whenyourfavouritedies:

justnevilledup:

dailyfrogs:

hi this is my favorite tiktok

Voice 1: Fuck metal straws, save the turtles in real life.

Voice 2: It’s a fucking frog.

Voice 1: Ohh my god, it’s a frog??

[Overlapping]

Voice 2: Do you not know-?

Voice 3: You dumbass.

Voice 1: Wait- 

[ID: A tiktok by @/dathoejoe of someone putting a flipflop on the putside grass at night, on it sits a large frog. They gently move the flipflop to encourage the frog to slide off onto the ground /End ID]

theundeadpumpkin:

kibbits:

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

[ID: tiktok video by user anglerraptor in reply to user runamuckfool’s comment of “What the actual fuck are you”

The person celebrates receiving the comment, then strikes proud poses in front of a non-binary flag that has dinosaurs, flame effects, and the text “fuck gender” superimposed on it, while they are surrounded with hearts, sparkles, and chains effects. /End ID]

[Audio description:

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

*Two trucks by Lemon Demon plays*

“Gender affirmed.” Said in a deep, echoey filter.

/End AD.]

the-sarcastic-shortie:

radishnt:

curapickt:

[Video Description: post from @/cock-holiday reading “Of course you have white hair and trauma”. OP then goes through an incredibly long #prev tags chain to end up at a tag from @/wiindblade reading “#santa” /end Description]

[Additional Description: the Wii Music is playing in the background. End of Description]

myguiltyotpleasures:

[video description: A tiktok by @ the.sign.guy. It depicts a person pulling a sheet of metal from a wall of shelves and shaking it with both hands gripping opposite edges in front of a camera so it wobbles and makes a sound. The person then proceeds to shake various sheets of metals in varying sizes, producing different sounds. /end video description]

mordredmanor:

zroem:

DnD party drawn in VR – A commission for @schnoodly.

3D model|twitter|instagram

[VD: clips of an artist’s work in progress in Oculus Quill on four characters, followed by slow turnarounds of 3D models from the waist up of each.

1: a close up on the torso and forearms of an archer in full plate, with one hand pulling back the serving of a bow, with a red-fletched arrow on the string. The artist uses a pen tool in the same red color to draw wavy tendrils rising from the fletching, then zooms out slightly.
2: a close up on the torso and arms of a mage with outstretched hands. White motes of light connected by golden lines, looking like constellations, are floating between the mage’s hands. The artist takes a dot tool and add small dots at the end of the lines radiating from the motes, making them look like fireworks.
3: the artist opens a menu and selects an overlay mode. They close the menu to show a close up of a character in a cape and long fingerless gloves who is crossing their arms and holding out one hand, with blobs of light and wavy tendrils of light radiating from their palm. The artist enlarges a large circular brush, overlaying a lighter yellow-white color on the character’s outstretched hand as if glowing.
4: a close up on the face of a character with pale skin, long red hair, and dark brown horns. The artist sculpts more tendrils of their hair with a pen tool.
5: A slow turnaround of a 3d model of the redheaded character, who has pale skin, long red hair, and two sets of dark horns one of which emerge above their ears and follow the curve of their head and the other of which poke up from their temples. They wear a teal apron with a bright orange flower design over red armor. Their hair waves as if in wind as sunset-colored cloud wisps surround them. They hold a cookie in one hand and more cookies as well as colorful flowers in a basket hanging off their arm.
6: A turnaround of the archer, who has dark feathers and tendrils of darkness and branching twigs surrounding them. They have medium brown skin and dark hair, and they wear a dark cape pulled up over their hair as they pull back the bowstring of a purple, bramble-looking bow. They also wear dark purple-colored plate, with golden designs on their gauntlets, pauldrons, chestplate, and the edge of their hood.
7: A turnaround of a mage, with pale purple skin and almost white short choppy hair. They wear a cape fastened over their breastplate and have their arms wrapped in white bandages. All around them, including between their hands as if they are casting magic, are motes of light. Around them are also many small dark flowers.
8: The final character turnaround is a person without armor, with medium skin and dark hair tied back. They wear a shawl around their shoulders, a blue outfit, and fingerless gloves as they stand confidently with arms crossed, holding out one hand with a small blog of radiating light. Around them are brown tendrils that resemble the branches of a tree, with yellow leaves and colorful ribbons on it]

The Controversies Around Helen Keller

Welcome to part three of my mini-series on Helen Keller. I took a Disability in Literature class in Spring 2022 that focused heavily on her legacy. In this class I’ve learned that the idea we have of who Helen Keller was is not entirely accurate. A lot of people either see her only as the seven year old at the water pump, a scene made famous by the film The Miracle Worker. Or, they see her as this elderly woman who could do no wrong and only wanted to help others, that is the image the American Foundation for the Blind and other similar charities and organizations popularized.

In Part One I discussed the tools and accommodations she used to navigate the world as a Deaf-blind woman.

In Part Two I discussed her interests in writing, socialism, animals, nature, performing, etc.

In this post I’m going to be discussing some of the controversies surrounding Keller–because there are a lot. Some of these are well known and publicized, and others have been brushed under the rug.

Before I get started I’m going to set up my content warnings: this article talks about racism, white privilege, ableism, internalized ableism, eugenics, child abuse and The Miracle Worker(1963)

Captain Keller of the Confederate Army

Fifteen years after the American Civil War ended, Captain Arthur Keller of the Confederate Army and his second wife, Kate Everette welcomed their first child into the world–Captain Keller’s third child, his first daughter. 

