Fuck you, Deaf "Community"

The BBQ Pit
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I just wanted to come back and say this thread really touches me. I’m so glad to hear all the different opinions, and I’m glad to see the different views trying to co-exist. It’s that sorta stuff that really makes me glad I’m a member, and that there’s hope for all of us as people.

Thanks guys. I swear I just have something in my eye, it’s just dust. Or dirt. Or something. That’s all.

I wanna hug you all. This pit thread is like the rose in the concrete. I kinda wish it wasn’t in the Pit, because it’s so educational, and it’s so nice to see the other voices out there with their stories and opinions. So thanks, you guys too, FunnyNameGoesHere, and FG. It’s been enlightening cool.

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[QUOTE=Jurph]
Thanks for this insight, AFNGH. Does the Deaf community resent the (pardon the pun) vocal minority who are anti-CI extremists? Presumably their rabid views are doing a disservice to the community.

I’ll admit that my views above were informed over the last five or six years by a few Gallaudet students, an audiology PhD student who deals with the DHH, and a terp who worked with an expert in my field who was DHH… but while none of them was extremist, they all gave me the impression that the rest of the Deaf Community was very much extreme. Has the change been pretty recent, or fairly fast? Perhaps it’s linked to the growth of DHH internet use?
[/QUOTE]

I’m not AFNGH, but I’ll comment. They are doing a disservice and giving those of us who share the disability a bad name. Anecdote != data. That said, the folks I’ve met out there are by and large accepting. In the 80s I wasn’t old enough to really remember objectively, so I can’t compare notes to see when overall resistance to CIs started dropping but I wouldn’t be surprised if the drop started visibly increasing within the last 15 years.

Additional thoughts sparked by various posts in this thread:

To be fair though, I could see where uneasiness about sawing one’s *skull * open and mucking about in the brain which has to be the organ that we lack the most knowledge about, the widely reported side effects or efficiacy of the operation and post-op training, and so forth, could be interpreted as “Are you OUT of your GOURD? TEH EVOL!11!!eleventyone” One successful result does not mean that everyone will be equally as successful, period.

Communication, for deaf folks, is and always will be (barring some actual miracle cure or adaptive tech which CIs are not), ‘push’ as opposed to ‘pull’, if you’re familiar with the concept of pushing content to viewers. (ie, me going out to all the individual news sites to read the articles as opposed to setting up a feed to pipe the ones I’m interested in to a single page for my reading pleasure) That is, it’s going to take extra effort to communicate with the opposite side of the disability in real life.

Regarding **jayjay’s ** comment regarding the lack of sign within a family with a deaf kid, while it might be perceived as cruel, parents generally don’t set out to be actively cruel. I suspect that possible reasons for the lack of sign among parents are due to things such as: being overwhelmed by the accomodations that your deaf kid needs, intimidated by the starkly different paradigm (visual as opposed to aural) that sign poses in comparison to verbal foreign languages, overwhelmed by the fact that ASL is a foreign language (hey, in the US, being multilingual is not an everyday event unlike Europe where it seems to be standard to have at least two languages handy), intimidated by Deaf culture and politics, lack of talent to pick up a language that’s spatial in nature, and so on ad nauseam.

So it goes.

FTR, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I was in an oralist school for the deaf for a few years as a kid. I’m still faintly surprised that I learned anything in class there given how much I sucked at reading anyone’s lips other than the teachers. I still suck. Hell, we kids developed our own home sign to be sneaky and supplement the talking that we did. I’m damned glad my parents were realistic and fought with the school districts to get me adequate interpreting services for mainstream schooling when I got sprung, or I’d have been completely fucked. There are kids who had positive memories of their time there – at least I’m guessing this is the case from the fact that there are a good number of people who turn up to the reunions, and I’m glad for them, but that wasn’t my experience at all. I am never darkening that place’s doors again. Ever. (sensitive, smart kid + suckitude at communication + dorm life = inevitable disaster and fodder for therapy later in life. :wink: )

In any event, I wish like blazes that I’d been able to comment more earlier in this thread, but as I mentioned in my previous post, work is pwning me. :frowning: Sorry, dudes.

And yeah, I agree with **RoOsh’s ** comment that this has been a very cool thread to read and participate in (even to the small degree that I did).

