[nabs-l] Body language and facial expressions

[Koby Cox]

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On Nov 19, 2011, at 1:30 PM, Bridgit Pollpeter <bpollpeter at hotmail.com> wrote:

> This is such a dodgy issue. It is a fine balance, and while I understand
> we shouldn't use and act in ways completely unnatural to us, we also
> should try to follow behavior that's not indicative of other
> disabilities associated with mental and cognitive issues.
> 
> Most body language and facial expressions are learned behavior. Since
> most of the population is sighted, we learn facial expressions and body
> language from observing others.
> 
> Babies and little children often mimic what they see others doing. As we
> grow older, we tend to adopt body and facial expressions natural to us
> as individuals, but often associated, whether conscious or unconscious,
> through learned behavior.
> 
> It stands to reason that if a person is trying to adopt behavior
> nonvisually, one would work with another person to adopt, and
> understand, certain facial and body expressions. Just because we learn
> the behavior, A. K. A. facial expressions and body language, through a
> nonvisual medium, does not necessarily imply that the facial and body
> expressions a blind person replaces with either more stoic and rigid
> expressions or movement, or rocking or inappropriate movements, is
> inorganic, or unnatural, to that individual. If you learn, though
> nonvisually, a different way to move and express yourself, why does it
> have to be unnatural and arbitrary? Like sighted people, we're adopting
> behavior, just in a different way; it's learned behavior though learned
> in a nonvisual manner.
> 
> And as I've stated earlier, I believe asking u to cover, hide, something
> like our eyes is equal to bleaching skin or straightening hair or
> covering accents/dialects; I don't, however, think that changing certain
> behaviors, such as rocking, can be equated to this.
> 
> First, all people have physical movements often unique to them as an
> individual whether noticeable or not. It's often instinctive and
> unconscious. However, some movements are associated with mental,
> cognitive or psychological disabilities/concerns. In particular, rocking
> is often associated with developmental disabilities or abuse victims.
> Certain facial expressions are also associated with developmental
> disabilities and other psychological issues. Obviously people who are
> blind, while many do have multiple disabilities, don't have
> developmental disabilities, but because some of the "blindisms" are also
> linked to such disabilities, I don't think it's a problem to expect
> people who are blind to correct such behavior. I don't see this similar
> to changing, or concealing, body parts or internal attributes associated
> with race or ethnicity, or in the case of disabilities that can't be
> controlled such as the functioning of eyes or missing limbs.
> 
> In a nutshell, which I have problems fitting things into, smile, my
> point is that body language and many facial expressions are picked up
> through learned behavior. Whether we learn this behavior visually or
> nonvisually, it doesn't mean we're just going through the motions-
> acting as it were. It's the same process just done nonvisually. Just as
> we learn to read and write Braille or use adaptive technology with
> computers. We're doing the same things, just in a different way.
> 
> I also don't think we can compare certain changes nade , physically or
> internally, indicative of race or ethnicity, to correcting social
> behavior such as body language or facial expressions either linked to
> other disabilities or inappropriate to a given situation.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
> Read my blog at:
> http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
> 
> "History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
> The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan
> 
> Message: 7
> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:26:31 -0700
> From: Marc Workman <mworkman.lists at gmail.com>
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
>    <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Blindness versus other minority groups
> Message-ID: <039F2609-C62A-4985-83E1-FBC50C239F70 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Carly wrote,
> How can facial expressions and other body language convey meaning if
> they are not naturally, ocuring? For this reason I don't see a reason to
> sort of put on nonverbal, expression if, behind it there is little,
> meaning?
> 
> I want to take Carly's point further and suggest that pressuring blind
> people to look and act like others is in itself wrong.  I'm not
> suggesting there is no value to it, nor am I saying it should never be
> done, but it makes me uncomfortable.
> 
> The subject of this thread is comparing blindness to other minorities.
> I think there's a parallel between pressuring blind people to look and
> act like everyone else and things that some minorities used to do and
> still do for similar reasons.  In the past, among African Americans,
> there existed the practice of skin bleaching and hair straightening for
> the purpose of appearing less black and/or more white.  I can't give
> evidence to show how common this was, but Malcolm X talked about trying
> to remove the kink from his hair himself and finding it a physically and
> emotionally painful process.  There are also surgeries performed to give
> people of East Asian descent more "white looking" eyes and Jews more
> "white looking" noses.  These are just a couple of examples.  Pressuring
> minorities to adopt the dominant group's style of dress, gate, diction,
> body language, etc also often happens.
> 
> I hope we can agree that this is at the very least unfortunate.  There
> may be psychological and other explanations for why this occurs, but
> feeling pressured to get a nose job or to bleach your skin so that you
> look more like one particular group in society is problematic to say the
> least.  So what's the difference between these cases and pressuring a
> blind person to adopt the behavioural habits, facial expressions, body
> language etc of some sighted people?
> 
> You might say that we live in a sighted world and so we have to adapt.
> There is something to this, but I wonder if it would be equally
> acceptable to say we live in a white-dominated world so non-whites have
> to adapt.  It may be the case that blind people who don't "look blind"
> are more successful and integrate better, and it also may be that
> non-whites who look and act white are more successful and integrate
> better, but in neither case is it just that the minorities need to
> assume the dominant groups characteristics in order to be successful.
> 
> What ultimately needs to happen is not that blind people begin to look
> and act like sighted people, but that we all become more accepting of
> differences that are arbitrary and irrelevant.  Most, if not all, so
> called blindisms are irrelevant, and I see no more reason to stamp them
> out than I do for trying to eliminate various differences in behaviour
> and appearance possessed by other minority groups.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
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