouney is an AI that creates paintings from a sequence of words that you give it.
Here are some examples:
Ruined city
To use it is very simple, just go to this address:
Sign up with a discord account (a chat program) and start giving him instructions. There is a free demo and 2 subscription models to not be limited in the number of images generated. He ends up generating 4 images, from there you can ask him to start over, to launch variants of an image he gave you so that he comes up with 4 others approaching it or upscale one of the results.
I used it recently to illustrate my articles. It is an interesting tool for me because even if I like to draw and paint, the time that I will spend making the illustrations would be time that I will not spend writing. Until then I used google images but these are not necessarily copyright free and above all they are not original which is important to me. The other solution could have been to go through an outside artist but this has a cost that unfortunately I cannot afford, especially when trying to post one article to you per week.
Hey, but Nilsa, are the artists going to disappear?
The answer is no, for several reasons:
The sequence of words that we use is of paramount importance to generate the images and depending on what we choose, the result can be very different. Then we choose an image among 4 that we choose to modify or not from the AI. Those are already artistic choices.
The images generated sometimes have bugs and would often need to be retouched so that they are less shocking to the eye.
Headless gorilla
Finally I think it can be a great tool for all designers / painters. Midjourney is a great way to get inspired and I think the images generated will mainly serve as a base for repainting over them as we already do with photos in what is called photobashing .
There are no copyright issues: is such a creation the property of the artist?
That’s a delicate subject. Not being a lawyer specializing in intellectual property, I would not be able to say who owns the image generated by code which is the intellectual property of the developers. Is it their property or is the AI considered a mere tool and thus the ownership of the work produced belongs to the user of the AI?
I do not know enough about the law to be able to decide on the question but this one is very interesting. It would be necessary to search the CGU of Midjourney and I admit to you that I was a little lazy.
After when the artist repaints over the generated image, he appropriates the image and creates his own work and in this case the final rendering becomes his property. As in photobashing, if you have repainted and modified the image enough so that we do not recognize the original photo used then there are no copyright concerns.
I am not sponsored for this article if I tell you about it it’s just that I find this tool really magical.
I know it’s different from what I usually do, but I hope you enjoyed this article.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon.
There are articles that are more complicated to write than others and this one is one of them. However, it is a subject that I really want to talk to you about.
Sometimes I have thoughts on topics and these are topics that I find very interesting, exciting and about which I want to share my thoughts with you. Even if sometimes the subject is complicated, which gives me apprehension but it in no way affects my desire to share this with you.
This article talks about a rather sensitive subject on the internet, it is the subject of “Woke culture”
Woke culture, what is it?
The term “Woke” in English means “awakened” so awake to what? Awakened in fact to the social inequalities that constitute our world:
Race Inequalities;
gender inequalities;
Sexual Orientation Inequalities;
Etc…
And the term “Woke”, it makes sense because I don’t know if you have already experienced it, but when we realize a systemic inequality (the patriarchal system for example), when we make the effort to realize this, here I am talking above all about certain men because generally, women have a little less need to make the effort than them, when we realize this, we realize that it is omnipresent. It’s in all our relationships, it’s in everything we see, everything we consume, everything we look at, etc…
It’s a bit like the red pill in Matrix.
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
In Matrix Morpheus offers Neo two pills :
A blue one that represents the reality he has always known that will remain his reality
A red that represents the truth.
But by taking the red pill there is no going back. Well, the Woke culture is a bit like that. Hence a phrase that comes up often: “Check your privileges”
Be aware of your privileges because there are other individuals who do not have them and therefore you are not subject to the same inequalities.
Exemple:
A white, straight, cisgender man (meaning his felt gender is the same as he was assigned at birth) and well by that logic, he’s advantaged by what he’s wrong with. experience systemic racism, systemic sexism, homophobia or transphobia.