163

[QUOTE=tesseract]
we focused on oral communication, but we never went back to signing. They still plan to learn it, but in the meantime, wow – I suppose if they went near a Deaf community function, they might not get out alive.
[/quote]

But the Deaf community isn’t going to ostracize kids with CIs or who were raised orally. The Deaf community doesn’t hate kids raised orally, it hates Oralism. It hates the teachers and doctors who told parents that teaching kids to sign was child abuse. And yeah, some of them hate parents who refused to allow kids to sign, and the usual cause of that is that their parents refused to allow them to sign, and they suffered tremendously because of their parent’s decision.

And a lot of the attitude you would get back would depend on the attitude you give out. If you go to a Deaf community function and explain to everyone there that you raised your kids orally and signing is for losers, then you’re sure going to get a chilly reception. If you go to a Deaf community function and explain that although you raised your kids orally but that you want them to be exposed to sign, you’re going to get a different reception. The Deaf community is always going to be pro-sign, because that’s what defines the Deaf community–people who’s primary method of communication is sign.

The advice you guys were given–not to sign, because sign would make the kids less dependent on learning to speak and understand voice–turned out to work for the kids in your family. They had very good results from CIs, and therefore very good results from oralist-only education. But while such good results aren’t unheard of, they are not typical. Just go browse the alldeaf forums and read deaf person after deaf person complain how oralist-only education failed them. And the problem with the oralist-only advice you got is that you didn’t know except in hindsight whether it would work. What if the kids had reached school age without being able to communicate effectively in english? The reality is that this is a more typical outcome even with CI, and you can imagine how ineffective it was before CI.

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Wait, I want to add one more thing about the Deaf community. Not to throw them under a bus or anything, but at Deaf community events you’re going to find an overrepresentation of people that are socially isolated from the hearing community, for obvious reasons. So you’re going to find people who have trouble communicating with hearing people. The deaf or hoh people who can communicate effortlessly in the hearing world are going to be underrepresented.

You wouldn’t go to a small town and start lecturing the rednecks on how they need to change, would you? Even if the rednecks DO need to change, lecturing them wouldn’t do any good. And it just might turn out to be like the movies, where the rednecks teach the city slicker a thing or two in return.

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[QUOTE=tesseract]
Literacy? They are way ahead of their peers in reading, writing, etc. (In part because they love to read, have no TV, and have very language-oriented parents.) Obviously, their operations were wildly successful, but not without years of hard work, a great school, and therapy. We have been derelict in teaching them to sign (we all started signing as a family and began teaching them sign when they were babies and before we knew about implants – but then were advised to stop signing until their language acquisition was much better, because they would rely too much on signing rather than training their brain to interpret sound.) So we focused on oral communication, but we never went back to signing. They still plan to learn it, but in the meantime, wow – I suppose if they went near a Deaf community function, they might not get out alive.

Now that I read this comment, I see that they would be the most shunned of the shunned. “Mingle”? They ARE hearing folks. The focus was to see if they could get into regular school by kindergarten – and if I remember correctly, they did. College? Since their first years in school, it has never even entered our minds that they would go to a college for deaf people.
[/QUOTE]

The advice you were given to avoid ASL was just bad advice. It may have worked in this case, but over the hundreds of years of Deaf education, it has failed so many. The kids are NOT hearing. In your post you mentioned several situations in which it is hard for them to hear and understand, situations that are extremely commonplace. ASL would have completly elimated that issue.

I often ask parents why they want to pursue an oral only route with their children, and most often I hear that they want to give their child “more”. How are you giving your child more by keeping them away from a way to communicate? ASL works RIGHT NOW! It is not a maybe. It will provide the ability to communicate, no matter what. You don’t need to wait until after surgery and years and hundreds of hours of therapy to see success.

As I said, I don’t have a problem with CI’s and deaf kids learning oral skills, I think it is wonderful. My problem is with the exclusive use of oral only communication. Why not make sure your child has a full range of tools to pull out? Why not try everything and see what works for them? A child can not appreciate or use what was never offered to them.

