Literature Reviews, Cats, Travel and Stuff

So, not to get all optimistic and stuff, but things are really slotting into place at the moment! I’ve had two responses so far for my dissertation deaf women’s lives autobiography research - and this is good considering I gave them all a deadline of 31st July. I’m quite happy about things in general - only horrible stuff on the horizon relates to money and spot breakouts and literature reviews. I’m not too bad for money but I have to transfer my matured bond into my account sharpish as otherwise I won’t have any money for next week. I’m going to Edinburgh for my partner’s brother’s wedding - where Dan is best man, erk. He’s rather nervous, methinks, but I know he’ll be fine once he masters that best man speech.

The nasty spot breakout appears to be on my chin - I know that I’ve read or watched something somewhere that says spots normally congregate in one place if there is a deficiency or difference in diet or something? I better check that out. I get the feeling I’m not eating enough fruit or veg or drinking enough water. Or perhaps getting too little or too much sleep. I seem to find myself on a fine balance between things sometimes. Because I’m on Dianette again, I would have thought that would control spot breakouts, but maybe it takes time to work properly.

The literature review is probably the hardest part of my dissertation - I haven’t even started writing it yet. I know the research is the most important part so I am really glad that I got the information to all the participants out quickly. I’m really excited about the huge response I got from different people who wanted to take part. I was concerned that there would be too little response but there are now more than I thought I would have! I think I will need to think hard about what I include and exclude from the actual writing up, and think about how gender and being deaf intersect.

I’ve always found it quite difficult to put the two together, creating broken up compartments in my life and my identity - Woman, Deaf, Feminist, Early 20s, etc etc. But I think they overlap and inform each other. I think I will find that deaf women are often quite strong and determined whether or not they are feminists. I know that my being deaf has led me to think more about human rights - this has also come from doing Sociology and reading about things. My main education has always been from reading, and I’ve always found it rewarding to read and watch books and films with strong women as main characters.

I know that Romance and soaps and things are seen as ‘low culture’ but a lot of women watch them, and I’ve realised that within these genres there is a kind of escapism from reality which appeals to a lot of women. I’ve never liked soaps much because I find it very emotionally manipulative - but then, I used to read books like the NightWorld series - about soulmates and fantasy creatures (vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, witches, etc) - which is a kind of romance genre. Also with Point Horror books - essentially they generally used to end with the main protagonist in a happy relationship/romance. Not all romance is necessarily about finding the ‘one’ I don’t think.

I have a few favourite Romance films - like Moulin Rouge, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, Sabrina (with Audrey Hepburn), A Life Less Ordinary, West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet among quite a few others. I tend to veer towards romance with an ‘edge’ or with something different. I think many great films have love as one of the themes - after all, life wouldn’t mean a great deal without the capability to love and be loved. It doesn’t even mean those huge great romances (which often seem all surface and no depth) but those that are enduring, that carry on and are a constant throughout someone’s life. Such as in Forrest Gump, and The Notebook and A Very Long Engagement. They resonate because they aren’t all about roses and chocolates and big gestures that often ring hollow. Nothing wrong with flowers though, for men or women!

I think a lot of books and films about love can become an emotional education, and when you go back to them in later years, the feelings often seem more intense because you ‘feel’ it more. Perhaps that is the complexity of adult feelings? Maybe we feel more because we have been through more. When I was doing Romeo and Juliet at Chickenshed (I was one of the narrator signers), the second time around I felt things more intensely - the hopelessness and the tragedy.

Writing means a lot to me because if I couldn’t write then the only other way would be to speak and sometimes I just get really fed up with speaking. I’m not as articulate when I speak; when I’m nervous I get tongue tied and sometimes stumble over my words. It doesn’t help that people are often ignorant or forget that I’m deaf - they don’t always slow down a bit and look at me or face me when talking.

I find it frustrating with my hearing friends sometimes because they sort of blather away and then I have to constantly ask them what they were/are talking about. Particularly as some of my newer friends are unfamiliar with deaf people. It’s something that all deaf people seem to get - my sister certainly gets this too.

It’s not just friends, its also family and can be really alienating, whether or not they mean to ‘forget’ that we can’t follow the kind of speech that hearing people seem to use (’blethering’ or ‘banter’ or quick speech) with each other. I have noticed that when hearing people speak to each other, it seems to involve little mouth movement sometimes, which is SO annoying when I’m trying to lipread them. It isn’t anyone’s fault, but I do think people could slow down a bit!