So there are a lot of white, straight, cisgender men who feel a little bit attacked when we say that. This is something I see daily on social media. And say:
“Hey wait, just because I’m a white, straight, cisgender male doesn’t mean I’m living my best life and everything is fine. »
So of course! That’s not the point, but, a white, straight, cisgender man can have a shitty life, but it won’t be the fault of the system that dwells on his skin color, on his gender or his sexual orientation.
Recently politicians wanted to talk about it. They fear “Wokism”. That’s a pretty pejorative way of talking about “Woke Culture” and given what I just said one might well wonder what exactly they fear.
In fact what they fear is rather and mainly the “Cancel culture”. It’s likened to “Woke culture”. Sometimes when I read articles or journalists talk about it, often they overlap.
La « Cancel culture » vous en avez surement déjà entendu parler. C’est le fait de « Cancel », d’annuler ou plutôt ici de Boycotter une personne ou une œuvre parce qu’il ou elle a fait quelque chose que l’on juge inacceptable.
As explained in the Contrapoint video:
Someone is suspected of doing something wrong => It becomes: Someone did something wrong.
Presumption of guilt when there is no evidence.
Someone did something wrong => It becomes: This person is a bad person.
Abstraction and what Contrapoint calls “essentialism”
The action of the person becomes his very essence.
In a society where justice is based on the presumption of innocence, it hinders this “Cancel culture”, but we can also understand that people who have difficulty finding spaces for expression, face one of the only things that they can do:
Boycott or incite to boycott.
Besides, when it’s things or people who are “cancel”, often it doesn’t go to court or if it goes to court, justice has shown itself in a certain way to be disappointing and when I speak of justice, I am also speaking of popular justice.
Exemple:
At the time I started writing this article there was a Facebook post about an actor who is taken into custody following a rape complaint and seeing the comments under the post, it totally echoes what I just said about “Cancel culture”:
Personally given his popularity, he doesn’t have the profile of a rapist, I find it hard to believe
Strangely when you are known it often happens
Another girl who wants to be known
Ladies, ladies, you have to stop, you can also earn money by working. I know it’s time to accuse known men
Yes it sucks, and when it comes to the fact that it’s systemic, the comments that I chose you were posted by both men and women.
Well you know what? You might think that’s my problem with the “Woke Culture”, but no, it’s not even that! (Well not only)
No, what I want to talk about is:
The Place of Suffering in Woke Culture.
As we have seen, the “woke culture”, in its very ideology, there is the desire to correct inequalities and give strength to minorities. In this “culture”, having the status of “victim”, victim of inequalities, victim of injustices, victim of oppressions of the system, means that you will be protected. We will give you the floor, we will fight for you. This protection is the very principle of the “Woke culture”.
One of the manifestations of all this is the “Trigger warning”. In front of certain posts or tweets, there is “TW” followed by a word:
TW blood
TW aggression
TW rape
The principle is to warn people with traumas related to these themes from the start of the job or to allow them to use “blockers”. (A small program that hides for themselves messages containing certain words including “Trigger warning”.)
There is a real link between being a victim and the fact of suffering because suffering legitimizes the status of victim and the more you are a victim, the more, somewhere, you are legitimate in your fight.
Typically, anything I say there, woke-up, I’m not the most legitimate person to talk about, because I may be a deaf woman, but I’m perceived as hetero cisgender and white.
If one day I want to talk about racism or transphobia then according to this same logic I am illegitimate to talk about it because I am not a victim of it.
In this logic the more I suffer and the more I have my place in this “culture” there and we can even go further, the more I suffer and the more I am right or I am given reason. That’s why in “Woke Culture”, if you don’t care about the suffering a subject brings, your opinion doesn’t matter. There are only the people concerned that we want to hear. The advantage is that it leaves space for people who have not been heard from for too long and who can do so here in a secure way, that is to say spaces where they feel good and safe.
It is important to listen to the victims, because the system does not do it enough, but the thing is that sometimes a victim or a person who is part of a minority, they can be wrong, it happens. The main concern is that as we do not want to listen to others, we find ourselves in hyper-segmented mini-societies.