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Heya, DeafDyke! Thank you so much for your kind words! I’ve been lurking around alldeaf the past few years, and I remember seeing you around. It’s good to see new faces here, but I understand if you don’t commit to a second board - that is a lot of crack for a single person to handle! :slight_smile:

But, if you stay, I know you’ll work out just awesomely, if for no other reason than this:

[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
Matter of fact, right now I’m listening to things like Weird Al …
[/QUOTE]

You know… There’s a rumour that Mr. Al is a regular on the SDMB…

[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
Please do not bash an entire community for the beliefs of a few indivduals.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I agree. The one regret I have about my rant - and it’s a big regret - is the absurdly wide brush I wielded. What can I say? I was, at the moment, extremely upset at a number of Deaf individuals. I contend it was a crime of passion. At any rate, I know it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever said, and like I said there’s the regret.

Anyway.

On to the one part of your post I had issues with:

[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
It’s very difficult to believe that there are still some people who make a fuss about CIs in this day and age. However, they ARE getting a lot more accepted. Even the NAD (National Association of the Deaf) is OK with them!
[/QUOTE]

I suspect the Deaf community would have an easier time with CI’s had the NAD not issued a scathing and unwarranted press release concerning CI’s and children. I believe the words used were “we deplore the FDA decision” and “parents who display less parenting skill than dehydrated pond scum” though my memory is a little foggy. Although their current position paper displays a nearly 180-degree reversal of their ill-informed previous position, there are many many people who remember the strong language and thick-headed attitude of the original piece, which stood as NAD gospel from 1991 until late 2000. This, and a handful of other annoyances I find in their current press releases (bitter pissing matches with the A.G. Bell Association, anyone?), makes it difficult for me to accept them as anything but ill-informed blowhards.

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tldr

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lizardling, even within the last five years the difference is AMAZING. To the point where I’ve been bashed for suggesting that people should wait and see until after getting the first implant, to get a second implant (unless of course it’s clear that a HA won’t help or if the person has severe tintitas/recruitment or other issues)

Lemuer66, EXCELLENT post! I think that a lot of the amiomisity may come from orally educated people who can be kind of high and mighty about being orally skilled and/or “better educated.” Sort of like the way some hearing people can be high and mighty about having gone to Harvard or another Ivy League college. There IS a subset of hardcore Oral folks who really DO look down on ASL, and who think they are better then Sign users. However if you come to a Deaf community gathering and WANT to learn sign and don’t act all snobby about having a better education or oral skills, you’ll generally be accepted! Believe it or not it’s actually VERY common for most orally educated kids to learn Sign as a second language. Even a signiifcent percentage of Auditory-Verbalized kids (this is a really fucked up technique where no visual cues are offered. It is actually common for practioners to cover their mouths so that kids can’t lipread) learn Sign as a second language.
I have a lot more to say, but I need to head up to the bath!!! Will be on lata!

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[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
lizardling, even within the last five years the difference is AMAZING. To the point where I’ve been bashed for suggesting that people should wait and see until after getting the first implant, to get a second implant (unless of course it’s clear that a HA won’t help or if the person has severe tintitas/recruitment or other issues)

Very cool to hear!

Also, auditory-verbalizing? Yeek. Well, I suppose there’s one word I recognize even without turning around (when I have my HAs in) – my mother yelling my name in that tone. Nobody else can get that Pavlovian reaction. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to recognize anything else for the life of me, anyway. :stuck_out_tongue:

I hope you stick around as well. :slight_smile:

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Grrr…tried to post last nite, but the hamsters ate it.
Anyways:

Well granted their view was really kind of extreme. I can somewhat understand their views, since a lot of the language used to promote the CIs made them seem like a cure. Then again, I can understand the views of the parents who opted for implantation. If HA is not effective (like the kid can’t even get enviromental sounds or even some words with the HA) then why not opt for something else? I really do think that NAD didn’t quite understand that a CI was basicly a “super advanced” hearing aid. (and yes, I know that they don’t work the same. But the end result is the same. They both aid in hearing) Kids who can hear with CI, are basicly functionally hoh…just like me and thousands of other audilogically hoh people who have been hoh since childhood are.
At least they have changed their position. Yes, it took time…yes it sucks that they had such a militant view on CIs.
Besides, using that argument you might as well bash AG Bell for being extremely pro assimulation into the hearing culture.(and yes, thirty or forty years ago they were like that!) It has had some VERY harsh attitudes about ASL in the past. Heck it STILL lumps ALL Deafies into the militant “CIs are gonna kill us” pro no oral skill types. I don’t deny that there are still folks like that out there, but Deaf people’s opinons on things like oral skills and hearing assistance is extremely varied. Heck Ag Bell is still pretty much “oral is THE BEST, and there are NO downsides whatsoever to going oral only”
It’s not as bad as it used to be. It used to really bash Sign and Deaf Culture. It’s better then it used to be…but OMG, I remember reading Volta Voices and there was an editoral by a TOD (teacher of the Deaf) who was ranting about proposed legislation in California that would require all TODs to be fluent in ASL.
Heck…even thou it’s not that unusual to see 'terps at AG Bell conferences, they are still really audist. They tend to be “oral is the BEST and ASL should only be used as an afterthought, if at all.” Pretty much like English-only militants.
It does push for choice, but on the other hand that does seem very tokenist. There’s still the attitude that oral skills are the only thing needed to acheive in the world. Heck, if you think that NAD is extreme, where were you when AG Bell was so upset about Sign being used in a Superbowl commerical? We were talking about that on a listserv I am on, and a hearing audilogist, said that their reaction was just another reason why she didn’t support AG Bell. (although she DOES support the development of oral skills in dhh kids) She found it typical of their stance on things…basicly that they are extreme audists, who accept Sign, but more on a token afterthought basis, rather then on a “full toolbox whatever works” basis. I can tell you that if they promoted a full toolbox methodology a lot of the infighting/friction (between NAD and AG Bell) wouldn’t even exist. There are TONS of ex-oral folks who now identify as Deafies…faint It’s not just Militants For Deaf Pride. (which of course, as we all know would be an awesome name for a band!) I can understand why you might feel a little uncomfortable with NAD’s views on various and sundry things. (I assume you’re a AG Bell family? You really gotta understand that if a lot of the families who are kind of moderate towards ASL left to join other organizations, it would lose quite a few of their members. So they have to push the myth that all cultrally Deaf people are extremist militants) However NAD and AG Bell aren’t the only game in town. There’s the American Society For Deaf Children.: http://www.deafchildren.org/
as well as a newer organization http://www.deafbilingualcoalition.com/
Both are very openminded…and I think if you tested the waters you might be surprised that the Deaf World isn’t as militant as AG Bell wants you to think.

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(emphasis mine)

O Lord, give me strength.

See, I get this a lot. But only from Deafies. It’s bogus, wildly presumptive, and doesn’t really impress me. I don’t particularly like the A.G. Bell Foundation. We don’t give them money, they don’t give us money. Like I said in several places in my OP, we’re decidedly NOT oral-only, which I understand is a requirement for the A.G. Bell group. I happen to admire some of their goals, which is much more than I can say about the NAD. And you can’t ignore the fact that oral-only has worked amazingly well for some, just as ASL-only works well for others.

So why do you assume we’re an A.G. Bell family? Because I can’t stand the NAD? But why the false dilemma? Choosing between A.G. Bell and the NAD is like comparing the virtues of PETA and Tyson Foods. Which one is a better contributer to society? I could pick one side if I really needed to, but I’d have to overlook some seriously messed-up behavior to do so. Better to not choose either, but rather a path that better suits my family’s values.

So, no, I’m not an A.G Bell groupie, I don’t drink their kool-aid, and I certainly don’t think they’re the only people who see Deaf culture as a group that - for all their virtues - promotes self-aggrandizing militants from within.

See other replies to my OP for evidence of that. Do you think all these other people listen to A.G. Bell press releases? Are they all (as a certain overly-dramatic redhead put it), “anti-deaf and anti-ASL”, i.e. all “the many people in the hearing world continues to degrade, discriminate, and look down on” deaf people? *

Or, maybe, just maybe, is it even remotely possible, that personal interactions with various Deaf culturists have left a bad impression on a lot of people?

Thank you for these links. I’m reading through them now. But the problem with online groups is that they’re, well, online. I need to deal with the people in my location, and as I’ve said before, the Deaf people in my location, at least those whom I’ve met, and I’ve met quite a few, have a nasty habit of either projecting militant Deafism, or worse, protecting it.

On a lighter note…

Hell yeah. :cool:

  • Oh and Ms. Red, there, is the primary reason I never posted in that other place. I won’t compete with someone that militant who averages 20 posts per day for the past few years.
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[QUOTE=diggleblop]
tldr
[/QUOTE]

Ducking into this thread to post that is being a jerk, diggleblop. This is a warning; do not do this again.

