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Items tagged with: languagematters
Following up on my last post: While "Dining in the Dark" uses blindfolds to simulate blindness—a deeply problematic practice—Netflix’s *Love Is Blind* raises a different but related issue: the casual use of "blindness" as a metaphor.
The title refers to the idea that love can transcend physical appearance, but it uses blindness to symbolize ignorance or a lack of perception. This isn’t new—our language is full of metaphors like "turning a blind eye" or "blind ambition" that associate blindness with negative traits like ignorance or inability.
As a blind person, I see how language shapes perceptions. These metaphors may seem harmless, but they perpetuate outdated, ableist notions of blindness as a deficiency. They turn our lived experiences into rhetorical devices, erasing the richness of blind culture and reducing us to symbols of "lack."
No, *Love Is Blind* isn’t offensive in the same way as "Dining in the Dark," which makes a spectacle of our lives. But the metaphorical use of blindness shows how ingrained ableism is in language and culture. Casual metaphors matter—they reinforce unconscious biases that we must challenge.
Blindness isn’t a symbol. It’s a lived reality, full of challenges, skills, and a vibrant community. Let’s think more critically about how we use disability in language and storytelling.
💬 What do you think?