Arthur Keller was the owner of Ivy Green, a plantation located in north-west Alabama. The plantation was built decades before Helen Keller’s birth and until the 13th amendment it had always relied on the exploitation of of black slaves. If you read the wikipedia article for Ivy Green you will find that the page erases nearly every mention of slave holding. The closest mention to its history is the mention that the cottage Helen was born in was once a plantation office. The article focuses on it being the birthplace and childhood home of Helen Keller and has a section dedicated to The Miracle Worker, a deeply flawed movie about Anne Sullivan’s first month as Keller’s teacher.

In her biography, Keller acknowledges that both her parents had connections to the confederate army (her mother was the daughter of a confederate general). Keller writes this matter-of-factly with no clear distain or pride for her heritage in her tone.

The family on my father’s side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native of Switzerland, who settled in Maryland. One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education—rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

My grandfather, Caspar Keller’s son, “entered” large tracts of land in Alabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming and vivid accounts of these trips. My Grandmother Keller was a daughter of one of Lafayette’s aides, Alexander Moore, and granddaughter of Alexander Spotswood, an early Colonial Governor of Virginia. She was also second cousin to Robert E. Lee.

My father, Arthur H. Keller, was a captain in the Confederate Army, and my mother, Kate Adams, was his second wife and many years younger. Her grandfather, Benjamin Adams, married Susanna E. Goodhue, and lived in Newbury, Massachusetts, for many years. Their son, Charles Adams, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and moved to Helena, Arkansas. When the Civil War broke out, he fought on the side of the South and became a brigadier-general. He married Lucy Helen Everett, who belonged to the same family of Everetts as Edward Everett and Dr. Edward Everett Hale. After the war was over the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 1)

Keller does describe her relationship with some of the servants working on the plantation. The most significant was her childhood friend Martha Washington, the daughter of a servant who was a few years older than Keller. They played together, with Martha playing the role of both friend and baby-sitter to Helen. Keller shares these memories with fond sentiment, but you cannot and should not ignore that there are elements of racism and ignorance to privilege in her work.

I do not have the words, knowledge base or experience to give this passage the critical race theory analysis it deserves. What I do have is months of research into Helen Keller, reading her books and essays, reading scholarship from other disabled writers.

And if I’m going to write about her and recommend you read her works and develop your own opinions about her, I’m going to make sure you know the ugly, unflattering aspects too.

“In those days a little coloured girl, Martha Washington, the child of our cook, and Belle, an old setter, and a great hunter in her day, were my constant companions. Martha Washington understood my signs, and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished. It pleased me to domineer over her, and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter. I was strong, active, indifferent to consequences. I knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way, even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it. We spent a great deal of time in the kitchen, kneading dough balls, helping make ice-cream, grinding coffee, quarreling over the cake-bowl, and feeding the hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps.”

“Martha Washington had as great a love of mischief as I. Two little children were seated on the veranda steps one hot July afternoon. One was black as ebony, with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with shoestrings sticking out all over her head like corkscrews. The other was white, with long golden curls. One child was six years old, the other two or three years older. The younger child was blind—that was I—and the other was Martha Washington. We were busy cutting out paper dolls; but we soon wearied of this amusement, and after cutting up our shoestrings and clipping all the leaves off the honeysuckle that were within reach, I turned my attention to Martha’s corkscrews. She objected at first, but finally submitted. Thinking that turn and turn about is fair play, she seized the scissors and cut off one of my curls, and would have cut them all off but for my mother’s timely interference.” (The Story of My Life, Chapter 2)

While reading Chapter 2 you will find that when Keller talks about her early years before Anne Sullivan became her teacher and taught her how to communicate, she describes her young self as an unruly child who was apathetic and incapable of love. In the editor’s supplementary account of the autobiography you will also find that Keller does not actually remember her childhood much, and she is repeating a lot of the stories she was told. In a later section I’ll explore some of the reasons behind Keller’s outbursts as a child, but right now that isn’t the focus.

The focus is that Keller came from a privileged family, and though her family had lost some of the power it held before the Civil War, those advantages still helped her go far in life. Her family was able to pay Anne Sullivan a salary, able to pay for Keller to travel to Boston to study at the Perkins School for the Blind. After her father died when Keller was a teenager, it seems a lot of her education was also paid for by generous donations. 

The woman writing the above excerpts is twenty-two years old and she’s still learning the world. Because of that privilege it doesn’t occur to her that Martha Washington put up with Helen’s behavior because her mother worked for their family and she couldn’t retaliate.

A few years later, after discovering socialism and beginning to advocate for labor rights, the way Keller wrote about minorities began to change. Along with joining the International Workers of the World Union, she also openly supported the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) both in writing a public letter of her support as well as sending them a financial donation.

You can read her letter to Oswald Garrison Villard, Vice-President of the NAACP here.

She also co-founded the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) in 1920 with several others.

Southern states, especially her home state of Alabama, did not react well to this. Her hometown especially, because despite the fame she had brought Tuscumbia, she was no longer welcome among them. 

After her death, however, Tuscumbia cashed in. Using the recently released movie The Miracle Worker to rewrite Keller’s legacy. The movie reduced Keller to her seven year old self, many years before she would develop her political opinions, making her more palatable to racist tastes. Ivy Green became a museum in honor of Keller, attracting tourists from all over the country. They opened a gift shop and every summer they would hold a theatrical production of the play The Miracle Worker was originally based off of.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell is most famously known for inventing the telephone, but his legacy left scars on the Deaf community. Bell came from a family business of elocutionists. Elocution is the study of pronunciation, grammar, tone, etc. The overall aim of elocutionists was to standardize the English language and improve how native speakers used it. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, invented the Visual Speech System–which was a method of lip reading taught to deaf students. In the 1870’s, A. G. Bell visited several schools for the deaf to teach the Visual Speech System.

