When good signs go bad

You might be surprised to know that not long ago, it wasn't uncommon for people who communicated with American Sign Language to incorporate stereotypical ethnic appearances into their signs for various races. For instance, you can see in old ASL dictionaries that the sign for Asians used to mimic that of a slanted eye. If you wanted to refer to a Native American, you could put three fingers behind your head in reference to a feathered headdress.

Obviously, such gestures did not survive the wave of political correctness that took root over the past 20 years or so. And like its spoken counterpart, ASL began to adopt kinder, more appropriate references to minority groups. It was this premise that prompted me to write an article about what deaf students at KU thought of the changes. 

My first hurdle was that I didn't know any deaf people, students or otherwise. But one call to a university interpreter solved that problem. She knew of several students who might be willing to talk to me, and sure enough, the first person on her list agreed to an interview. He was one of the coolest people I've ever met. Not only could he read lips, which made our meeting a breeze, but he also spoke. He even agreed to be the subject of a pictorial that would provide visual examples of the updated signs.

That turned out to be harder than first believed, however. Anyone who's seen ASL in action can tell that most signs are fluid, not static. In other words, they require the movement of your hands and arms. That was especially true for the politically correct signs that my volunteer was demonstrating for the photos. To complete the entire sign for Japan, he started by making a diamond shape with his thumbs and forefingers. Then he slowly pulled his fingers apart in the shape of a crescent to signify the shape of the island.

The only way to portray that correctly in a newspaper was with a sequence of photos that showed the beginning, middle and end of the sign. Unfortunately, and for reasons that are still a mystery to me, the editors decided to only include the "start position" photos for each sign we wanted to demonstrate alongside my story.

Look at the shot below. That was the photo for Japan that appeared with my article. Except, it's not Japan. No, in the static position, it's a completely different sign altogether. Fancy a guess?

(Cue Jeopardy music)

Time's up. Any ideas? If you answered a vagina, then you are absolutely, 100% correct. And this picture was part of the lead story on the front page. I wish I could say that I was smart enough to realize that we had printed a dirty picture as soon as I saw it, but in reality, I remained blissfully unaware for several hours until my editor received an email from the interpreter's office, which uncovered the faux pas we had committed.  I sat in my editor's office slack jawed while she read the letter to me. The only good news was that the deaf community was surprisingly good natured about the whole thing. No protests were organized, which was nice. I'm only good for one of those per year, you know.