The cats are doing well, and I think Quentin is enjoying life at the moment as Dan (my partner) takes him out to the garden quite a bit. Q has become much more vocal lately about wanting to be let out, and I’m not really surprised as he obviously loves going outside and sniffing the flowers! The two girl cats are alright, Flossie as strange as usual and Georgina vying for everyone’s attention. Although she seems to have been taking her shoe fetish too far as Mum found cat wee in her shoe the other day. We think it may have been Q though as he’s been a bit prickly and scared recently.

He’s still on blood pressure tablets, one a day I think. Sometimes he seems quite calm and others he seems to panic and get all worried. He still likes chatting away to us though - it goes something like “Meow! MEOW!” “Whats wrong Quentin?” “Meow, Meeeoww, Meoow” “You want to go outside?” “Meow” “You want food?” “Meooow, Meoow” “Yes it’s lovely weather” “Meeeeooow” - something to that effect!

Georgina has this silent meow - she sort of makes the shape of a meow with her mouth but we can never hear anything - maybe it’s really high pitched or quiet! She does it quite a lot, really, whilst Flossie is sort of noisy when she wants to be let in or when she wants food, but we rarely hear her talking because shes the quiet type really! Unless birds are involved (she sort of “twitters” at them, haha - it’s a sight to behold)!

So, this literature review better get started, I was planning on planning the chapter today so that I know what I’m going to write or discuss and how. Then the methodology chapter will need to be started. I’m not going the traditional sociological route with so many chapters on certain things, although I will need to make sure methodology is a big feature as my dissertation is partly about methodology. There just seems to be so much reading - although I should be past that now, really! I think I will scan reading material quickly and pick out the most relevant bits to talk about.

So I think the next few weeks will be about weddings, the dissertation and hoping for more accounts from people! Also, hoping for money…

Update - Life As I Know It!

Things have been really strange recently - I’ve been thinking hard about what I want to do for my dissertation and I seem to be going the autobiographical route - asking deaf women to write about their lives as deaf women, what barriers they may have faced, their trials and their achievements, their happy and sad moments. I want to break the silence that deaf women have in academia and in society in general. I’ve been reading this fantastic book ‘Deaf Women’s Lives: Three Self-Portraits’ which I am finding so inspiring.

I find myself both nodding in understanding and also thinking hard about what it means to be a deaf woman in a hearing world that privileges hearing people and men. I’m wondering how to fit the two together - do they need to fit together? I can’t see the obvious connection between being a woman and being deaf but I am hoping that somewhere along the line I will suddenly realise that maybe it doesn’t matter - what really matters is that the experiences of deaf women are documented and thought about.

Also - why am I a feminist? Specifically, why am I a feminist when my Deafness has been the overriding experience in my life, and has shaped what I’ve done, where I’ve been and where I’m going? What does feminism have to offer deaf women? It certainly needs to be more accessible and more open to new ideas.

I am feeling so confused about the feminist blogosphere at the moment, I’ve decided to go on a break with my main “feminist” blog because I feel that there is so much infighting and so called ‘blog wars’ that I just can’t cope with having to feel as if I have to align myself somewhere. I’m both sex positive and a radical feminist. If there even is such a thing, according to both “sides”. I am still vehemently anti-porn and anti-prostitution, but at the same time feel as if it is not so clear cut as ‘banning’ porn.

In the end, who decides what is the ‘bad’ kind and ‘good’ kind? And I really dislike the fact that porn, like other forms of addictive obsessions, can turn into something that destroys families and makes people bankrupt, makes men coerce their wives, partners, girlfriends etc into doing things they don’t want to, can reinforce the idea that women are objects. It isn’t the ONLY thing that posits women as sex objects, but it definitely contributes to it.

I feel, however, where do we draw the line if we were to ban pornography? Does erotic literature count? Does soft corn 70s gentle kind of porn with a story-line count? (if there even is such a thing…) What about sexual descriptions in books, novels, etc? Like, in some of my favourite fantasy books by Kelley Armstrong, there certainly is a lot of desire - but women’s desire, sex scenes from a woman’s point of view, which can in fact, be quite empowering.

