2018-04-19 12:10:17 (edited by ryok 2018-04-19 12:11:45)

HI all.
A lot of people ask me, how do you see people if you're totally blind. Why don't you touch faces etc.
Personally, I feel like touching face is sort of an invasion of privacy. I mean, I don't really get it. The way I look at people is by looking at their personality, behaviors etc.
The way that people look isn't a primary thing to me.
For some reason, I feel like this is weird in a way because I don't tend to put people's looks into prospective.
If you think of it deeply,  In a way, it feels like you're talking to a futuristic AI.
I wonder if anyone here thinks the same way as I do and is that OK or should I change that?
Best regards.
Ahmad.

2018-04-19 12:56:13

I dunno, but I don't touch faces either.  I find it a rather awkward practice.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2018-04-19 13:45:01

Back when I was in year8, for you Americans that’s sort of like 8th grade. Anyways there was this really, tutchy feely guy, he was also more or less without useful site. Anyways he was ridiculed, got called an asshole by a lot of people even thaught he was gay. So my advice to you guys, don’t do that.

2018-04-19 14:09:38

Hello folks! Ryok, I agree with your point of view. Touching someone's face is not only disrespectful, but also embarrassing, specially when you're not very close to this person, or...don't know, maybe sometimes you have to do so if you are a massage therapist for example. Other than that, I prefer not to pay atention to how a person looks physically.
Best regards, Haramir.

The true blind is the one who refuses to see.

2018-04-19 14:47:11

Hi,
I agree with ryok here.
I don't like touching the faces of people, in fact, I don't think of  it as an invasion of privacy, but it is just unnatural to me.
However, I know what you mean.
I never took in mind how people look physically, I always focus on what the person is saying, how are his reactions etc.
Indeed if you are talking with someone and you tell him or her something that is either surprising or even shocking, but they didn't react by words to it, people can see on their faces if they are surprised or shocked or really any feeling, but you don't know what is happening because even if you touch their face you will not know anything.
Plus, I can't imagine someone touching someone else's face to see their reaction after they've told them a bad news or something lol.

2018-04-19 15:00:22

For me, people are primarily a list of concepts. I think even for sighted people the image of someone's face just acts as an anchor with which the ideas of the people they're imagining are associated.

So yeah, I don't think touching faces gives you any particular information anyway. Characterization on voice makes more sense if you want to do that.

2018-04-19 15:03:41

Yup, agreed with you guys.

2018-04-19 15:05:31

This is like a telepath asking a non-telepath "how do you know when someone is sitting behind you and what they're thinking about?" Answer: we don't, and generally only care if there's good reason to be concerned about it, which, the vast majority of the time, there is not.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-04-19 15:07:52 (edited by flackers 2018-04-19 15:16:51)

As someone who's lost his sight, I think not being able to see faces just to see what a person looks like is quite a positive thing. Not being able to see facial expressions and make eye-contact is a pretty big drawback socially, but just seeing how someone looks in terms of facial features, I'm glad I can't do that anymore. You make a lot of decisions about people just on how they look, and not how they are. Especially when it comes to the opposite sex, or whatever your sexual preference may be. Touching faces is something I'd never do, and I would suggest those who've never had sight not do it either. I think it's an invasion of personal space, and it doesn't really matter what their face feels like. It's not worth putting them in such an awkward position for such little and not very useful information. As a child it's probably okay because you're just trying to get an idea of how the world is, but once you reach maturity, probably best not to do it.

2018-04-19 15:33:02

Yeah I'm glad I don't get the knee jerk human reaction of judging a book by it's cover.
But I don't even know what my little sister looks like for Christs sake, all I have to go off of is what other people tell me and that's just the basic information, the kind of thing you'd get on a damn passport form.
I need a writer friend soooooo bad.
Also yeah, social interaction would be significantly easier if I could read facial expressions, because even though you can tell what people are feeling most of the time by their voice if your paying attention, it's not the case with everyone, and just being able to communicate from a distance in a loud place would be extremely helpful.

2018-04-19 15:48:05

I don't need to see people I hear them. lol

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2018-04-19 16:24:55

I have never in my life touched someone's face to see what they look like. I couldn't imagine anyone doing that, its creepy and weird. One issue I have, and I don't know where it stems from, I do feel weird about looking at people, I have to fight my instincts to do it, well I obviously can't look them in the eye but even to look in their direction, I've always been that way. I don't understand why it is that way, but it is, it just really feels weird to look at people.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2018-04-19 17:09:38

As someone who used to have sight and could see faces and now can't, I've never got the thing of touching faces, to me it seems like a very personal thing to do, not only as an invasion of personal space, but touching someone's face is kind of an intimate thing to do, something that maybe should be reserved for your partner, and like when you stroke your childs face if they are upset or something.