In 1886 Arthur Keller wrote to Alexander Graham Bell to ask for advice in educating his daughter, and later met Bell in person with Helen in tow. Bell had recommended Keller reach out to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, but he took a liking to young Helen and became invested in her education. In her autobiography, Midstream, she describes him as one of her oldest friends.

“Someone has said that a beautiful memory is the most precious wealth one can possess. I am indeed rich in happy memories of Dr. Bell. Most people know him as the inventor of the telephone; those who are familiar with his work for the deaf, believe that what he did for them was as important as his great invention. I admired him for both, but I remember him not so much as a great inventor or as a great benefactor, but as an affectionate and understanding friend.

I could almost call him my oldest friend. Even before my teacher came he held out a warm hand to me in the dark; indeed, it was through him that Mr. Anagnos sent her to me, but little did he dream, or I, that he was to be the medium of God’s best gift [Sullivan] to me.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend, pp. 107)

Helen was a child when they met, but Bell was a renowned inventor in the middle of his life. He valued himself as an educator and believed that helping the Deaf was what his real calling was. He was wrong, put plainly. Bell tried to replace sign language with lip reading and oralism. He believed it was better in the long run to insist on integration of the Deaf and hearing worlds, rather than risk Deaf communities becoming isolated and unable to communicate with hearing people.  

Decades later we have the research to prove that Deaf/HOH students need sign language for their best chance in success. Early access to sign language helps with brain development in small children. Forcing Deaf/HOH children to rely on speech only negatively impacts their language development.

Here is a link to an article that further explains the necessity for sign language in early development.

“All his life Dr. Bell earnestly advocated the oral method of instruction for the deaf. Eloquently he pointed out the folly of developing a deaf variety of the human race, and showed the economic, moral, and social advantages that would result from teaching them in the public schools with normal children. He regarded the sign system as a barrier to the acquisition of language and insistently urged its abolition. He deplored the segregation and intermarriage of deaf mutes, and felt that so long as their only way of communication was through signs and the manual alphabet, they would be isolated from society and very few of them would ever rise to the position of the average intelligent man or woman.

Yet the manual alphabet and the sign system have zealous defenders. They are both easier to acquire, but the ultimate results are not comparable to those of the oral system by means of which the pupil is taught to read the lips and answer in his own voice. In my case there was no choice : my additional handicap of blindness made the use of the manual alphabet essential. Later I learned to read the lips, but I think my education would have been greatly retarded if I had begun with the lip reading in the first place.”(Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 113-114)

Because of the social capital A. G. Bell had as the inventor of the telephone, his power stretched far. And because Keller was only a small child when they first met, his philosophy left deep impressions. Keller adopted his stance on teaching oralism and sign language. In some of her writing, Keller expressed a belief that deafness was a worse disability to live with than blindness. From her perspective, blind people had a much easier time at connecting to the world through communication. She believed deafness was much more isolating and lonely.

“You who see and hear may not realize that the teaching of speech to the deaf is one of the divinest miracles of the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps it is impossible for one who sees and hears to realize what it means to be both deaf and dumb. Ours is not the stillness which soothes the weary senses; it is an inhuman silence which severs and estranges. It is a silence not to be broken by a word of greeting, or the song of birds, or the sigh of a breeze. It is a silence which isolates cruelly, completely. Two hundred years ago there was not a ray of hope for us. In an indifferent world not one voice was lifted in our behalf. Yet hearing Is the deepest, most humanizing, philosophical sense man possesses and lonely ones all over the world, because of Dr. Bell’s efforts, have been brought into the pleasant social ways of mankind.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 115)

Peter Fagan: Love and Sexuality for Women

In chapter seven of Midstream, Keller relates two different conversations she had with Bell on the subject of her falling in love and getting married.

“It is not you, but circumstances, that will determine your work,” he said, “We are only instruments of the powers that control the universe. Remember, Helen, do not confine yourself to any particular kind of self-expression. Write, speak, study, do whatever you possibly can. The more you accomplish, the more you will help the deaf everywhere.”

After a long pause he said, “It seems to me, Helen, a day must come when love, which is more than friendship, will knock at the door of your heart and demand to be let in.”

“What made you think of that?” I asked.

“Oh, I often think of your future. To me you are a sweet, desirable young girl, and it is natural to think about love and happiness when we are young.”

“I do think of love sometimes,” I admitted; “but it is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”

He sat silent for a minute or two, thought-troubled, I fancied. Then his dear fingers touched my hand again like a tender breath, and he said, “Do not think that because you cannot see or hear, you are debarred from the supreme happiness of woman. Heredity is not involved in your case, as it is in so many others.”

“Oh, but I am happy, very happy!” I told him. “I have my teacher and my mother and you, and all kinds of interesting things to do. I really don’t care a bit about being married.”

“I know,” he answered, “but life does strange things to us. You may not always have your mother, and in the nature of things Miss Sullivan will marry, and there may be a barren stretch in your life when you will be very lonely.”

“I can’t imagine a man wanting to marry me,” I said. “I should think it would seem like marrying a statue*”

“You are very young,” he replied, patting my hand tenderly, “and it’s natural that you shouldn’t take what I have said seriously now, but I have long wanted to tell you how I felt about your marrying, should you ever wish to. If a good man should desire to make you his wife, don’t let anyone persuade you to forego that happiness because of your peculiar handicap.”

I was glad when Mrs. Bell and Miss Sullivan joined us, and the talk became less personal.

