Here's the thing. Sighted people will more often than not fail to ask the question, even if they do think this way. If you're capable enough and you spend a lot of time around random sighted people, it shows. They don't mean anything particular by it, but I do think it's the majority, and what matters to me is if they keep thinking that way once they spend 5 minutes in a room with me or not, not if they originally thought that way.
There is a thing I call the god factor. There's probably a better name for it. I'm reasonably talented at math, and in so far as blind people go I'm better than 90%. I'm also reasonably independent, enough so that I lived alone in college. We call these things normal. But because I broke the stereotype, I spent most of college and a good bit of high school with people being more or less amazed and thinking I was some sort of math genius or something because how else could I do it, and what do you mean you like to cook? too? Wow! Mind you most people didn't come out and say it. But it showed. If you break the stereotype by enough you become the blind guy who breaks the stereotype, and people stop judging you for yourself and don't know what to make of you anymore. They also, some of them, stop seeing the work you put in as well. That's why I call it the god factor. It was never "he tried hard", it was always this innate thing that must be special about me that no one anywhere could duplicate, and obviously I had to be 10 times smarter to deal with overcoming the blindness because even walking to class must be some sort of huge, scary daily challenge.
But that's not the worst thing. The worst thing seems to have been a Florida problem, given that it stopped once I moved to Seattle. The worst thing was the random person once a month or so who would come over and tell me that they don't know how I do it, if they went blind they'd probably just kill themselves. In those words. It happened enough that my reaction kind of just became "come on, not another one", and as far as I know my parents got a similar reaction when I was a kid, also with an additional helping of "You're such a good mom/dad, taking care of two blind kids". Florida isn't very good with disabilities, let's put it that way.
"Blind people can't have sex" trolls are very far down my list of things sighted people say, well below a bunch of genuine stuff that's worse.
Twitter: @ajhicks1992
