Last week I was complimented on my ability to do eye contact. That’s lovely, but I resented it nonetheless. You should know I’ve received intensive coaching on eye contact, aka “social skills”. These social skills, acquiring them consists of mimicking the non verbal interaction of sighted people and then applying that consciously in order to look “natural”, i.e. “not blind”. To reiterate: sighted = natural, blind = isn’t. Training consists of doing lots of role play, simulating what goes on in social interaction and then receiving feedback. Having been without sufficient eye contact skills for a while now, that’s where my challenge lies. In a conversation I have found it is much more natural for me to turn my head away, making ear contact so to speak, than it is to try to look you in the eye. However, the flow of human conversation is such that making eye contact and looking away, then making eye contact again, punctuate its rhythm and I understand that. Yes, I do understand, but I notice my lack of stamina in situations that call for a lot of this kind of social interaction. It’s OK in a one to one conversation with someone I know, but it is absolute hell in a room full of people, or if I am in a group of more than 4 people. I just can’t keep up, so after a while I just stand there, staring stupidly ahead, trying to fix my gaze on the sound of people’s speech. It’s a conundrum. I know I need to simulate interaction in a certain way if I’m to function socially, yet doing so has become something that is increasingly becoming alien to me. No resolution of that paradox, except to withdraw at home and let no one in. Peace and quiet, messy eating habits and turning my ears, not my eyes towards sound. Heaven.
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What you write is powerful, Alex. May I quote you on my blog? I need to write about this as well. I’ve been musing about the glass ceiling in employment discrimination, and I believe that for blind people the barrier tends to manifest in the ambiguous areas of normative social performance such as eye contact and schmoozing in group settings. It doesn’t matter how skilled one is in other performance sets; awkwardness or differentness in social settings is interpreted as deficit. While I meet the criteria for categorization as “legally blind,” I think a more relevant label for me is :socially blind.” That’s the glass barrier I butt against every working day. Thank you for delving into this.
Mark
Of course! No problem at all if you quote me. Yeah… Social skills. There’s a lot of emphasis on “not looking blind” in order to improve our chances with regard to getting jobs. But of course you never look entirely natural. The other day someone said to be that she could hardly see I am blind, and that too was a compliment. Of course I’m at an advantage having lost my vision so recently, so a lot of the interaction stuff I know from experience. Yet I am surprised at how unnatural it feels to do things like that. And then I’m the most relaxed around other blind people, because I know no one then cares about such matters.