Years later Dr. Bell referred to that conversation. Miss Sullivan and I had gone to Washington to tell him of her intention to marry John Macy. He said playfully, “I told you, Helen, she would marry. Are you going to take my advice now and build your own nest?”

“No,” I answered, “I feel less inclined than ever to embark upon the great adventure. I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 7, My Oldest Friend pp. 133-135)

Anne Sullivan married John Macy in 1905 and they lived together with Helen in a farmhouse in Wretham, Massachusetts. John Macy worked as a lecturer at Harvard University. Meanwhile Keller wrote and published essays and went on lecture tours with Sullivan at her side. Somewhere between 1913 and 1914 the Macys’ marriage fell apart. They never divorced, but John Macy did move out of the house. Keller hired Polly Thompson as a secretary to reduce the workload as Sullivan’s health grew gradually worse. In 1916 Thompson went home to Scotland for a vacation and Keller temporarily hired on a friend of John Macy’s as her secretary. His name was Peter Fagan, he was a socialist like Macy and Keller, and twenty-nine years old. 

In Chapter 11 of Midstream, “In the Whirlpool,” Keller describes the upset of recent life events (Macy moving out, Sullivan being ill, the war in Europe souring the moods of audiences) had caused her daily life and how in the middle of that chaos something new had happened–she fell in loved and was loved in return.

In Midstream, she only ever refers to Peter Fagan as “the young man” and describes him as vaguely as possible. However, there are newspaper articles which identify him later.

“I was sitting alone in my study one evening, utterly despondent. The young man who was still acting as my secretary in the absence of Miss Thomson, came in and sat down beside me. For a long time he held my hand In silence, then he began talking to me tenderly* I was surprised that he cared so much about me. There was sweet comfort in his loving words. I listened all a-tremble. He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.

His love was a bright sun that shone upon my helplessness and isolation. The sweetness of being loved enchanted me, and I yielded to an imperious longing to be a part of a man’s life. For a brief space I danced in and out of the gates of Heaven, wrapped up in a web of bright imaginings.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 178-179)

Helen and Peter kept their relationship a secret because they anticipated Kate Keller (Helen’s mother who was staying with them at the time) to react very poorly to the news. They planned to tell Sullivan first, believing she would be sympathetic and help smooth tides. Afterall, Sullivan was blind in her youth and then had her vision restored with surgery (though she was slowly going blind again) when she was about twenty years old. Sullivan knew what it was like to be disabled and knew the highs and lows of love and marriage.

In the interim they spent their time together and applied for a marriage license in secret. The marriage license is what let the cat out of the bag, because suddenly the press was firing up with articles about Helen Keller getting married. The newspapers were how Kate Keller found out and she immediately confronted Helen about it.

“As we parted one night, I told him I had made up my mind definitely to tell my teacher everything the next morning. But the next morning Fate took matters into her own hands and tangled the web, as is her wont. I was dressing, full of the excitement of what I was going to communicate to my loved ones, when my mother entered my room in great distress. With a shaking hand she demanded, “What have you been doing with that creature? The papers are full of a dreadful story about you and him. What does it mean? Tell me I” I sensed such hostility towards my lover in her manner and words that in a panic I pretended not to know what she was talking about. “Are you engaged to him? Did you apply for a marriage license ?” Terribly frightened, and not knowing just what had happened, but anxious to shield my lover, I denied everything. I even lied to Mrs. Macy, fearing the consequences that would result from the revelation coming to her in this shocking way. My mother ordered the young man out of the house that very day.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 180)

Kate Keller then took Helen to Alabama where Helen’s younger sister Mildred was living with her husband. Peter Fagan attempted to talk to the family in Alabama but Helen’s brother-in-law chased him off with a shotgun. They were forced to separate.

A little more than ten years later Helen relates all this in Midstream and reflects on what could have been.

“The brief love will remain in my life, a little island of joy surrounded by dark waters. I am glad that I have had the experience of being loved and desired. The fault was not in the loving, but in the circumstances. A lovely thing tried to express itself; but conditions were not right or adequate, and it never blossomed.” (Midstream My Later Life, Chapter 11, In the Whirlpool pp. 182)

The circumstances in question were an ableist society. Although there was no specific law against a disabled person marrying, there were a lot of societal pressures preventing it because society feared disabled couples would produce disabled children. This led to “great minds” like Alexander Graham Bell firmly believing that Deaf people should not intermarry. It is why he brought up that Keller’s disabilities were not hereditary when they spoke of marriage in the section I provided earlier.

Keller’s family might have objected to the marriage specifically because Keller was the breadwinner in her household and if she married suddenly a man would have control over that.

Eugenics and Internalized Ableism

If you look back on her writing, you’ll notice threads of internalized ableism. She viewed herself as a burden because all her life she’d been dependent on someone else to translate for her, someone to guide her. No matter how accomplished she became, she would always be aware of how much she needed others. 

Look again at that moment where Helen tells A. G. Bell that she’s decided she’ll never marry: 

“I have fully made up my mind that a man and a woman must be equally equipped to weather successfully the vicissitudes of life. It would be a severe handicap to any man to saddle upon him the dead weight of my infirmities. I know I have nothing to give a man that would make up for such an unnatural burden.”

That is a shitty way to feel about yourself, as if you will be nothing but a curse to those you love. And when Keller describes how Peter declared his love for her, she focuses on his promise to help and assist her as well as love her. 

“He was full of plans for my happiness. He said if I would marry him, he would always be near to help me in the difficulties of life. He would be there to read to me, look up material for my books and do as much as he could of the work my teacher had done for me.”