I've never got why on a lot of TV programes and films they show blind people touching faces, as like the rest of you there's basically nothing touching someone's face could really tell you about them.

2018-04-19 18:38:51

God is there anyone who does! touch faces? This seems to be an oddly common belief among sighted people, but I don't think I've ever met any blind person who actually does it for precisely the reasons stated here, indeed for me touching my lady's face is a very gentle, intimate, personal thing and not something I'd want to do with any random stranger.

As I do have some usable vision I tend to get an idea of how people look, but as it is only close range and a person needs to be very! close for me to get any kind of detail usually I get to know them through voice and physical presence first, also I can't do facial expressions or eye contact, though I can often pickup a person's general impression via emotional resonance, which is often a good record of how a person is.

while I do have a concept of physical attractiveness, I'll say its so general it doesn't mean too much  very few  do not! seem attractive to me.

of course my lady is actually aesthetically attractive in this sense, but more than that she is beautiful, though what we have is based far more on a  frightening amount of personal chemistry, mental and spiritual compatibility and of course the fact that she's very much and most completely my best friend, albeit I will admit that there was absolutely nothing on my part until we'd actually met in person.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-19 18:49:17

Visual descriptions give and meen absolutely nothing and nowadays I regard most of such useless visual information as noise - something for causing only confusion, not possible to check/control and simply clogging up a mind. But what is important: voices, names, hands and indeed faces. Yep, call me the odd one here, but for those people being close and important, face is an important detail. Obviously it doesn't apply to strangers or every new persone I meet, but as already told, to the important ones, that being mostly good friends. Of course when wanting to get to know the other persone's face, I always ask for permission and only when it is granted, only then I explore the face. All this has obviously nothing to do with looks, but instead being a source for my own associations, which are mostly synesthetic in nature. Interesting thing is also, that I like my face being touched as well. It's somehow pleasant and relaxing. Other important details relating to those I know, are birthdays and phone numbers, as I tend to memorize them probably without as big effert as most people around. Over the years I can tell, that I'm quite different comparing to my other blind friends here, but at least I understand now, that there's no need to mask, fight or try to hide my true self, as long as not causing any problems to other people.

2018-04-19 19:03:01

Interesting mftd. My lady is extremely tactile and very friendly with people, but doesn't generally touch faces (well accepting mine and that only in a very intimate way, she also loves having her face touched as well).

I'm synaesthetic myself, however personally I find visual descriptions actively help in getting a sense of who a person is, indeed my lady loves writing about colours and  on a purely poetic level even though unlike me she has never had any vision really enjoys them in descriptions, ---- I'm pretty sure she is also synaesthesic and likely even experiences colour in a different sensory modality, although obviously without scanning her visual cortex there isn't a way to tell.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-19 20:53:35

I wouldn't just go up to someone and touch them, but I've heard stories about where a sighted person grabs a blind person and leads them across the street like a lost pup. I wouldn't react all well to this. I can't believe people think so low of us that they disregard us as if we aren't on the same level as they are, and don't have the same human rights as they do.

To be honest, I feel sorry for sighted people. They're so tied in with vision, it so completely overwhelms them that they don't even know how to use their other senses. Their world is visual, and things like smells and so forth are just there, but they don't know how to use it. Without their sight, they are virtually crippled. Observe as a sighted person tries to get into their house if its dark and no lights are around. They have such trouble with it. Even if they put one of those rings on to help identify the key, I could probably go through all their keys and get the door open before they could fumble around knowing they have the right key to get it open. That's not really an issue with phones having LED lights on them, cars that give a 30 second window where the headlights will stay on after you get out, and keychain lights. They just don't know how to exist without vision, and yeah I know its not the most flattering or correct way of thinking but its the way I feel about it. But, do I go around and if I'm with someone, just take the keys out of their hands and open their door? No, I'll offer to do it, but if they don't want the help, then I don't push things further. I don't give a good flying fuck what someone thinks about someone with a disability, you, do, not... have the right, to violate someone by just up and grabbing them. Believe me, if someone ever did that to me, they'd be laid out on the ground. I think you should treat people like they're a different country from you. What I mean by that is respect their sovereignty, and well, I know we American's have the habbit of nosing in where we don't belong, but that's our leaders doing that shit, its not what I would do, but imagine other countries negotiating with a nation apart from them. Do they just send people over, no, they may exchange ambassadors, they may have envoys, but they don't just go sending an entourage. If you treat people like that, regardless of what their disability is, you're off to a better start than if you are pushy, and grabby.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2018-04-19 22:47:31

@Ironcross I disagree with  your contempt about sighted people. yes, a lot of sighted people rely on vision for most everything, but I've met sighted people with a surprising range of cross sensory transferance, since after all a sighted person always has the option to use their other senses if they wish or are in a position to.
For example, a good friend of mine is a professionally qualified Simonet, as such his sense of smell and taste is massively developed, especially when it comes to wines and foods.