Women are visual too, not just men. I see sex scenes (good ones!!) in my favourite TV series or in my favourite films, and I get turned on. I see nothing wrong with that. Sex is part of human social interaction (I do think what we are attracted to is socially constructed, but there is still a kind of visceral desire). But porn does really repel me - I haven’t actually SEEN any porn, but I’ve been exposed to the kind of images there are in films and I really don’t like what I see. There’s no artistry or sublety, no reality about it. And the violence or crudeness is getting really obvious. I don’t like degradation - and that is what really bothers me about pornography. The degradation of women and the objectification of women.

On my other blog, I feel really restricted. It is one of the reason why I don’t publicise this blog, because I’ve felt the restriction that comes with knowing that loads of other people are reading your blog. I don’t feel able to discuss sexuality or what I’ve been thinking about because I’m afraid of what certain people might say - that I’m a “pro-porn, sex-pos” or some crap like that. I truly feel angry about that. What good is feminism if we can’t articulate our desires as women? It may mean that I start blogging here much more often, mostly for my own benefit.

I got my card details stolen last week by some stupid wanker who decided that he/she would use my money on a porn website. Yet more evidence that porn has a corrupting influence. I had to ask my partner, who was in York with me at the time (thank goddess, otherwise I would have been a huge mess), to phone the bank and go with me to the bank etc to cancel my card and sort it all out.

I hadn’t realised how helpless it makes you feel - at least they didn’t use a huge amount of my money - it was more like £12 and £6 here and there. My minicom doesn’t work in my university room (it does at home in Barnet obviously!) otherwise I would have tried to sort it myself. I’m home at the moment waiting for my new card, which should arrive tomorrow or wednesday. The bank are going to refund my money so I’m really happy about that. I hope they find whoever did it.

At the moment, I’m trying to clear out all the unnecessary clutter and rubbish in my room ready for my partner to move in when his stay in uni accommodation finishes (in June). We are going to live together in my room which is a huge attic room with a bathroom attached - probably until we can find a flat. There’s no time limit as we are paying my parents and my sister will be off to Uni herself in September. I’m hopefully going to find a good job when I finish my MA in September, I’m really nervous about it but I’m sure I’ll find something interesting and challenging. The clutter I have in this room is astounding - but not so bad as I thought. I have to clear out the cupboard attached to the wardrobe and tidy stuff up a bit.

My partner’s older brother is getting married in June, I’ve been searching for a lovely dress and think I’ve found something not too bad on the pocket and suitably classy for a wedding. It’s white with black details, embroidery on the skirt and black shoulder straps etc. It also has a net underskirt which I’m suitably ‘YAY’ about because I love net underskirts. Also, it comes in the right size…obviously! None of my current dresses have them though (net underskirts, I mean)! My partner’s sister got married in January 2007 too - and she’s a year younger than me.

I really don’t know how I feel about marriage, it’s not a huge deal for me. I never was the kind of kid that thought about the “perfect day” or anything like that. The only thing that I feel excited about would be compiling a list of music for the reception!! It fills me with terror having to speak vows in front of loads of people!  Also, not knowing what the hell people are saying in speeches and stuff like that.  I wouldn’t say no if my partner asked, especially if it means a lot to him, but it doesn’t really mean a lot to me - just a sign of “official” commitment, of perhaps celebrating our relationship with other people. I hate being the centre of attention, I’ve always shied away from physically being in the limelight. My big ambition is to be published one day, but I don’t want to be “famous” or anything.

I better get back to clearing out my room!

Donuts and Coffee!

I’ve really got too much work to do at the moment, it feels as if I’m being pulled in too many directions at the same time! I finished my research blog - here but I still have two essays and my dissertation proposal to do. Luckily I have three weeks although my supervisor thinks it may be possible to have an extension of a week to sort out the dissertation proposal, as I am going to be meeting my dissertation supervisor the week classes start again.

I’ve been ordering too many books recently - a lot of them for my dissertation: on my desk I have 8 books I have to read about disability and gender and a few about deafness. I’m sure I will get through them because I’m actually finding them quite interesting. Some of them are depressing because there’s a book called ‘Being Deaf: The Experience of Deafness’ and there was this short autobiographical chapter from a deaf woman who had a really tough time of it and really wasn’t positive about her identity as a deaf person. It makes me realise how things have changed, and then also makes me realise how much they haven’t, because there is still a long way to go.