At the time when Midstream was written, Anne Sullivan was living with poor health and everyone in Keller’s circle was watching with bated breath because they believed Helen would fall apart after Anne died. And the death of a life-long friend is debilitating in its own way. Helen had a best friend of fifty years who she spent most of her day every day with, but the grief of losing a best friend wasn’t what others feared. Even Helen herself had doubts about how she would manage when Sullivan died.

Keller was a eugenicist herself and that fact complicates a lot of her advocacy, especially her stance on being pro-birth control. Keller was also in favor of euthanizing infants deemed too disabled to live an enjoyable life, although she firmly believed that no one person could hold that kind of power and that the responsibility must fall upon a board committee of qualified professionals.

She also thought poorly of people with intellectual disabilities, sometimes throwing them under the bus while justifying her right to be heard because she had an analytical mind. The cause of this ableism I think stems from the fact that Keller’s mind was her saving grace. Her hunger for knowledge, love of reading, are what made adults pay attention to her as a child. It’s what got her through college. I think in the same way that sighted and hearing people cannot imagine living a happy life without sight and sound, Keller couldn’t imagine enjoying life if she had an intellectual disability. 

It doesn’t make her right, far from it. She isn’t justified or forgiven for her eugenics and ableism. It puts her in the same light as every other major historical figure- she did some things right, some things wrong. Her opinions are not always agreeable. She made mistakes.

I highly recommend checking out this podcast “The Helen Keller Exorcism” by Radio Lab, especially if Keller’s stance on eugenics stymes you. The podcast interviews several disabled scholars, including two deaf-blind women, Elsa Sjunneson and Haben Girma. Along with eugenics, it explores Keller’s internalized ableism and her relationship with Peter Fagan. The podcast is nuance and insightful.

The Miracle Worker

In 1957 William Gibson wrote a play about Helen Keller called The Miracle Worker. It was inspired and sourced from Keller’s autobiography The Story of My Life (1903). Included in the autobiography were letters Anne Sullivan wrote to a friend describing her experience teaching Helen in the early years. Some of the scenes in the play and movie are direct references to events described in the letters. However genuine the source material is, the play dramatizes the events for entertainment value. The greatest example comes from a letter where Sullivan described trying to teach Helen table manners and how it resulted in a food fight and a temper tantrum, but eventually Helen sat down and ate with a spoon. The movie version turns this into a ten minute scene where food and plates are thrown and furniture is knocked over.

The play first premiered on October 19, 1959 on Broadway in the Playhouse Theatre. The play was directed by Arthur Penn. Seven year old Helen Keller was played by thirteen year old Patty Duke. Anne Sullivan was played by Anne Bancroft. In 1963 there was a film adaptation of the play, with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft resuming their roles. Patty Duke was sixteen when the movie was filmed.

Some problematic details I want to point out:

If you have any experience with child abuse, this movie will be incredibly uncomfortable to watch. The viewer’s first introduction to it is the scene where Helen’s parents have said goodbye to the doctor who treated her for a fever and, turning back to their nineteen month old daughter in her crib, realize she is not responding to their voices or movement. Kate Keller’s actress lets out a horror movie type scream and the father runs in. They should and shake the crib, trying to stir a reaction from Helen. There is no baby on screen but the camera looks up at the parents almost like it’s from Keller’s view point.

Throughout the film, viewers must watch adults regularly shout and scream at Helen, usually out of frustration at her, losing their patience with her inability to communicate or understand what they want. Anne Sullivan’s actress physically shakes and drags Patty Duke through the dining room scene. Plates are thrown and shatter loudly in that scene. Furniture is turned over. 

Patty Duke also performs a caricature of a Deaf-blind child rather than an actual person. Picture every stereotype you know of, Duke performed it. She stumbles through every scene with her hands held out, head tilted back. She makes loud whining noises in an imitation of the deaf-child caricature. She has loud temper-tantrums 

On the subject of temper-tantrums, I feel the need to state that yes, young Helen Keller did have a lot of those. They happened because she was trying to communicate a need or want and the adults responsible for taking care of her couldn’t understand. Or, the adults were trying to make her do something, but they did not have the tools to explain the how and why of what they were doing, and young Helen grew frustrated. There was a natural reason why Helen had episodes like this and after her communication needs were resolved, they decreased to the point of nearly disappearing. The problem is that the play was over-dramatizing this to portray her as an unruly, feral child that Anne Sullivan saved.

Which brings me to the language heard in the film: multiple members of Keller’s family insist she’s more animal than human. The half-brother watches Helen repeat the hand-signs Sullivan tears her and tells Sullivan that Helen is only imitating her like a monkey because it’s a game. At the beginning of the film her family talks about sending her to an asylum, until Kate Keller convinces her husband to write to the Perkins school as a last ditch effort to find a solution.

The movie features flashbacks to Sullivan’s own childhood, where she lived in a filthy, neglectful and abusive asylum between the ages of 8-14. The scenes themselves are too dark and blurry to distinguish anything, which is a directorial choice to represent that Anne was nearly completely blind during those years. After she graduated Perkins School for the Blind, Sullivan was able to receive surgery to restore some of her sight. In one scene, Sullivan has a nightmare where she hears her younger brother’s voice, Jimmy. Jimmy was also disabled and left in the asylum, but he died within a year or two from an illness he caught while playing in the morgue with rats with Anne.

AndThe Miracle Worker is the most famous representation of Helen Keller in history. 

It is the movie that at least two generations of children grew up on, being introduced to disability through the movie’s deeply flawed and inaccurate portrayal. This movie won awards and has been remade at least twice. The Ivy Green museum performs the play every summer and sells merchandise associated with the movie, including DVD copies of the movie. 

