- I've had a random woman at a bar force me to feel her face. Oh my God, so cringy, so crazy. (upbeat music) Aah, hello, yeah, I don't know what's going
on with this hair either. We don't have to talk about it. 10 weeks in quarantine
isn't doing me well. It's fine, all right? We're just gonna move along
with the rest of this video. So I haven't done a good old
listicle video in a while. I've in the past, done things like "10 Questions
Not to Ask a Blind Person," or " 10 Best Things About Being Blind, "10 Worst Things About Being Blind. "Five Reasons People on the Internet "Think I'm Faking Blind," all of the lists, and it's
been a while, a hot minute. So I thought, why not
sit down in my bedroom, chit chat with you guys about
five of the most annoying misconceptions or
stereotypes about blindness, about blind people, about being blind. That's what we're
talking about here today. Some of these things I
have probably, absolutely, definitely mentioned in videos in the past over the last almost six years of having this YouTube channel. Crazy that it's been that long. So if you're an avid Killer Bee, you will have probably seen me talk about these different topics, but I haven't just done a sit down where all five are in one quick video. So that's what today's video is about. Also, shameless self promo, we are almost at (popping) two million Killer Bees in the club, so you know, let's get it there. Hit (popping) subscribe if you wanna join this fun little fam on the internet, and (popping) hit the
notification bell to make sure you are notified every week. I upload two videos a week, (popping) Tuesdays and
(popping) Saturdays. Make sure you're a part of that. If you comment within
the first half-an-hour of the video going up, so if you're a part of the #earlysquad, then I will probably reply to your comment or at least heart it
because I am hanging out in the comment section
during that first half hour, so come hangout with me. And I've also talked about
a lot of these things over on my Tik Tok where I've
been making content daily @mollyburkeofficial over on Tik Tok for more fun educational
content around disability. Okay, let's jump into it. (sighing) Number one, (bell dinging) that all blind people
wear dark sunglasses. (buzzer buzzing) This just isn't true. There are many blind people
who never wear sunglasses. There are some blind people
who wear them all the time. And there are some like me
who wear them on occasion to, you know, spice up an
outfit as a fashion accessory or if it's super sunny
out and it hurts my eyes, or even just to protect my eyes from the harmful rays of the sun. So some blind people (popping)
wear dark sunglasses. Some blind people
(popping) never wear them. Some blind people (popping)
like me wear them sometimes. There you go. Number two, (bell dinging) that you can tell somebody is blind just by looking at them. (buzzer buzzing) Big no, absolutely false, completely not true. There are many blind people who you would never know are blind. You could be passing
somebody on the street every day on your walk to work, okay, nobody's currently really walking to work, but in normal day times, you could walk by somebody
on the street daily and have no idea they're blind. You could be a barista at
Starbucks serving up coffee to Christian every day and
have no idea he is blind. Only (popping) 2% of blind
people use a white cane. The others use a guide dog
or mainly nothing at all. Mind-blowing. Not to mention our eyes
all look different. Yes, some diseases cause a
visual effect to the eyes where they look glossy, foggy. They might face different directions. A blind person might
not have muscle control. That is true, but there are
also a lot of blind people who their eyes look
completely, quote, normal and you could never tell by looking at their eyes that they
can't see properly. Number three, (bell
dinging) that we don't care about our physical appearance
or the appearance of others. Once again, big false,
(buzzer buzzing) big not true. Yeah, I am blind. I can't see myself in the mirror. I love fashion. I love makeup. I love dying my hair fun colors. I love tattoos. I love room decor. I love, quote, visual
things even though I'm blind and many blind people do. I have a girlfriend who is blind and went to school for
fashion merchandising. I have a blind friend
who went to school for, what did she go to school for? Event coordination, like
event design and coordination. So just because we are blind doesn't mean we don't take pride in
our appearance as well. Doesn't mean we don't wanna
go to the gym and workout. Doesn't mean we don't care about putting together a cute outfit. Some blind people don't, but that might not even
be because they're blind. That might just be because
even if they were sighted, they would just be the type of person who wasn't into aesthetics. There are plenty of sighted people who don't care about clothes, who don't care about hair and makeup. But I do and I'm blind, and that's okay. And along with that, the idea that we don't care
what other people look like, like our partners, that is not true. We can have physical attraction or things that we look for
physically in a partner. Just because we can't see them doesn't mean we can't experience what they look like in other ways. You know, I have preferences physically in the guys that I date. Are they like hard lines in
the sand that I will not cross? No, but in my ideal world,
I would love to date a guy that's no taller than
like (popping) five 11 because I'm only (popping) four foot 10. So even though I can't
see what he looks like, his physical presence
being very, very tall makes me personally
just feel uncomfortable. I prefer guys who don't
have a lot of body hair or facial hair just because
it's a texture thing. I can feel that. So just because I can't see doesn't mean I don't care what my partner looks like. Number four, (bell dinging)
okay, whew, that we feel faces. Now this is truly (buzzer
buzzing) a misconception. A stereotype that has come from the way scripted media has portrayed blind people throughout the years or books. Basically any form of entertainment that has depicted a blind person where the character is not
written by a blind person, they've not consulted a blind person, they've never met blind people. It's being portrayed by
an able-bodied person. This whole feeling face thing
is just so bizarre to me. I have had multiple
times where people have physically forced me to feel their face and I can't even express to
you how uncomfortable that is. I have had men try to make me feel their faces when I meet them. I've had a random woman at a
bar force me to feel her face. Do you remember that need
Neeve, in New York city? - Yeah.
