Deaf Community - "No such thing as hearing loss, just Deaf gain!"

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I guess it's hard for deaf people to understand that there are people with disabilities out there.

This is not a big surprise considering Deaf community has a very unfavorable view of disabled people. A Deaf father of DeafBlind daughter ranted on Facebook about it last year, and then we got a DeafDisabled woman announcing about publishing her thesis focusing on ableism within the Deaf community.

Transcript:

Hello, Meredith here. I have noticed that many are starting to discuss the ableist view of “I am Deaf, not disabled,” and “I can do anything, except _________.” I honestly thought this day will never come. I am happy it is here! It is making me feel rushed to publish my thesis ASAP. Haha. My thesis discusses this very topic, in an autoethnographic way. I feel that I need to put out some quotes from my thesis, to give you a sneak preview of what is there. So, here it is:

“The term ‘disability,’ they claim, does not describe them because they are able to do things physically and mentally, emphasizing their able-bodiedness by showing and proving to society that they are capable of doing such,”(Burke, 2014, thesis submitted for grade)
“The purpose of this thesis is to show that the culture and the community of Deaf people and Deaf Studies do internalize ableist thinking and ableism. Through a critique of Deaf Studies scholarship and through an autoethnographic account of being deafdisabled1, this thesis challenges the idea that being Deaf is just a culture not at all the social model of disability. Deaf people consistently believe that the social model of disability does not apply to them in the same manner as people with disability. This thesis also challenges that disability is a biological reality and socially constructed as it applies to the Deaf,” (Burke, 2014).
“Additionally, when they define a Deaf person with a disability, deafdisabled, and/or see a hearing disabled person they shift into the idea of the medical model of disability. This is what I will call disability irony,” (Burke, 2014)
“This thesis hopes to promote a better understanding of how the absence of disability studies within Deaf Studies and the denial of disability enhances the attitude of ableism towards disabled and deafdisabled people. Deaf Studies and the community of Deaf people should be an example of acceptance. Their experience of oppression from hearing able-bodied, sighted and able-minded people should offer lessons on intolerant, discriminatory and unacceptably ignorant behavior. They should not turn their backs on the deafdisabled and disabled people but be an example to world of acceptance and appropriate human behavior,” (Burke 2014).
This is all from a couple of pages. I hope this will bring more positive discussion regarding this very topic. I also hope to publish it within a few months – a year.

Thank you!

Smiles big!
 
ayyy grats on the feature @Dragon Face , well deserved!

Back on the topic of my friend, it makes me sad that the deaf community can be so removed from everyone else. My m8 has said she's anxious about being around hearing people, cause shes not always sure how to communicate and people in the past have just not bothered to try and speak to her because they know shes deaf. Despite this, she really wants to try and make more hearing friends and get out of her comfort zone. She can lipread really well and has some hearing cause of her implant, so honestly the world is her oyster, but I think the community encourages this fear of communicating with the 'others' with this elitist bullshit. Like, unfortunately when you have a disability it means you are a minority. That means in the everyday world, you're probably not gonna have tons of people like you in close contact. That doesn't mean everyone else should just alienate you, but it also doesn't mean you should expect everyone else to make all the effort. There are reasonable adjustments you should expect to be made, especially at like work or school, but unless there's an international drive to make everyone bilingual in the same sign language there's no way everyone you meet will be able to communicate on the same level.

One thing that happened was when we were in dorms, my m8 had another deaf student in her dorm block. They hit it off p well (they're actually engaged now :feels: ) but one thing that they had to first overcome was the fact he was american lol! I didn't realise there were as many differences between BSL and ASL etc as there are! But they're fine, idk the specifics but I assume the differences are easily worked out.

Also, I wonder what the community thinks of Makaton? I'm semi-learning it for work (by semi I mean not actively having lessons but i'm picking it up slowly) and it's great for the kids we work with. It's pretty basic, but it's so important to so many of the kids at work who are nonverbal, like without it they would have no communication at all. The most wholesome thing is when two nonverbal kids have little interactions like asking each-other's names, especially when you had no idea one of the kids could even understand signs lmao. At the moment, I can only finger-spell and use basic words, but having a way for the kids to say like "toilet" or even just yes or no to an activity is so great for them. Makes my day when a kid signs "happy" at me :feels:.
 
