Post by @zersiax@cupoftea.social

2026-09-18 22:58 UTC

@linguacelta@toot.wales They are an extremely telling linguistical phenomenon... blind in such idioms often seems to be essentially a complete lack of sensory input of any kind, which in turn seems to highlight just how central one's sense of sight is and how one's life would immediately be over if one were to lose it. Meanwhile, as I'm sure you know, there's plenty of blind people who live fulfilling lives, although I won't discount that there's also a huge amount that are struggling, be it minorly or catastrophically. I have a harder time seeing, pun partially intended, the issue with "deaf to oppressed voices". Deaf would seem to mean unable to hear said voices, is the ablist angle that it is used here as something one can selectively "turn off and on" as it were? Selectively deaf?

Replies (2)

@zersiax@cupoftea.social 2026-09-18 23:04

@linguacelta@toot.wales I think there's a distinct lack of authoritative resources on this topic, quite likely due to the fact that as I experience it in the blind community, most would shelve this under the "we really have far bigger fish to fry" category. Gaming streaming website Twitch made some waves several years ago by making a statement on the term "blind playthrough" being offensive to the blind, which caused some chuckles due to the fact their platform, particularly at the time, suffered from severe accessibility issues for that same demographic, just to give an example. I am however observing "blind people" being used a lot in a political/head-in-the-sand type of meaning particularly as of late, and particularly on social media like BlueSky, which does have a bit more of a problematic edge to it. Linguistically terms like ignorant, uneducated or rigidly closed off seem to fit better, but I could see problematic angles on at least some of those as well

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@linguacelta@toot.wales 2026-09-19 08:09

@zersiax@cupoftea.social I think the "deaf to..." usually imply that the deafness has a moral component. It's generally used to describe people who are ignorant or uncaring, rather than people who are unable to hear something through no fault of their own. If nothing else, I think it's a bad metaphor. " Putting their fingers in their ears" would be far more accurate!

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