For the record, Helen Keller was still alive when the movie was released. She was eighty-three years old and had retired from public speaking due to her health failing, including a few small strokes. There is no published response to the movie, I cannot even say if she ever viewed it or had the plot described to her. What I can tell you is that before she was even thirty years old, she was exhausted with the public’s fascination with her childhood. She longed to talk about her life goals as an adult, her opinion on politics, anything other than a told-to-death story of the water pump. 

But while other self-recording creatures are permitted at least to seem to change the subject, apparently nobody cares what I think of the tariff, the conservation of our natural resources, or the conflicts which revolve about the name of Dreyfus. If I offer to reform the education system of the world, my editorial friends say, “That is interesting. But will you please tell us what idea you had of goodness and beauty when you were six years old?” (The World I Live In, Preface)

TikTok and #HelenKellerwasfake

In 2020 there was a series of TikToks posted by a handful of different creators claiming that Helen Keller wasn’t real–and “wasn’t real” here could mean many different things. Some claimed that she was a real person who faked her deafness and blindness for attention. Others claimed that she was just a puppet and someone else was writing her speeches and books. Some believed she was just a character in a story, as though someone wrote multiple books about a character in an autobiographical narrative style.

Someone claimed that there was no way she wrote a dozen books because nobody could write that many books, and that even one book from a deaf-blind woman would have been impressive. Nevermind that authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett and many others did not exist and publish prolifically. 

Here is an article of 8 memoirs written by blind writers, including Helen Keller and Haben Girma.

Someone pointed out that Helen Keller once piloted a plane, with a smug “got’chya” attitude. 

Oh no, you go me (*sarcasm*) blind people can’t fly planes. Neither can the ten year olds pilots sometimes bring into the cockpit and allow to hold the steering wheel while their co-pilot takes control.

Did I ever tell you that I once captained a ferry? And by captained, I mean I was five years old and my uncle brought me aboard the ferry he was employed at and let me blow the horn a few times.

But it’s true actually and there is video evidence of it. Helen Keller actually flew a bi-plane with a co-pilot. She did it while filming Deliverance in 1919, a silent film about her life. I found a clip of her flying the plane if you’d like to see it.

[Video Description: “And isn’t everyone flying these days” a radio caster says while a silent clip plays. 

Helen is surrounded by her loved ones (Anne Sullivan, Polly Thompson, Kate Keller, and her younger brother) as they fuss about her, buttoning her coat and securing her helmet. Keller turns with a smile, accommodating them. 

“Helen knows the scene is absurd,” the radio caster says, “and her mother, brother, and Anne Sullivan consider the flight hazardous. But there is no stopping the producers whose inspirations change daily. Helen Keller herself has never feared physical action.”

Helen climbs aboard the plane, struggling a little.

“As a child she learned to dive into the ocean with a rope around her waist tied to a stake on the shore. She has enjoyed tobogganing down steep New England slopes. And she knows to that if it will serve to rouse public interests about the capabilities of the blind, almost anything she can do to get attention can be justified.”

Keller settles into the front cockpit, getting comfy and roaming her hands along the surface to familiarize and orientate herself with this new environment. The camera angle zooms out as someone gives the plane propellor a big push to help it get started. It whirls and swirls up a cloud of dust on the now visible field.

The plane takes off the ground while the radio caster says, “But the plane ride, though pointless itself, still thrills the onlookers.”

The camera switches to watch Keller’s loved ones watching the plane fly with baited breath.

Over clips of the plane in the air, the caster says, “Helen is in the air for half an hour and says she feels more physical freedom than ever in her life.” A clip of Keller and her copilot in the plane plays. Keller is smiling as the wings of the plane sway from side to side. 

The plane begins to approach the ground to land. “Only later does she learn that in this landing she and the pilot are in genuine danger of motor engine failure.” The plane lands smoothly despite the weighing danger.

“Helen’s good humor is taxed much more than her courage,” the radio caster says. “There will be scenes [in Deliverance] where she dresses herself just to show the public she can, and in which she sleeps to prove to the curious that she closes her eyes.”

The plane comes to a stop, engine shutting off, and the crowd of loved ones and flight crew approach the plane. Helen is given a hand by her brother to keep her balance as she climbs down. As soon as both feet are on the ground she turns to hug Anne Sullivan first. The clip ends and shows a portrait of Helen Keller from when she was in her twenties. End of Video Description]

Here is what I want you to know about the TikTok controversy:
It wasn’t new. All through Keller’s life there were skeptics who thought she couldn’t do all the things she was doing. There were people who believed insane things about her like that she didn’t close her eyes to sleep, as you saw in the video. There were people who believed someone else wrote her speeches and she was little more than a puppet.

But that was never the lasting narrative. Those dissenting voices were disproven by everyone who actually spent time talking to her, who experienced both her witty and insightful conversation and the day-to-day struggle she had.

The TikTok creators saying these things now do so for a few reasons: 

One, they genuinely don’t understand anything about blindness or deafness, they have never been given the chance to learn how disabled people navigate their lives. If you know someone in this position, I genuinely recommend sending them a link to one of my other Keller posts in which I explore and explain all the tools and accommodations Keller used to navigate her life [link].

Two, controversy generates views. Sensationalism has been the marketing strategy of the media for decades, stirring up emotion instead of informing. TikTok thrives on views, generating money for the handful of creators with enough of a following to enter the creator’s fund (although their earnings are a pittance compared to what the app makers get). 

I encourage you to do your own research in cases like this. Don’t just take my word for it, look at the sources I’ve linked for you. Read Keller’s books. Enter your arguments fully armed.