I’m also angry about a member of my family who phones up my Mum sometimes and makes her really upset about things. She had the audacity to compare my Mum’s health with mine and say that my Mum’s health isn’t as bad as mine. How does she know? She seems hell bent on upsetting my Mum everytime she mentions that I have PCOS and if I don’t lose weight I will get diabetes and so on. Everyone is different; I know that I am at a higher risk of Diabetes but insulin resistance is actually about having low blood sugar because your insulin overcompensates. This explains my cravings for sweet things because my body insists my blood sugar is low. It is also why I get so cranky when I’m hungry.

But I would hesitate to say that I will have a shorter life or that I’m infertile because I still have my periods, I don’t constantly overeat, the only think I really need to sort out is the exercise. But why do people insist on discussing MY health behind my back? Why do they insist on upsetting my Mum when it is MY body and MY responsibility? Not hers.

I’m 23 years old and I know much more about PCOS than other people do because it is MY condition, nobody else’s (I mean, in my family). It’s up to me when I feel ready to exercise. At the moment everything gets in the way as I have so much work to do and the weather is so cold. I have no doubt that I will start exercising more in the summer, as I always do. It makes me cross when people, no matter how “well meaning” compare my health, my body, to someone else’s health and body. I have a completely different body to my Mum’s, and a separate collection of “problems”. I’m not a child any longer and I wish that people would treat me as an adult. They certainly don’t earn my respect by going behind my back and upsetting my Mother.

Aha - Donuts and Coffee - a very unhealthy lifestyle choice but one which appears to be getting me through the awful hell that is essay writing Krispy Kreme donuts are heavenly - I have only just tried them and they are wonderful. Only in moderation, folks!

New Horizons?

Its been a while since I’ve blogged anywhere, especially since my life has been a lot about trying to get through the last weeks of term without heading for some kind of breakdown! My insomnia certainly seemed to be getting the better of me but I think I’m slowly starting to get back on track. Yesterday was a nightmare because I spent most of the day in bed, really tired and my body sort of lethargic and ‘I can’t be bothered to do anything’.

However, today I actually went to the library which I think is a huge achievement, considering how yukky I’m feeling at the moment. I’m not a huge fan of the York uni library because although it’s quite big, it doesn’t always have enough books for the number of people wanting to get that book!

I’m doing two essays over the holidays, one on cosmetic surgery and another on women’s magazines. There were plenty of books about cosmetic surgery and I got most of what I needed, but the women’s mags reading material was mostly checked out, probably because some people on my course are also doing the same questions. There were only one of each copy so I am not surprised that I couldn’t get hold of them. However, my partner’s library is coming to the rescue, as it has at least 5 copies of each book I need! Its quite interesting, but I think it’s because my partner’s uni has a focus on cultural analysis, possibly (although York does do a lot of cultural research…).

I also have to do my research proposal (which I’m panicking about a bit) and this blog that I’ve set up which is like a kind of journal of my development as a women’s studies researcher. The blog is quite interesting but still involves a little bit of effort as I didn’t make complete notes for all the sessions, so will have to think quite hard about one or two of the entries.

When I was walking to and from the library tonight, I felt as if I was experiencing some sort of ‘reality’ which meant things really are real. I know that sounds really confusing and mind bending (and also a bit crazy) but I’ve always felt sometimes as if I’m not really actually experiencing things, as if things are not 100% real. It’s almost as if what I see, feel, touch and understand are experienced through this lens of complete subjectivity, a kind of looking glass of observing the world.

 Anyhow, tonight I sort of felt a removal of that looking glass because things suddenly felt very real, as if a curtain that had been drawn over my mind suddenly got thrown open, even if just for a few minutes. Campus was quite strange as it was pretty much deserted apart from Wentworth and maybe a few lights on across campus, but nobody much was walking around.

Sometimes I feel I have to force myself to see things objectively, or as other people see them. I often wonder how my essays seem to other people, what they see in them, what the language and experience is like for them, if it makes any sense. It’s one of my worries at the moment, that my essays are too simplistic, not developed enough or something. That perhaps I’m kidding myself and I’m not really that good a writer or researcher.