We are more at the stage where:
This person gives his opinion and we don’t care.
but at the stage where:
You talk, it offends me.
As I am offended, I am right so my suffering is instrumentalized by me or by a group and therefore the suffering becomes a weapon.
Why is it a problem?
This gives importance to suffering. We focus on it, we almost praise it and suddenly, instead of becoming the engine of change, sometimes it becomes the locomotive of unhappiness.
I am not saying no at the individual level because indeed it is up to everyone to manage their suffering as they see fit and I do not have to comment on that. I say NO on a societal scale, on a cultural scale.
If we absorb a culture that makes the more we suffer, the more we are right, we expose ourselves to abuses of victimization that harm the causes for which these same people are fighting. The problem of inequalities and oppression is that they become systemic and it is therefore the whole system that must look into it to find solutions.
I’m not sure you get there when the system is thrown out of the discussion and suffering is a key. Typically the fact that me on my own blog, I’m hesitant to talk about it because I wonder if I’m legit enough to do it, I think that’s something the fight has to move past.
After that it is highly possible that what we are experiencing right now is just a stadium. A necessary step. Because having the recognition of the status of victim by society is an important step and very surely necessary to initiate a change and define oneself differently.
I don’t really have any solutions to offer, it’s just an element that bothers me in the “Woke culture” because I feel like it’s a little bit toxic logic that can harm the general cause . Afterwards, it is not necessarily a state or a stage in which she locks herself up, but perhaps a stage in the system locks her up, precisely by not leaving enough room for the victims and therefore using suffering as a weapon is their way of reacting to it.
This weekend I visited my friend Tor who is a little depressed. He is a pastry chef and is preparing for a major pastry competition. When there are potentially good things to eat, we can count on my sister and me.
He lives a little far away now but, as a child for a long time, we were very close. It did me a lot of good to see him again even if sleeping at 2 on a sofa that had lived too much for 2 days with a snoring sister was not very restful!!!
So let’s get back to the main subject of this article: the food!!! Tor gave me the recipe for his kringlers and believe me, they are to die for.
Ok, Nilsa, but what are your “Kring things”?
Kringler or kringle in the singular are the Scandinavian version of the pretzel. Kringle comes from an Old Norse word meaning “ring” or “circle”. There are several varieties. They can be flaky or made from a yeast dough depending on the region and like pretzels, they can be sweet or savory.
How to make a sweet kringle:
Ingredients:
1 kg of fluid flour
200 ml milk (warm)
8 tablespoons of powdered sugar
4 eggs
100 g unsalted butter (well softened)
20 g dehydrated baker’s yeast
1 teaspoon of salt
Stuffing:
60g butter, melted
3 eggs
130 g almond powder
A handful of slivered almonds
5 tablespoons brown sugar
A few drops of vanilla extract
Chocolate chips (optional)
Toping:
2 egg yolks
Flaked almonds
Instructions
stuffing
Beat eggs and brown sugar until tripled in volume and stiff.
Add butter, vanilla extract and ground almonds.
Blend until smooth.
Dough
Mix yeast and sugar with lukewarm milk (heated to around 36 degrees) and set aside for 15 minutes.
In the bowl of the robot, and using the beater utensil, mix the flour and the butter until you obtain a sandy mixture.
Change utensil and insert dough hook.
Make a well in the center of the flour, and place the beaten eggs in it.
Start the robot at low speed and gradually pour in the milk, yeast, sugar mixture, then add the salt, gradually increase the intensity of the robot to medium/high, and knead until you obtain a non-sticky dough. and flexible.
From the moment the dough wraps around the hook, the kneading should last at least 5-7 minutes.
At the end of kneading, the dough must be homogeneous, wrap around the hook, and detach from the sides of the bowl.
Put the dough in a large container, cover it with a cloth and let it rest for 45 minutes in a warm place away from drafts. It should at least double in size.
On a floured work surface, degas the dough and divide it into 6 equal parts.
Roll out each part into a rectangle using a rolling pin.
Spread the stuffing and sprinkle with slivered almonds and chocolate chips.
