10/31/07

I love it when you talk dirty to me

Today I’m going to be a teacher.

As some of you know I am hearing impaired and wear a cochlear implant, which is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. It helps me hear and under the right conditions, it does give me a useful auditory understanding of my environment. A cochlear implant has several external components it requires in addition to the receiver and stimulator that are secured in bone beneath my skin; there is microphone, which picks up the sounds, a speech processor which filters sounds to prioritize audible speech and then sends the electrical sound signals through a thin cable to the transmitter and finally there is the transmitter its self, which I have to wear behind my ear.

But there are times that I can’t wear all of the electronics, as when I’m surfing or working out and other times I just don’t feel like being bothered by all of the hardware, (for example when Debbie and I are engaging in expressions of passion for each other as we tend to tear out the wire or when I've reached my "nuff of this BS limit"). For those times I’m predisposed to rely on situational awareness, reading lips (yes, pun intended) and signing for my communication requirements.

I have been signing a long time and have become extremely proficient, so my comfort level while signing is very high. Also I really am of the opinion, at least in my case, sign is a language that comes more from the heart and far less from the brain, so at those time when speaking from the heart (like when my lovely love has stoned pissed me off) I tend to fall back on communicating my arguing points in sign because I can express myself a great deal better I think. But one of the things that have never ceased to amaze me as a hearing impaired person is that in next to no time after folks discover I’m hearing impaired and that I sign, they want me to teach them dirty talk in sign.

Now it has been said that profanity is the crutch of the conversational cripple, but it also been said that under certain circumstances, vulgarity provides a relief denied even to prayer. Dr. Laura Berman says that dirty talk is flirty talk, it fans the flames of desire and gets your deepest expressions passion across to your lover, so sometime dirty talk does have a time and place. Also as a surfer I have found a certain amount of bad language to be enormously helpful when dealing with a rebel surfboard on a bad day at the break or some tourist kook drops in on me. So in my opinion dirty words do have a place in any language, people just need their vocabularies to include a few off color words and even in sign language we have them.


Most people think they know at least one very popular vulgar expression in sign, but that well-known obscene hand gesture made by extending the middle finger of the hand while bending the other fingers into the palm better known as “flipping the bird” is not really a sign expression at all as it predates the modern ASL or BSL (American Sign Language, or BSL; British Sign Language, for my many readers across the pond) in common use today by hearing impaired people by at least several centuries.

But since knowing how to talk dirty seems to be so important to folks, I went out to see if I could find a tutorial on how you can to talk dirty to me and I found these very nice videos from Video Jug on how to express your nasty ol’ selves in an off color way when you are chatting with yours truly, but I must caution you these videos do have a decidedly British accent as BSL and ASL do differ (You know them Brits, always got to be difficult)… these signs are pretty close to what we hearing impaired in the States use to vividly and passionately express ourselves.

This first video will tell you how to make sexual references using sign language.

Before we view these videos, I would like to mention that the ASL and BSL sign for Gay is very different; Gay in ASL is the the sign for the letter "G" on your chin like the example I've presented in the picture.




But everything else in the video seems to translate pretty well.










VideoJug: How To Make Sexual References Using Sign Language

Now this next video will tell you how to be just generally "foul handed" as it were, but I will caution this one has a much more of a British accent, but it is funny all the same…


VideoJug: How To Swear Using British Sign Language

There are also videos in this series that will tell you how to insult someone and flirt in sign.

So talk dirty to me people…cuz sometimes I like it when you talk dirty to me….




1 comment:

dubbs said...

"flipping the bird" has an extensive history of its own...obviously it is a symbol of offense because of its suggestive phallic nature being that it is the longest of all fingers. However, when driving in Australia, females find it more effective to wag their pinky fingers at aggressive male drivers as if to suggest those men are, aheh, overcompensating for lacking in other areas.

Or if you are female and the jerk who just cut you off is female, one of my fabulous lesbian friends got sheer joy from going one step beyond flipping the bird by also licking the side of it and winking at her. Brilliant!