About the author of this post:

Hello, I’m Mimzy. I run a writing advice blog and my most popular subject is teaching writers how to better write blind characters. This includes helping them build interesting blind characters, determine the limits and skills of their characters, brainstorm accommodations for them (especially in fantasy and sci-fi stories) and avoid ableist tropes and phrasing. I am a visually impaired writer and currently I’m in university studying English literature and Disability Studies. 

accessibleaesthetics:

bodhrancomedy:

More tips on hearing aids and writing them!

[Video Description: TikTok user @bow_asintakea_rawn talking to the camera and speaking in different backgrounds. The words they say are above them in writing, along with the occasional emoji.

“Tips for when you get hearing aids! Also Hearing writers, this is so you don’t embarrass yourselves. You are now the Wicked Witch of the West. Rain is now your enemy. Good luck. Hearing aids go in boxes.”

They open a small black box that fits in their hand. 

“Not pockets. Don’t put them in there. You know how you hate hearing your voice in recordings? You’re gonna have a new one. Can you wear glasses and hearing aids?“

They put on a pair of sunglasses. These remain on in every outdoor setting throughout the rest of the video.

“Yes. Next question. Probably a good time to note: you will get slightly scared of bees. Films are so much better if you can hear the music in them. Prepare for a period of physical adjust-oof-ment.”

They stumble a little.

“You will become incredibly clumsy. Dunno if you know this, but hearing aids”

They hold one up.

“- or at least mine - are color-coded. Red goes in your right and blue goes in your left.”

They hold up an alcohol wipe packet.

“Nothing alcohol-based. They will destroy the protective lining.”

The words “(of most molds)” are added at the end of the second sentence in the words on screen.

“No one touches the hearing aids. If you have to handle my hearing aids you will handle them like they’re forensic evidence. No touchie! I can’t believe I have to say this - but I can’t wear them in the shower.”

They turn on the shower a moment before switching to the next scene. 

“And most importantly, hearing aids don’t work for everybody. They just happen to work for me so do whatever makes you happy and what makes you comfortable. Peach out.

The make a peace sign with their hands.

End Video Description.]

tikkety-tok:

I thought it was gonna be the other way around, but this is way better

[Video ID: a tiktok by user @ jillieholiday. The text spoken by the robotic voice at the beginning of the video is also displayed in the form of an onscreen caption. While the voice reads the caption, the video shows a girl in a green hat, looking amused and covering her mouth as though to suppress laughter. The video switches to footage of a balding, gray-haired pastor who stands at an on-stage podium wearing a gray suit and red tie. He remains relatively still as he speaks, up until the point where he says “I’d better just get used to it”. At this point raises his arms to around waist-height a couple times, seemingly in exasperation. When he says “get it out of your system,” he raises his arms to around the same height and waves his hands back and forward slightly, as though trying to shoo the audience away. When he pauses, he looks down at the podium with a sigh before saying that he’s “not used to being laughed at” End ID]

[CC: 

Robotic voice: “a pastor’s time slot got switched with a comedian’s at a Christian conference I’m laughing so hard”

Pastor: “So I thought I would spare you the analysis and just tell you up front um…I’m a sinner.” (The audience laughs.)

Pastor: “A man who never feels sure of his motives, including the one’s I feel right now about why I’m doing this.” (The audience laughs again.)

Pastor: “And–you’re a very strange audience” (The audience laughs again. For a brief moment, the audio stops abruptly). I’d better just get used to it. I–this is a *serious* talk in case you–wondered. (The audience begins laughing in the middle of his sentence. The laughter grows in volume as the pastor reaches the end of his sentence.) “Get it out of your system”.

Pastor: “But, uh. (He pauses and seems to take a deep breath.) “I’m just not used to being laughed at, y’know?)]

appraisedtiktoks:

[Video ID: A tiktok by user @ skinnypudge. The person in the video is offscreen, speaking to a black cat that is laying on the floor. All that can be seen of the person speaking is his hand, which holds a tiny cowboy hat. After he says “Here we go,” he tosses the cowboy hat like a frisbee, and the hat lands right on top of the cat’s head. When the music starts playing at the end, the video shows a close up still-shot of the cat wearing the cowboy hat. The cat appears unamused. End ID]

[CC: 

Person behind camera: “Okay, if you wanna be the sheriff, you have to catch the hat, okay? Here we go!” (He stops speaking to throw the hat. When it lands, he laughs. He begins speaking again through his laughter). “That was literally the first try!” 

(As the video switches to the still-shot of the cat wearing the cowboy hat, the audio abruptly switches to the Animal Crossing Wild World Daytime Town Hall Theme)]

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

[Video ID: A TikTok by user @ catboyslimshady. The video shows a person with short green and blue dyed hair, an orange shirt, and a pink Trolls jacket speaking into the camera. When asking “Hey, are you a male or a female?” they speak using body language that suggests that they are imitating someone who is confused. They then switch to talking as themself using a more casual demeanor, saying “Mmm, actually, for your information, I’m Gmail” before turning and whipping their head around rapidly. Their face becomes distorted as the Gmail logo appears on their face with a fade-in. End ID]

[CC: “(Imitating someone else) Hey, are you a male or a female?” (Speaking as themself) Mmm, actually, for your information? (They give a brief dramatic pause). I’m Gmail. (As the Gmail logo appears onscreen, distorted laughter followed by rock instrumentals can be heard)]

feedyourlocalgoth:

demonicstain:

transcribed-described:

vulcanette:

[ID: a tiktok by @/christiantheshowm, with a caption that reads “Millennials/Gen Z’s as Therapists:” and is a conversation between a therapist and his patient. The therapist is a black man with a beard, wearing a suit and round glasses. the patient is a black man lying down on a couch with one hand resting on his head. he is also wearing a white hoodie. the hoodie is up and the drawstrings are pulled tightly so that only his eyes, nose, and mouth are shown.]