Roll the dough on itself and form a sausage by tightening it well.
Cut the resulting roll in half lengthwise.
Braid the two pieces obtained together and give the braid a crown shape. Form this braid by tightening well.
Cover with a cloth and let rise for 30 minutes in a warm place.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C convection heat.
Brush with egg yolk, chocolate chips and slivered almonds then bake in a hot oven for 20 to 30 minutes.
Final words
I’m super happy with my comforting little weekend, both for Tor, for my snoring sister and for me.
I hope you like this recipe and that you will enjoy it as much as we do!
Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you Saturday for a new story!
Nyx disappeared from the frame right when I took the picture! >.<
Ok, that was 1 hours ago. I took Nyx out and took him to the dog park. There, a woman, her companion and their dog were about to enter. Of course Nyx was very happy to meet a new friend.
She was like wagging her tail and waiting for that dog to be unleashed, when that woman tried to release her dog. Nyx must had interrupted them, apparently this woman got angry at Nyx for no reason.
She tried to hit my dog and maybe his dog was growling at Nyx. I don’t really know since I can’t hear so I came in, to call Nyx over. Well, unfortunately, that woman threw coffee at me, BUT lucky I stood a bit further from her and didn’t get « coffee splashed » on me.
She seemed so angry and yelling at me for no reason then left, her partner was like ho no and tried to calm her down. She just simply left and I had no clue what was going on. Honestly, I never thought that someone would throw coffee at me… 🤣🥲
Yep, it happened just like that and then people came over to see if I was okay. I was like I’m all good peachy and utterly clueless about what had just happened recently. So bizzard lol
Nix didn’t do anything to that dog and all she wanted was to smell that dog’s ass & play with. What a day !
It was definitely not her day today at all but dude don’t throw hot coffee to someone else!
I hope everything goes well for you. Take care of yourself and your loved ones and see you soon.
Yesterday I went for a walk in the forest with grandmother, like every year, it is a tradition for us. The two of us spend a moment talking about anything and everything, taking pictures of the animals we may meet and picking up spruce branches to make our Christmas wreath that night. While pricking my fingers with the iron girls, I thought to myself: “Why not share with Danish traditions but lived within my small family?” So let’s go !
Julekrans
The Christmas wreath in most countries that I have seen in the movies is mostly made for decorating doors but not in Denmark. Here we braid our wreaths decorating it with red berries and traditionally 4 white candles. Once done it is tied with red ribbon above the table where we take our meals. Normally we make it one month in advance and we light a candle every Sunday before Christmas. At home we do it at the last minute just for decoration.
Julemærker
This morning I was mailed my little Christmas cards that I make myself for all the people I love. This is another of our traditions. We write handwritten cards to wish a Merry Christmas to our loved ones. They are usually decorated with a specially printed Christmas stamp for the occasion. Little with Mira (my big sister) and my big brother we accompany grandfather to go buy them. We took the opportunity to lick the pastry windows and we were entitled to a small cake that we tasted sitting on a bench, usually cinnamon rolls.
St. LUCIA
Earlier in the month, on the night of December 12 to 13, in schools we celebrate Saint Lucia. We elect a “Saint Lucia” who wears a crown with candles who leads a procession where we sing Christmas carols. I was never entitled to it, but my sister was once elected “Saint Lucia”. She was so beautiful and I was so proud!
False lumberjacks
The weekend before Christmas Grand-Pa and Papa turns into a lumberjack to bring us a pretty Christmas tree. Finally, this is the official version! Personally, knowing them and considering the cleanliness of their shoes and the pick-up, I suspect them to go buy it and then spend the rest of the day in a brewery.
Juleserie
Today and tomorrow is going to be time for Christmas Eve shopping, and I will start cooking with my assistant sister in front of our traditional Christmas series and overdosing on eggnog. In Denmark there are 2 big national channels which every year make a Christmas series on TV serving as a forward calendar for the children but my sister and I are crazy about it.