- Oh my God. So cringy, so crazy. I had an ex boyfriend's
grandma make me feel her face. I actually did (popping)
a storytime about that on my channel years ago. I'll link it below. People really think we do that,
for the most part, we don't. The only people I've ever personally heard of doing this are people who are blind but also
have other disabilities like perhaps a cognitive
delay or are blind deaf. So they use it to just kind of
understand facial expression or body language better or to connect. But I'm not gonna just meet you and like wanna feel your face. It's not a thing. Have I felt a loved one's face before? Yes, I have never felt my
mom's face to be clear. I've never felt my brother's face. I've never felt my dad's face. However, when I'm with
a boyfriend, a partner, if I'm in like a snuggling intimate moment where I'm like kissing
them or something, yes, I'll have my hands on their face, but that's like a very normal thing that I feel like a lot
of sighted people do too, so we don't feel faces. Don't try and make us feel your face, please and thank you, PSA. And drum roll, (drum roll)
number five, (bell dinging) probably, dare I say it, the
biggest misconception of all that blindness equals seeing black, (buzzer buzzing) not true. I've said it time and time
before on this channel and I will continue to say
it time and time again. Blindness is a spectrum. The spectrum begins at legally blind, which is 20 over 200
which essentially means what somebody with 2020 vision, now I'm explaining this to
you guys fully understanding you might still walk away
from this video having no idea what I'm saying because my mom has been in the blind community
since I was a wee thing and she still doesn't understand
what legally blind means. Do you Mom?
- Nope. (laughing) - I tried to explain it
to her again the other day and she was like, "Yeah,
no, I just don't get it." (laughing) My own mother doesn't understand, so I'm gonna explain it to you, but if you don't
understand it, that's fine. What you ultimately
just need to understand walking away from this is
that blindness is a spectrum. Not all blind people see blackness. In fact, I would argue no
blind people see blackness. So legally blind, what
somebody with 2020 vision, which means perfect vision,
can see at 20 feet away. Somebody who is legally
blind, which is 20 over 200, has to be 20 feet away from
what you as a 2020 person could see from 200 feet away from, okay. So legally blind is what
we would refer to as being just the very beginning
of the blind community. But to be considered legally blind, you need to be worse than 20 over 200 with your best correction. With your glasses, with your contacts, with any treatments that you can have, your vision is still
worse than 20 over 200. So it is possible that
somebody without their glasses, without LASIK, without
contacts, could be 20 over 200, but if they put their glasses
on and their vision improves, they're not considered a
part of the blind community. So just to make that clear,
so that's where it starts. Legally blind basically also
just means like you can't do things like driving a car,
it would be legally unsafe. The law views you as being blind. So that's where our community begins. And way over here on
the other end is fully, completely blind, meaning
zero light perception, zero saddle pezeption? (popping) #zerozadowpezeption. Okay, zero shadow perception, nada. But that doesn't actually necessarily mean the person sees black, it
means they see nothing. This is a very hard concept for sighted people to
understand, I get it. The best way I can explain
this is when you put your hand behind your head, it's
not black, it's not white, it's not gray, it's nothing. It does not exist. Mind-blowing. I'm aware, as a sighted person, you will never be able
to conceptualize this. That's okay. All you need to understand
is it's not black, it's just nothing. Now that percentage of
the blind community, way on that end of the
spectrum of the scale, is the slimmest part of our community. Again, said it many times on this channel, nine out of 10 blind people
do have remaining vision. They are considered blind. They are a part of our community, but they do have some
form of remaining vision. It differs for every single person. Blindness is not blackness. It is a large community with
many different experiences and many different views on the world. Literally, their view of
the world is very different. So that squashes that misconception like a little bug under my shoe. Don't squash bugs, it's mean, they have feelings too, just
saying, it was just a metaphor. So in my case, I have a little bit of
light and shadow perception, but the best way I can describe it is like if I'm in a room of 20 blind people, 18 of them can see more than me. One might be able to see less than me, being like the one totally,
totally blind person. But I'm like of all my
blind friends, pretty much, I am the most blind, almost every single, I can't actually think of like a really close blind friend of mine that sees less than me or even honestly, that sees as much as me. Majority, if not all of
my close blind friends, have significantly more sight than I do, but that does not make them less a part of the blind community, and it doesn't make their struggles as a blind person less than mine. It just makes their
struggles as a blind person different than mine. So there's there,
everyone, there is there. I need to end this video. My brain is turning to mush, okay. I hope you found this video interesting. If you would like five more
misconceptions or stereotypes that are really annoying to
live with as a blind person, let me know and I can
definitely make sure to do that. If you want some more Molly in your life, click up here to watch the video I recently posted about why I can't stand when people call me differently-abled. And click up here to see the video where I tried out a ton of weird, strange, unusual lifestyle products. All right, I'll see my next video. (blowing kisses) Love you, bye.
