It seems a bit extreme to say over a sweet, teen romance book, this ruined me but in all honesty, it did. Never have I read a book that fit this facet of my life so perfectly. There really isn’t anything out there for queer LDS and former LDS people like myself. I own Sue-Ann Post’s memoir, and borrowed Saving Alex from the library. I own Latter Days on dvd. I even owned the church-endorsed In Quiet Desperation, a book written by the parents of a gay kid who knew he was suicidal and chose not to intervene despite knowing this (because God told them not to), and the LDS posterboy for the new face of pray the gay away. That’s how thin on the ground representation is.
This book was the book I needed, not just as a teen, but as an adult. This book is going to save the lives of so many queer LDS kids. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s an absolute fact.
As someone born into Mormonism, all the terminology, attitudes, language and doctrine was spot-on. They got it right. So many kids are going to find this book and have something that was written just for them, a candle in the dark. The scene where the hypothetical is mentioned? I did that. It crashed and burned in a slightly different, but still heartbreakingly predictable way. Too many of us die, either at our own hand, actively or passively, or are murdered, actively or passively. Too many of us end up with nothing once the walls are removed and we’re standing in that field for the first time. But for the ones who find this book, be it through libraries, or friends, or illicit ebook… they won’t be standing alone.
*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.
knitting in the dark 