Back when Nelson Mandela died, they had an ASL interpreter at his memorial, who infamously is known for just flailing his hands around meaninglessly because he didn't actually know sign language.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FHtQXEQOnMUMost of the world looked at it and laughed because of the supreme incompetence that must have led to it happening, but the deaf community saw it and screeched. For them, the guy flipping his fingers around was tantamount to blackface, and there was a huge uproar on twitter over it.
View attachment 535877
Just to nitpick a bit: this guy wasn't supposed to be an ASL interpreter, but an SASL interpreter.
Also, he wasn't a native English speaker, so even if he could interpret from his native Xhosa to SASL, English at such an official event was too much.
He was working for a company that provided SASL interpreters for cheap and he was doing it for years. According to the company, he provider them with fake contact data.
If I had to guess, he was a guy who maybe learned few SASL signs, fabricated his resume, lied his way through the interview and got a job as interpretative macarena dancer.
He's now doing acting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...2bb96304e34_story.html?utm_term=.4d3fd6341936
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...d-to-the-fake-Nelson-Mandela-interpreter.html
 
Just to nitpick a bit: this guy wasn't supposed to be an ASL interpreter, but an SASL interpreter.
Also, he wasn't a native English speaker, so even if he could interpret from his native Xhosa to SASL, English at such an official event was too much.
He was working for a company that provided SASL interpreters for cheap and he was doing it for years. According to the company, he provider them with fake contact data.
If I had to guess, he was a guy who maybe learned few SASL signs, fabricated his resume, lied his way through the interview and got a job as interpretative macarena dancer.
He's now doing acting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...2bb96304e34_story.html?utm_term=.4d3fd6341936
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...d-to-the-fake-Nelson-Mandela-interpreter.html

Damn, that's honestly interesting. You could turn that shit into a crime/drama movie.
 
This lady Meredith Burke has a point, IMO -- that all this rhetoric about "It's not a disability" makes it sound like an actual disability would be the most incredibly horrible and life-ending thing possible, like people who really are disabled are Hartley Hooligans, incapable of being even mildly productive or having the smallest drop of quality of life. I immediately think of the guys in Murderball -- a really excellent documentary about US men's wheelchair rugby. The funny thing? No matter how old the guy was when he had to start using a wheelchair, no matter how much use of arm nerves the guy might have (one is a quadruple amputee who is allowed to smear glue on his arm stumps to catch the ball) or what their degree of spinal cord injury actually is, they bond the same way any douchey Chad sports bros bond on a team. Nobody is considered insufficiently disabled to be in the club. (There is a complicated system for determining how many men can be on the court at once depending on how much use of their bodies they still have, but that has to do with sports rules, not disability separatism.)

If one of those guys suddenly, miraculously stood up and walked one day, his teammates would applaud like hell and then make him buy the beer that night. But you know, clearly admitting you have something that makes it harder to function in some aspects of life is beneath the big-D Deaf people. Because the scene in Murderball where they talk about the different tactics for slaying pussy from a wheelchair is staged, or something. /sarc
 
Damn, that's honestly interesting. You could turn that shit into a crime/drama movie.
To be honest, it already reads like a Nollywood script anyway. I give it a year for it to turn up one of those weird African film channels on cable. Bonus points if they manage to thrown some of their truly amazing CGI skills in there too.
 
It may be Deaf bluntness being part of this. Unlike hearing people, we pretty much speak up on our mind even if it's socially inappropriate. If you're Deaf and you meet up with a Deaf person after years, they will tell you that you've gotten fatter.

So they're like Asians?

People who are “hearing impaired” at all are considered disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act, so they are disabled under the letter of the law.

I have epilepsy and I’m disabled. Doesn’t bother my ass. These fags need to come to grips with the notion that being disabled doesn’t mean you can’t function in society.

I think it should be up to the individual to decide how their disability limits them. It sounds like the Deaf community wants to force people into groupthink. It's similar to autistics and downies who are against any sort of cure or preventative measures because they equate it with genocide. Be glad that hysteria in its old timey sense is no longer a thing. Or we'd have Hysteria Culture.

Back when I worked EMS we had a large, world renowned, school for the Deaf in my district. It was by far the scariest most horrifying place I have ever encountered. (And I’ve seen some horrors!) We actually wanted to try and get at least our officers trained in sign language. Enough to facilitate EMS and Medical Emergencies. The school fought us in ways that you would not believe. They took steps to insure that the kids only communication with the outside hearing world was exclusively through them and their “teachers”. It didn’t take us long to work out that yes the place was in fact a cult. A really scary one. Conversations with Law Enforcement and CPS went knowhere. They were just as frustrated as us. The place was politically protected.

But what if someone had an accident? Do they intend on just frantically signing to you even though you can't understand? That's worse than those kids on Tumblr saying white people can't learn Spanish, as nonsensical as that sounds.