Another friend of mine is a martial artist and  has fantastic spacial awareness because of that, so frequently she does! not bother turning on her lights until she gets in the house, and is extremely good at remembering objects and their layout in total darkness.

I'm fairly sure there are bushmen in the otorongo delta in Africa who rely upon their smell and hearing as much as their sight to find food and water and likely have far better senses than I do big_smile.

Yes, these are specific examples of people who have developed their other senses due to circumstances, but obviously the option is open for them to do so, so I'd not necessarily start being dismissive of someone just for the fact that they haven't learned to do something that you or  I have had to learn due to circumstances, the only annoying part is that while a sighted person can always play audiogames and learn to use their other senses, a blind person can't decide to go and try being sighted for a while.

After all a deaf person could equally say "oh those poor people having to use their ears look how stuck they are in noisy environments, they can't even communicate without their ears" big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-19 23:37:34

I agree with the fact that we can't have a double standard about this. if we don't want to be manhandled by strangers, we probably shouldn't go around touching random people's faces either. Dark has a point, though, in that I've never actually met anyone who did this. I've met quite a few blind people who are, shall we say, extremely open about their strange fetishes and prone to oversharing in general, but I can't say I've ever encountered someone who believed that touching faces would give them any valuable information.

I do not, however, fully buy this myth that blind people don't care about appearances. We may base our attractions on different criteria, but there are physical things about a person that can be highly erotic. There are also certain voice profiles, not to mention accents, that I am a personal fan of, and, contrary to popular belief, I don't think that's wrong. of course, it's a safe bet that there are blind people who are asexual, and perhaps some do experience attraction differently, but I don't think that we should be shamed if our model varies slightly from the norm.

Allow me to explain, since I don't think I've ever seen such attitudes expressed on this forum, but I definitely have on other blindness related forums. Lots of people say it's unfair to judge someone based on their voice because you can't help what you sound like, there is literally nothing you can do to change it, while if you want to, many aspects of your appearance can be altered, so it's more fair to base how you feel about someone on their appearance. To me, that sounds like a load of rubbish.

As far as the act of feeling faces is concerned, what can that actually tell you about a person? All faces feel basically the same anatomically, I would think, so the idea of doing that is kind of weird to me.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-04-20 00:01:49

The whole point of seeing faces is to recognize people at a distance, and to read expressions. Since we don't have a face-cane, face-braille, face-readers (Face Access with Speech?), or enough hands to always have one swinging around looking for a face to examine, I don't really see the point of it. Typical Mind Fallacy strikes again, but you can assume that's going to happen today because there are still people.

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2018-04-20 05:53:45

I wouldn't say I have contempt for sighted people, but just as they see us as severely dysfunctional, I can draw parallels to how they can seem dysfunctional at times. Oh, there is certainly nothing stopping them from learning to use their other senses, they just sort of live solely on vision really, everything is so visual that it just doesn't matter about sounds, about feeling things around you, etc. Of course, this isn't everyone
I am not one of these people who hates sighted people because they have something I can never have, I'm just saying if you flip the coin over to the other side, being sighted isn't the end all and be all of living. I have heard people say they would rather be dead than blind, and I just can't fathom it. While I do live my life without concern for dying, for example, eating unhealthy foods and not caring about it, having too many sugary drinks, having the occasional cigar or alcoholic beverage. That stuff doesn't matter to me because if its literally something that is going to kill me, I'll have died being happy and enjoying my life rather than stuffy and miserable. It doesn't mean that I have a death wish or something. I hear about that all the time, why do you do this, its not healthy? Because I friggin want to. Do I know what is to come after death, no. maybe, as I'd like to believe, I can be recycled, or reborn into a level of noncorporial energy that makes up the universe. Maybe I will get to choose to live a life as someone, or something else, or, maybe the end is just the end, dying is ceasing to exist. If its that option, why not do what I can, while I can. I also think most people by my age sort of lose their fear of death, while I never have. Does it bother me as much as it used to, no. Sometimes I could drive myself to a near panic thinking about it when I was in my late teens. I don't want to die, I want to live a good long time, but I will not let fear rule me, I will not make decisions based on societal norms, and based on what other people would have me do.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2018-04-20 09:02:52

@Cae your correct on faces etc in terms of their uses for telling expressions and recognizing at a distance, however I will say there is something of a facial aesthetic, one reason why for example statues and busts can be atractive to look at, (No doubleentandra intended), , indeed while I wouldn't ever run my hands across a random stranger's face, I  like to look at statues, as indeed does my lady.