The Christmas market
On the evening of the 23rd we meet with my friends to admire the Christmas decorations in the city, we vote for the most beautiful shop windows and we eat chestnuts on the Christmas market.
The night the animals start talking
On the morning of the 24th, after a short visit to mom’s grave, we go to the park with a basket full of treats to give to the animals. It’s a superstition that on Christmas Eve animals can start talking so we bribe them to not speak badly about us. I’m deaf so I’ve never heard Nyx (my deaf guide dog and the love of my life) speak but I don’t know, it makes me feel a little bit like she can. Yes it’s silly but I want to believe it!
Don’t forget to feed the Nisse!
Elf known as Scandinavian dwarf, nisser, tomte, tonttu or tomtar.
Around 4 a.m., as we eat late in the evening, I usually prepare a little rice pudding to last until then. Then with Dora (Isadora, 7 years old) my little cousin and Søren, my little brother, we put a small cup in the attic to feed the Nisse in the house. The Nisse is a kind of little Leprechaun who brings happiness to the house all year round, but who can be a bit of a joker on Christmas Eve because of all the commotion. This small offering is made so that everything goes well during New Years Eve. The next day, believe it or not, but when the cup isn’t just empty it is at least always missing a few bites. (We have cats but I love to see them all amazed the next day coming down from the attic with the empty cup!)
Party Games
In the evening, after the guests had arrived when I was still hearing, we would go to mass. Not out of religion but more to have a reason to come together to sing Christmas fields. I never complained but after my accident everyone understood that it had become a very boring time for me so since then we’ve been playing board games making sure dad doesn’t cheat too much! At 10 p.m. we start to eat.
At the end of the meal we all sit down by the fireplace. Papa plays the violin and Grand-Pa tells us tales. Usually I rest my head on Mira’s shoulder and I’m mesmerized by the hand dancing on Daddy’s violin until I fall asleep.
The Christmas morning
The next day we usually both wake up, my sister and I hugging each other, covered in a plea that wasn’t there the day before. Lots of gift packages appeared under the tree. At this point I pull out some little buns I made ahead of time and cook breakfast, impatiently waiting for Søren and Dora to come downstairs. Best time of year for me.
Makeup test
I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into our little Christmas habits. If you have any little traditions from your country or just things you do in your family I would love to hear about them if you want to share them in the comments.
As we say here: “Hav en glædelig Jul” Have a Merry Christmas!
Today was party time at our Deaf Club. The founder was celebrating her 72 years and our small association her 30 years (okay it was the 31st but last year with the confinement we could not celebrate it with dignity) and of course I was asked to cook. .. for 54 people! 😅
Well I did something simple but it was still very good. You just have to do it a little in advance because there is meat marinated for 24 hours. ( Fortunately I was able to borrow a cold room, my fridge would not have been enough >. < )
Let’s go for the recipe:
Here is one of the 14 dishes that I made! I feel so tired … ^^ ‘
Ingredients (for 4 persons):
For the marinade:
6 cloves of garlic, pressed
the juice of a lemon
a tablespoon of mustard
a tablespoon of olive oil
2 tablespoons of honey
a teaspoon of thyme
salt pepper
For the dish:
8 chicken pine nuts
1 red onion
8 potatoes
some cherry tomatoes
500 ml chicken stock
Preparation:
mix all the marinade ingredients with the chicken and let marinate for 24 hours
Arrange the potatoes cut into quarters in the bottom of a dish, arrange the chicken and onions (minced) on top.
Add the broth with the rest of the marinade and bake for 20 minutes at 180 ° c
add the cherry tomatoes and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.
It’s ready !
I hope you will like it.
It was so good to see every one there. I realise only now that was what I need. To be surrounded by people I appreciate and love, especially after the last trying months. In short, here I am recharged and ready to cower life to the fullest!
It’s been a while since I posted anything and I’m sorry. I won’t go into details (maybe later) but I ended up with an extremely toxic guy that I struggled to get rid of, and then I had some health concerns. Today everything is fine. It just took a little while for me to get over it.
