#I'm tagging the lads bc it sort of has to do with them in the way I am learning this for them

[krogerkryptid]

I think one of my favorite parts of the pathologizing of homosexuality in the late Victorian Era is that many people from different professional backgrounds were like "the cities are the centers of debauchery, there are very few accounts of homosexual activity and initiation in small towns and rural areas" which...yeah of course that's just how big cities work lots of people from lots of places are going to have more opportunities

[thealphapigeon]

That post you reblogged with the “they should get their hearing tested” tag made me curious, & you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, that’s fine! As an autistic HOH person, do you have any sensory sensitivities involving sound? Iirc you mentioned not owning birds bc they scream too much. What else is too loud for you? Does being HOH help with some sensitivities? Do you have any sensitivities that are *caused* by being HOH? Thank you for your time!

This is SUCH a fun series of questions, allow me to answer things in a broken up style. This will be a long one lads, I dunno how to stick a readmore in on mobile

As a kid before my hearing began to degrade, I was deathly afraid of noise like thunder, sirens, alarms, balloons popping, applause, hell at family gatherings when I was a baby I'd start SCREAMING the moment everyone started saying a prayer to bless the meal. I was a nuisance lmao

By middle school though those sort of sensory triggers didn't impact me much if at all, both because I learned how to tune things out and my hearing by then was poor enough I required preferred seating in the classroom. I was even a euphonium player in the school band for a few years. So I would definitely say losing my hearing has "helped" with the sensitivity on that front.

These days though I actually need sound to be functional and it has to be consistent, mechanical white noise, especially as I sleep. As a baby my parents wouldn't sing me lullabies, instead they set me on top of the washing machine until I fell asleep, played a recording of the hair dryer on an old cassette tape, or even make a sort of low buzzing sound through their teeth. I was... a weird kid. I have 2 fans going in my room at all times and my favorite place to sleep in the house is the basement, because I can hear the furnace through the wall. Unfortunately I do wake up whenever it switches off. Without consistent white noise, I do start to become aware of the low level tinnitus my hearing has left me with, which while not terrible it does give me a headache after a couple hours.

Going back to the tag I left on that post, I mentioned that because all throughout my life I have never simply.. listened to music because more often than not the lyrics would be only half heard by me and thus would be nonsense. As soon as subtitles started becoming common practice I returned to a lot of movies I loved as a kid and rewatched them. And holy shit did that change things for me.

These days my sensory issues relating to sound are mostly a matter of if I'm already having a rough day, I'm far more sensitive to texture, and my favorite form of stimuli is visual which is why I trend towards maximalism anytime I decorate anything. I love to see 👀

Thanks again for the ask!! I hope that answered some stuff