It’s that anxiety that makes my confidence waver a bit. I’ve always tried to make my essays well thought out and academic, yet tried to make sure the language is accessible so that people who may not be used to academic language can read them coherently. I have a dislike of language that is too drenched in specialised language (like psychoanalysis or certain sociological texts) or awkward, difficult language. Then again, I feel a sense of achievement when I finally ‘get’ a text that has proved difficult in the past. What is the nature of academia? Does all that awkward, difficult language somehow mean that academics are more ‘clever’ or intelligent? It seems to me that in order for academia to change anything, it needs to be more accessible. It needs to lose that whole objectivity thing and admit that it is very subjective indeed.

Somehow I like being awake in the middle of the night, when things seem still and quiet and haunting. I like the daytime, but not as much as I like nighttime - the time when secrets are shared, when people feel more intimate and closer, where you can watch the stars and feel the vastness of the universe. I like the night in summer, where you can sit outside at cafes or bars and enjoy the feeling of being with each other, or of watching the world go by. Maybe that is why I get insomnia, because I love the night so much. Don’t get me wrong, I also love summer days, spring mornings and so on, but night really makes sense to me.

I’m enjoying doing my masters degree, no matter how much I protest at the workload and the stress of it all. It has been one of the best years of my life, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve learnt and the confidence that I’ve gained (particularly in social situations). It seems that I no longer feel so alone with my feminist leanings and I feel more connected to the feminist movement. Academia doesn’t need to be out of reach or irrelevant to everyday life, as women’s studies has taught me. It is an attempt to record women’s history, women’s social lives and women’s possibilities. Perhaps I’m a bit idealistic but I really feel that women’s studies is as much relevant now as it was in the 70s.

Positivity

Things seem to be looking up a little bit despite my lack of money (although this does normally happen near the end of the month, so no surprise there) and my tiredness. I’m not sure what to blame my tiredness on - whether this is due to my periods of insomnia, PCOS (one of the symptoms is insomnia) or just a really silly sleep pattern - waking up late and going to bed around 3am in the morning! It’s probably all related really, since insomnia breeds bad sleep patterns and is a symptom of pcos. Never mind. I’m sure it will all right itself once I get some perspective on things!

I have decided on a topic for my dissertation - to do with achievement of deaf women. I feel much better having decided on this topic and I think it will be very interesting. Achievement can be a classist term - as who gets to say what ‘achievement’ is? I think I will need to actually ask a sample of women what they consider to be the achievements of their lives (or their lives so far) in order to discern the wide variety of achievement under that ‘label’. Hopefully this will make sure that *I* (a middle class, university educated woman) won’t define achievement for the women whose voices I will document.

I’m also quite aware of coming across as ‘patronising’ or something. I know from experience that deaf people often get patronised, normally by people who do not know how to communicate with them or who have their ideas of what deafness is from the media (not positive) and popular culture (and historical and medical ideas of deafness as a ‘lack’ and ‘impairment’ to be pitied or remedied).

As I wrote on my other blog, I have been called sexist a few times in a debate I had on the website of Nouse (one of York Uni’s newspapers). I really felt angry and disempowered by this: namely because I have worked SO hard to disentangle myself from sexist ways of thinking. I know I have a long way to go because sometimes I do come out with things that *I* view as sexist; such as using the word ‘bitch’ for example because I really don’t like gender specific bad language (such as ‘wanker’ or ‘cunt’ or ‘cow’ for example), because it (particularly women) positions women as being far below men with the status of ‘animal’.

Also, the use of ‘cunt’ is something that I am particularly unhappy with because it implies that women’s genitalia are somehow dirty, bad, and undesirable. ‘Cunt’ itself is not actually a swearword, its etymylogy comes from a welsh word I think. The fact that it has been appropriated as a bad word (the worst of the worst apparently) says a LOT about how our society thinks of women’s bodies (as dirty, unclean and overtly sexual).

Still, I don’t think of myself as sexist. I really give a crap about the men in my life and see them as people and individuals in their own right. However, as a feminist, I work hard to see the subtle nuances and not so subtle nuances of discrimination and sexism (and misogyny) in our culture and in other cultures around the world.

It is a learned guess that much of what I see or know is that male masculine macho culture is very much to blame as an underlying cause of the violence and sexism in the world. NOT ’all men’ as some people think feminists are saying. However, I hold those men that rape, are violent, and hate women accountable for those beliefs and actions. I don’t blame the women who are survivors of these events. I personally know first hand what it is like to be confronted with violence, and the threat of violence, with the pain and anger it makes you feel.