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[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
lizardling, even within the last five years the difference is AMAZING. To the point where I’ve been bashed for suggesting that people should wait and see until after getting the first implant, to get a second implant…
[/QUOTE]
Hell, I’m hearing and I’d STILL give that advice. I’d couch it in weasely language with lots of “technology is always improving” doors so I could avoid making a solid enough commitment that the audience could blame me if my advice were wrong, but I would never (an absolute I studiously avoid normally) put all of my eggs in one basket, either when advising others or getting the work done on myself or my kid.

I don’t get the oralist-only and ASL-only false dilemmas. Shit-oh-dear, why on earth would anybody insist on one to the exclusion of the other? Hell, I’ve been considering learning ASL though I don’t know anybody who is stone deaf because my ability to distinguish conversations decreases as environmental noise increases. Sure, that limits the people added to my conversations to people who speak ASL, but that beats making people think I’m stuck up because I’m sitting like a Buddha because I cannot understand anybody talking around me.

And how crazy is making stone deaf people rely only on lip reading? It’s a great tool for people who can partially hear, and I can “hear” a lot better when I can see the talker’s mouth, but it is only one tool in the conversational toolbox. As is ASL.

And I agree with what AFunnyNameGoesHere said about the acceptance of CIs in the past five years. It has really been in that short span that I’ve seen the clouds of FUD finally clearing.

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[QUOTE=dropzone]

I don’t get the oralist-only and ASL-only false dilemmas. Shit-oh-dear, why on earth would anybody insist on one to the exclusion of the other?
[/QUOTE]

While I absolutely agree, it’s probably worth mentioning that the Deaf aren’t alone in this dillemma. Up until the last decade or so, it was widely believed that raising kids bilingual (in any two or more languages) would impair their language development and “confuse” them. Turns out we were way wrong about that, and that while bilingual kids do start speaking a little bit later (and that by a few mere weeks), their ultimate language - in all their native tongues - is no worse than a monolingual kid.

So it sounds like some people haven’t updated their language development prejudices yet.

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I think a lot of hearing people don’t realize how much they lipread, especially as they get older. It’s not that they watch the speaker’s mouth and figure out what they’re saying. It’s that if you can see the speaker’s mouth your brain hears their words more clearly. All done unconsciously.

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[QUOTE=AFunnyNameGoesHere]
Hi, it’s DeafDyke from the AllDeaf messageboard. I DIDN’T create a sock account or anything. I don’t want to be banned. I would like to engage in constructive debate, and have a way to do so easily. To whoever offered me a paid membership, I may have to hunt you down as soon as the summer is over.
[/QUOTE]
My dear, you simply must get your own account – it’s one screen name to a customer, please.

At some point we will be going to a free posting with lots of display ads business model – optional subscriptions will reduce the number of ads you see down to the Google ads at the bottom of the page – so check back with us when you’re ready to participate more fully on the board.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. Thank you for this bit of housekeeping.

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Sorry for responding late, Monty, I just now noticed this.

[QUOTE=Monty]
For those wondering about a written form for Sign Languages, there is SignWriting. That seems to be gaining some acceptance.
[/QUOTE]

I love the concept behind SignWriting. It’s better-suited for computer work than handwriting, to be sure, but it captures more of the nuances of sign language than any other form I’ve seen.

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A slight aside I was thinking about the other day and my wife has observed…

The ubiquitousness of earpiece Bluetooth devices everywhere has made it less “weird” for hearing aid and CI wearers, since there is always a hesitation with looking different. Where people used to commonly notice or comment on my wife’s hearing aids, they rarely get noticed anymore in the chaff of all of the other head devices people are sporting these days.

I think the public consciousness is getting used to seeing earpiece thingies everywhere, and this can help ease the reluctance that people feel.

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[QUOTE=GargoyleWB]
I think the public consciousness is getting used to seeing earpiece thingies everywhere, and this can help ease the reluctance that people feel.
[/QUOTE]

Of course, there’s also the phenomenon of accidentally being mistaken for one of those douchey Bluetooth earset wearers to think about…

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[QUOTE=jayjay]
Of course, there’s also the phenomenon of accidentally being mistaken for one of those douchey Bluetooth earset wearers to think about…
[/QUOTE]

Yeah. At first, we had to correct people who thought my kid was wearing hearing aids. Now, it’s “how does your 4-year-old like her phone?”