Transcript:

Therapist: So how have things been?

Patient: Maybe I was just put on this earth just to die.

Therapist:Ok.

Patient: Like I’m not meant to find love or be happy.

Therapist: I got you.

Patient: Like I’m just supposed to die.

(the patient turns to the therapist who nods. the camera zooms in.)

Therapist (putting a pen up by his mouth): It do be like that sometimes.

Patient:It do be like that sometimes.

(the camera zooms in more)

Therapist:But not all the time.

That actually made me feel better.

Why did this like bring a tear to me eyes

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

[Video ID: A tiktok by user @ ricotaquito. The speaker, a man who appears to be Hispanic and/or Latino, with shoulder length black hair and a mustache, stands in front of the camera wearing a “JUST DO IT” t-shirt tucked into brown pants. The caption above him reads “Me in 8th grade defending myself after being called gay”.

As he begins talking, the speaker leans forward slightly, his arms hanging at his side. As he speaks, he punctuates his words with small, sharp backwards movements of his arms. As his tone becomes angrier and more argumentative, he often steps forward slightly, moving his neck from side to side, almost but not quite tightening his fingers into fists. When he says “Lady Gaga’s just a really good artist,” he lifts his arm sharply to about hip-height, pointing in front of him while trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. He begins to laugh uproariously and, as he does, on-screen text reads “I broke character” followed by three emojis.

He tosses his head back, turning around in a circle while alternating between leaning forward and leaning backward from laughing. Once he faces towards the camera again, he briefly falls forward from laughter, throwing his head forward and putting one hand on his knee while the other grips a desk next to him for stability. He then stands up straight and reaches in front of him to turn the camera off, still laughing. End ID].

[CC: Speaker: Shut up! I’m not gay! I like girls more than *you* do, idiot. God…Lady Gaga’s just a really good artist.

(He wheezes and begins to laugh uproariously. At the end of the video, he says something else that is difficult to make out through his laughter. It sounds as though he says “That’s so–” before the video cuts off.)]

waitwhatdidtheysay:

tiktoksthataregood-ish:

[captions]

[offscreen] “Here’s the deal, baby, you can only pick one of these books. The Communist Manifesto, or The Rainbow Fish. Which one will it be? [Russian choir music begins] Welcome to the team, comrade!!”

[Video description: A TikTok by user @ helloitsmall. The legs of the person speaking can be seen, but they are otherwise offscreen. They have a copy of children’s book “The Rainbow Fish” on their left knee and a copy of “The Communist Manifesto” on their right knee. A toddler stands in front of the person them. The camera zooms in on each book as their titles are said, then focuses on the toddler, who looks back and forth between the two books before picking up The Communist Manifesto. The camera zooms in on the child’s face. End ID]

appraisedtiktoks:

[Video description: a tiktok by user @ jennettemccurdy. She stands in front of the camera with a cheerful-looking expression. The caption onscreen reads “wondering what it would have been like to have had a healthy, non-traumatic childhood”. She lipsyncs with the audio and then starts dancing, moving her shoulders up and down (i.e. one shoulder up, one down while alternating between the two) and moving her head around in a small circle. End ID].

[CC: (Faint music can be heard playing in the background of the video. After a few seconds, an audio clip from Kanye West’s 2017 Grammy’s speech plays, which the woman in the video (Jenette McCurdy), lip-syncs to.)

Kanye West: “I guess we’ll never know”

(The sound of cheering from the audience from the Grammy’s overlaps with the song playing in the background, which seems to be a pop song of some kind)]

tiktoksforlosers:

[Video ID: a tiktok by user @ bbeckettt showing a zoom meeting for a math class of some sort. The teacher is writing on a piece of paper, which is displayed on screen for the class and says “Ex” followed by the quadratic equation 6x squared + 2x-8. Below the equation is scratch work to find the GCF (greatest common factor) of 2, which has been used to simplify the equation to 2(3x squared + 1x-8). The tiktok caption reads “I left it on” followed by a crying emoji. End ID]

[CC: 

Teacher: “So it’s gotta be four and three. ‘Kay, any questions before I go on from here?”

Student: (They respond with a voice filter which makes their voice sound like several robot or alien voices of varying pitches speaking all at once. Whatever it is that they are saying is made completely incomprehensible by the voice filter.)

Teacher: (stunned pause) …Great. I really understood that well!]

tabslabs:

prime-tiktoks:

[video description: a tiktok by @/catdogcody a white and orange cat is perched on a red fence looking around, surrounded by snow. “We had 41 inches of snow a few days ago” is written on the bottom in blue text. Capone’s “Oh No” plays in the background. “We took Cody outside to see it…” appears on top shortly after. Someone in a blue coat reaches out to put some of the snow on the cat as it begins to look around, as if preparing to jump off the fence. 

Person with camera: okay if he jumps in the snow, be ready to grab him- (The cat jumps into the snow and the person with the blue coat tries & fails to catch him)

Person with camera: -and make sure he doesn’t- *squeals* (The cat is fully submerged in the snow leaving only a hole that begins to fill in with powdery snow as he moves around)

Person with camera, audibly distressed: where’d he go?! *nervous laughter* 

Nervous laughter continues as the person with the blue coat digs out the cat and picks him up. Still images from the cat’s ungraceful descent are displayed as the video ends.]