why does it matter so much that Clint wasn’t deaf in the MCU??? Like it’s not super important to his character? I don’t know why you’re all worked up about this because it literally doesn’t even really matter??? if the first anon was annoyed by your always writing sign language into your fics they have a right to be??? the things you write aren’t just yours you have to respe ct your audience

thlayli-rah:

*sighs heavily* So okay here’s the thing. It actually does matter that Clint wasn’t deaf. It really really really really matters. And you know why it really matters? Because for YEARS I have been super self-conscious about being Hard of Hearing, to the point that I didn’t tell people. I’d just pretend to know what people were saying even if I didn’t (believe me, I didn’t). If I had, at an earlier age, seen a deaf superhero asking his colleagues to speak up, to face him so he could read their lips, wearing hearing aids– god I would’ve been so much less embarrassed about doing those things too.

I think about the kids I see at my work in the grocery store and at Lush, kids with hearing aids, whose hands fumble over signs, and I feel this pang in my chest for them. Not because they’re “pitiful”, but because there are people who don’t realize what kind of community they’re going to grow up in. People who don’t care about the way the world works for them, for us. They don’t know they could be superheroes. Because people like Joss Whedon take that away from them without blinking.

Representation really matters. Especially when it comes to some sort of disability or shift in the perspective of what is “normal”. The same way you wouldn’t write a fic in which Matt Murdock wasn’t blind, you shouldn’t film a movie in which Clint Barton isn’t deaf. Because that is part of who he is.
And by writing a script in which his deafness isn’t recognized sends a very clear message to the deaf/hoh community, which is: “people like you could never be superheroes” and even worse, “representing your community is not worth the effort”.

Secondly, I need you to read this very clearly: I will never ever write a fic in which Clint Barton is hearing, or a fic in which he does not utilize ASL. If that “bothers” my audience, or they feel disrespected by this fact, they are very kindly directed to this website and may follow the directions as follows.