Anyway, positivity - which is the title of this post - is my goal from now on; to try and see the positive to everything. That even if you know what its like to feel the hurt that women and men all over the world are experiencing, you CAN try to do something about it. You can let people know that you don’t think it’s acceptable.

I want to turn my life around - eat better, sleep at a reasonable time, wake up in the MORNINGS and enjoy the whole day, and get more done, and enjoy the simple things in life. Although, before all that, I actually need to tidy up my room, which is a tip, and get on with some reading for Mondays seminars. It is MY fault that I chose to do an MA….

Difficulties

I’m feeling kind of sad today for some reason. It could be because sometimes I feel like giving up or yelling at the world because of the frustration of having to deal with barriers all the time when I’m deaf. I feel like I’ve been neglecting to think about this aspect of my life - but how can I when it’s always there, always affecting me and my access to things?

Sometimes I feel that people are afraid to be honest with me about their feelings about deafness, about communication. I prefer people to be upfront about it - whether they feel uncomfortable or as though they have to be constantly ‘aware’ and not relax or something. At the moment I have been focussing on Feminism. But I want to reconcile the two somewhere.

I find the feminist movement to sometimes be exclusive when it comes to deaf people - lectures, discussions, seminars, marches with chanting/slogans (constantly changing so you’re not sure whats being chanted), general difficulties in social situations etc. Blogging, online stuff is so good for me, apart from when podcasts or audio casts are done (the f-word seems to be doing this quite a bit recently, which really bothers me). People don’t think about these things - how to include deaf people, people who can’t access things because society isn’t set up for them but is set up for able-bodied, five-sensed people.

I’m just feeling so angry and sad at the moment. Maybe it’s just me, where I am at the moment. I don’t feel that women’s studies looks at gender and disability - at least, it hasn’t been covered in this terms “approaches to women’s studies”. It’s a large part of the reality of being in the world for many women. My experiences as a deaf woman have obviously affected my access to things two-fold - in employment, education, social situations, relationships etc. People sometimes tip-toe around the fact that I am deaf - they don’t seem to want to mention it or say anything about it, which is kind of depressing as it’s the way I see the world - in visual terms, reading, watching, seeing language as a text, reading the world as a text and canvas.

I want so much to put the two together, my identity politics that seem so complicated to reconcile.

Musings…

I have another blog but I’ve decided that for more personal and anonymous things, I will write here in order to allow my personal freedom in writing and ideas. My other blog is a well known feminist blog that deals with many aspects of my life, but in the last two years has mainly been about feminism. I kind of wanted to give myself more privacy as a lot of people know the url to my other blog, which is not a bad thing but I think privacy is underrated nowadays, with stuff like myspace and facebook, where everyone can see what you write and what you’re doing.

I’m presently doing (just started in Oct) a MA degree in Women’s Studies at the University of York in the UK. I’m really enjoying it so far but have so much reading to do! This year was a break from education and I really liked the freedom of being able to read what I wanted when I wanted and I am already missing that particular freedom to read! There isn’t enough time at the moment really - seminars, reading, eating and work are my priorities at the moment. Although my social life is so much  better now than it was when I was last at Uni (at York, for my BA in Sociology).

I feel more able to be myself and to relax and think about what really matters to me. As a deaf person, life is constantly awkward - negotiating faces in order to lipread, constant blocks that one comes up against, people over anxious about making sure I know what’s going on when things are fine, and sometimes I feel like people are being slightly patronising or something, even if they really don’t mean to be. People’s reactions are probably the most difficult things about being deaf - there are some people that obviously aren’t comfortable with it, some that are perfectly fine and want to know how to communicate, and others that are just plain ignorant and rude.

And I’ve always understood that most of the time it isn’t their fault because we all get educated in stereotypes - on TV and in the media, at school, in films, etc. But it is up to us to negotiate these stereotypes and challenge them, to break out of those boxes and refuse the labels given to us. Yes, labels can be helpful, but not if those labels come with negative connotations and ideas surrounding them. Maybe it is not the labels that are the problem but the ideas surrounding them. For example, I identify as a Feminist, deaf person and as a woman, as a student and as a sister, daughter, girlfriend/partner, friend, and yet I understand that people will attempt to stereotype and expect me to be a certain way because of these labels. I’m very cerebral (ie. intellectual, critical, practical) but at the same time I know I can be emotional too. But isn’t that the joy of being human? That we can be walking contradictions?