In terms of appearances turtlepower though, i fully well agree with you. As a stage performer I am very conscious of my own appearance, for all I'll slob around in Pajamas when I'm at home big_smile.

Voices can definitely be attractive, but I fully well disagree that "you can't help your voice" as a singer myself I can say you damn well can! help your voice, indeed one singing instructor (a lady who was extremely harsh), said it always surprised her that the two blind people, namely Mrs. Dark and I both had astoundingly good diction, something she attributed to the fact that we  took more care over the way we spoke than most people do.

I'm not sure whether this is true or not but I thought it was an interesting idea, and certainly Mrs. Dark and I often discuss the quality of people's voices, both actors, narrators and indeed singers.

Of course physical appearence goes further than that, into realms of smell, presence, posture, quality and type of clothes (something which can be felt), all of which are quite possible to see and manipulate while blind, indeed this is one other aspect where my lady and I are rather similar that when we like to dress up we dress up! big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-04-20 11:20:37

I actually agree with Ironcross32 about sighted folks simply not caring about other senses. It's really sad to watch them being stuck on their sight like that. If they can see something, then it's obviously there, but if not, they don't even bother to care or go into that helpless "I cant see!" mode. Regarding voices, it's nice, that at least here are some folks who can actually understand how voice can be really attractive and thus very important part of a persone. I'm one of those blind folks, who simply couldn't care less even about own physical appearance, but probably for good reasons. Over the years I have gathered, that everyone sees and thus judges differently, so it's not possible to get reliable and consistant data to work on for getting it right. This way all this huge bulk of different opinions turns simply into, again, noise. That kind of stuff, which is not possible to perceive and check yourself. One example of this phenomenon for me are colors. I have never been able to experience them. As a child I tried and really wanted to put a grip on them and so always asked what color is what. Then I began to actually understand, that this information can be gathered only by trusting others, but has absolutely no function to me. The only place where it probably would, is when wanting to identify my belongings by trying to remember what color they are. We all know those "What color is your jacket/...?" kind of situations. But as I'm kind of afraid of giving out wrong information, because for me it's basically not much different from lying, I rather won't take the risk of confusing others being already confused myself. When I was 14, I tryed to use my synesthesia to may be get a little clearance on all this colored stuff, but chose a completely wrong "victim/subject" to test. Being a synestheet, basically all of my existing senses are interwoven in many different ways too hard to describe here shortly and understandably. But wat I did back then was simply asking my mother, could it be, that red color is like a hardly overdriven fast guitar solo. She didn't get a f*** of my thinking and asking and simply told me off for talking nonsence. Those kind of experiences have lead to this whole noise concept, which rather unfortunately only grows over time, as more and more categories are added to it. Sorry for driving slightly away from discussing seeing people, but it seemed a good place to put these thoughts here.

2018-04-20 11:45:42 (edited by flackers 2018-04-20 11:47:21)

Sighted people will spend five minutes looking for a torch so that they can see a set of switches under the stair where a blind person would feel them in a fraction of the time. And I have on occasion thought just use your sense of touch and stop looking for a light source. But to be fair to sighted people, sight is such a dominant and rich sense that using others in place is like trying to read braille with your toes. The fingertips give such richer information that trying with anything else would be mega frustrating. That's what it's like to be sighted and close your eyes and try to function like a blind person. That's also why for the sighted, blindness seems like such a nightmarish thing to have to live with. The thing you can't replicate by closing your eyes if you have sight, is the fact that the brain changes the way it processes information from the other senses, and knows that's the best quality info it can access, and so is more satisfied with it.

2018-04-20 18:40:04

Well, having exposure to both worlds, in that I'm partially sighted, but learned braille, etc. I can tell you tht I know what colors are, I know which colors are which, unless you start getting into shades, and light, and contrast can screw me up, but anyway, yo uask me to relate that in to something a totally blind person would be able to say, Oh... OK I see, I just can't do it. COlors are intangible. I can tell you what kinds of things are red, green, blue, orange, yellow, but that isn't going to give you one one-thousandth of the understanding of what color really is.

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