I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.
Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.”
She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”
And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”
She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea! The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn. I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did. So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”
I was waiting for the night bus at 1am the other night, eating fries, when a dude, high as fuck, tried to harass me. It took several “I don’t want to talk to you, please go away” for him to finally move, but I think it helped that another man was giving him the death stare and clicking his tongue at him. He then checked I was okay and whether I knew the guy or not. Good dude.
Shout out also the man who silently switched places with me on another night bus to be a buffer between me and a guy who had threatened me. Thank you
Men: this here? This here is what you need to be doing as allies. The men who harass and insult women are not likely to take our complaints about it seriously. But you, another man, they will listen to.
I was pumping gas at like 10 PM one night, and these bunch of drunk guys came walking up to the gas station, and one of them yelled over to me if I wanted to see his dick. His friend says to him, “You don’t have anything she wants to see.” and apologized. It was pretty awesome.
this is all we want from men. to recognize the wrongs done by other men, and acknowledge it. not give us shitass defense like, “not all men do that”
Gay Ryan 