To forgive me, I have planned a big article for this week on the interest of science fiction in our society. I hope you will enjoy it.
Right now I’m pretty busy so I don’t promise to be as productive as I once was for a little while but promise I won’t drop the blog. 😉
Take care of you guys. I’ll be back soon, I promise.
This article is going to be about suicide and if it is a very triggering subject for you, which I can obviously understand, then do not hesitate to withdraw from the article so that you can take care of your well-being.
Earlier this year, I lost a childhood friend and today is suicide prevention day, so I want to dedicate this post to her and her family. Finally I want to take the opportunity to share my story with you, even if it costs me a lot to talk about it.
I was 13 or 14 years old and at that time I was a little chubby and I was only 1.45mtall. I was called “Haven Gnome”, “Garden Gnome” in danish. Finally, this is what a bunch of girls told me day after day. To this was added mockery about my deafness, my ears sticking out and they kept harping on me that I was less than nothing. With my friends I pretended that it did not reach me and I kept silent with my family … I was good at letting nothing appear. At night, under the duvet I cried until I fell tired. My suicidal thoughts started at that time.
One day, I went out jogging alone to lose my so-called excess weight. Of course, I didn’t hear the man who approached me from behind until he dragged me by force, his hand over my mouth, in an underground parking lot.
If you allow me, I will not go into the details of what happened at that time.
My assault was the last straw, I cracked. When I got home, I took Dad’s sleeping pills box and swallowed all of its contents. I was so bad at that time, that I wonder if even without this event, I could have attempted my life.
I woke up in the hospital. What saved me was that I lost consciousness lying on my side and threw up some of what I had ingested. After a stomach wash everything went back to normal, I was very lucky, I didn’t have any physical damage. Psychologically it was something else. I suffered from ogoraphobia for approximatively a year and dysmorphophobia for almost 2 years. I saw myself obese when I was not.
Then I met a boy who loved me for what I was, what I was having trouble conceiving, but thanks to this relationship and with the help of my family and Daria, a family friend who is a photographer, I gradually learned to get used to my body. And I realized that in 2 years I had gained 20 cm and that my curves were distributed in other places. Today all is well in the best of worlds for me.
Reflection on suicide
Seeing that I never talk about what I did, (it’s the first time I talk about it openly since) I often hear my friends, who are not informed, saying that suicide is something stupid and they don’t understand how someone can do that. But suicide is not a stupid thing. Let me explain.
I can only speak for myself, because that is what I believe and not something that I know. To say that suicide is a stupid act, it would already have to be reflected by an healthy mind, which would make a bad decision. But the peculiarity of a suicidal person is that his mind is anything but healthy. So you can’t really say that this is something stupid.
In my case, when I was so desperate, my attempt was never thought of. My brain was like disconnected, as if it had tripped. I can still see myself doing all my gestures but at no time did I think of the consequences. It’s a bit like my brain has tripped and my body acted automatically, going into the bathroom and opening that bottle, like I could have been on the roof to throw myself into the void.
I don’t want to give advice or anything about how to detect whether someone is suicidal or not, I’m not qualified for that. What I can say, however, is that you shouldn’t blame yourself if you haven’t seen any warning signs. Already being close to a person, I think that naturally we do not expect them to hide their unhappiness from us to the point that they can harm themselves. Finally personally I always did everything to hide my malaise from my loved ones because I did not want to be more of a burden than I was already for them as a deaf person. The fact of not being able to imagine that the loved one can harm himself, combined with the fact that he hides his unhappiness, is to say that it is almost impossible to predict the suicide attempt of a loved one.
Denne artikel er dedikeret til Maggie og hendes familie, som alle mine tanker er rettet til.
This week I have not been very productive, I fear it, but I have a good reason!
At the moment, my little brother Søren is at home for at least 2 weeks. He’s my half-brother but it makes no difference to me. He is 10 years old and it is so good to see him! Dad had Søren in one of his essays to rebuild his life, but there was a big argument with his mom. She left when he was 4 years old and since then I’ve only seen him 3 or 4 times. You will understand that in these conditions I take advantage of my little devil and that my blog is not my priority! ^^ I’m not giving it up but I’m probably going to settle for one article a week rather than two until now.
This is just a little personal reflection, on a question that I am often asked at the association: “How does it happen in a romantic relationship between a deaf and a hearing person?”
I speak here only from my point of view and my own feelings. I do not pretend to have absolute knowledge, on the contrary, I ask myself a lot of questions on this subject. If you have your own opinion, I would be happy to discuss it with you in the comments.
Many of you must be thinking, “But what does being deaf have to do with having a girl or a boyfriend? “ And although being deaf or hard of hearing (it is surely a bit the same for other handicaps), we always wonder if it will have an impact on our love life.
In a relationship between deaf people, it is “easy”. We have the same concerns so we understand each other. It is less embarrassing to repeat a sentence that you will have misunderstood, whether orally or in sign language. With a hearing person, it’s very different. We are afraid of annoying the person who interests us by dint of having them repeat and doing so that they are disinterested in us. Sometimes just announcing that you are deaf (or hard of hearing) is enough to scare some people away.
Between a deaf person and a hearing person, there is always a gap, because we do not live in the same world. It is not a bad thing or anyone’s fault but it is so then it requires efforts of both parties to try to understand each other.
In the book “Finding Zoe” by Brandy Rarus, the deaf author describes her relationship with a hearing man. It was idyllic at first, but the more she got involved in the deaf culture, the more her boyfriend seemed to move away, which ended their relationship.
No matter how much a person can be involved in deaf culture, whether they have studied the subject or have deaf family … A hearing person will never be what it is to be deaf and what it brings. In the past I’ve already loved, many times and each time I’m apprehensive of how the other will take the fact that I’m deaf.
How I am when I’m dating!
I’ve always had a close core of friends but I’m a very reserved person so I’ve done a lot of online dating, be it Okcupid or even Tinder! (yes I was desperate!). But I never knew how to explain the fact that deafness was a part of me. I didn’t want people to reject me because of this. (It’s already happened).
Making contact :
After a few days, the time for the first Skype comes. It always makes me nervous. Indeed, I often have to ask them to type what they have to say and I think it must be a disadvantage to have to do it, it can annoy.
The encounter :
Me afraid to go to a first date! (I know I’m a good actress!)
Then we get used to it but at some point comes the time for the first meeting. As for everyone I suppose, there is the apprehension of “the-meeting-of-the-first-time”, but to that is added also the fear of “how-the-devil-is-that- communication-will-work ”! Fortunately for me, I read very well on the lips but according to the diction of each one, I need a time of adaptation, and to that is added that I am 100% deaf and not implantable, so I cannot help myself with the sound I would have heard to understand part of the conversation if he does not speak sign language.
The family presentation :
Finally if all his moments are going well, there is the presentation to the family. Personally I always apprehend, because that is when she realizes that you are deaf and that this is not harmless in everyday life, suddenly they do not know how to react and it can be very embarrassing. With my first boyfriend’s family, it went very badly. I felt like the attraction of the evening, in the wrong sense of the word. I felt like the highlight of a freak-show! I was harassed with questions about my deafness and none about our couple …
Besides that in these kind of meetings, people often talk at the same time, which is very complicated for us to follow the conversations all the more since often several discussions get entangled at the same time which we totally lose … we ended up following our boyfriend like a disarmed puppy, and we feel very stupid…
Conclusion :
Be careful I don’t want to discourage deaf-hearing relationships, on the contrary my only two important stories were with a hearing person and they were wonderful. It exists and it works, but it requires investment on the part of the hearing partner, taking a minimum interest in deaf culture and sign language because it is a part of us. On our side we must also make an effort to welcome them into our little world of ours by being compassionate and patient when they are awkward or when they find it difficult to understand us. As in all couples, there are two of us. Efforts must therefore be made by both parties!
Nilsa's world 