They are just brainwashing kids so when they are older they will be afraid to interact with the hearing world and run to the safety of the Deaf community. Very cultish indeed.
Well apparantly they're not disabled.

This is pretty good news to me as a disabled person since we can re-alocate the resoarces expended on support they don't need to me. Naturally if they have any objections we can obviously discuss them ....perhaps over the phone.

Jokes aside Self-indentifying with your disability to such a degree is really unhealthy.

They can't be very well rounded if being Deaf is who they are. It's like trannies who base their whole identity on being trannies. It's like fetishizing yourself.
 
I honestly don't get the butthurt from having a disability and being identified as that. I mean I don't get people who get butthurt about being called a cripple if they can't walk. Like deafness is a disability. You can't hear. It literally is a disadvantage compared to someone who has hearing. Hell my vision is shit without my glasses. I don't get mad when people take look through my glasses and go "Holy shit your eyes suck!". They do.
It may be Deaf bluntness being part of this. Unlike hearing people, we pretty much speak up on our mind even if it's socially inappropriate. If you're Deaf and you meet up with a Deaf person after years, they will tell you that you've gotten fatter.
Yes, yes you folks do. It's hilarious at times how blunt you guys are to people. I've only seen that with Taiwanese people who will bluntly say things like "When baby expected" to a fat guy.

I already lost my hearing by blasting max volume on my headphones
I've fucked it up with too many times hunting or shooting without ear pro like an idiot.
 
We wuz deaf ‘n sheet

On a side note can someone please tell me how to cross out text, I had a fantastic joke but now I can’t use it.:'(
 
Also, I wonder what the community thinks of Makaton?

If I remember correctly, Makaton is for British people with special needs, from what I've seen, while the Deaf community understood and recoginzed Makaton for their usefulness to help disabled children communicate, they also are disgruntled about them because hearing people tried to use Makaton method instead of British Sign Language on Deaf children.

I think they're ok as long as people are able to recognize both of them aren't the same thing.
 
I'm so glad this thread exists. The amount of "Deaf culture should be preserved and there shouldn't be any attempts to fix people so they can hear" is ludicrous. If people weren't meant to hear, why the fuck do we have ears, then.
 
This is not a big surprise considering Deaf community has a very unfavorable view of disabled people. A Deaf father of DeafBlind daughter ranted on Facebook about it last year, and then we got a DeafDisabled woman announcing about publishing her thesis focusing on ableism within the Deaf community.

Transcript:

Hello, Meredith here. I have noticed that many are starting to discuss the ableist view of “I am Deaf, not disabled,” and “I can do anything, except _________.” I honestly thought this day will never come. I am happy it is here! It is making me feel rushed to publish my thesis ASAP. Haha. My thesis discusses this very topic, in an autoethnographic way. I feel that I need to put out some quotes from my thesis, to give you a sneak preview of what is there. So, here it is:

“The term ‘disability,’ they claim, does not describe them because they are able to do things physically and mentally, emphasizing their able-bodiedness by showing and proving to society that they are capable of doing such,”(Burke, 2014, thesis submitted for grade)
“The purpose of this thesis is to show that the culture and the community of Deaf people and Deaf Studies do internalize ableist thinking and ableism. Through a critique of Deaf Studies scholarship and through an autoethnographic account of being deafdisabled1, this thesis challenges the idea that being Deaf is just a culture not at all the social model of disability. Deaf people consistently believe that the social model of disability does not apply to them in the same manner as people with disability. This thesis also challenges that disability is a biological reality and socially constructed as it applies to the Deaf,” (Burke, 2014).
“Additionally, when they define a Deaf person with a disability, deafdisabled, and/or see a hearing disabled person they shift into the idea of the medical model of disability. This is what I will call disability irony,” (Burke, 2014)
“This thesis hopes to promote a better understanding of how the absence of disability studies within Deaf Studies and the denial of disability enhances the attitude of ableism towards disabled and deafdisabled people. Deaf Studies and the community of Deaf people should be an example of acceptance. Their experience of oppression from hearing able-bodied, sighted and able-minded people should offer lessons on intolerant, discriminatory and unacceptably ignorant behavior. They should not turn their backs on the deafdisabled and disabled people but be an example to world of acceptance and appropriate human behavior,” (Burke 2014).
This is all from a couple of pages. I hope this will bring more positive discussion regarding this very topic. I also hope to publish it within a few months – a year.

Thank you!

Smiles big!

I think these hardcore Deaf people are often insensitive to people with disabilities because they're so far up their own asses that they don't realize they too have a disability.
 
1689077-char_misha.png
By providing every deaf person with a gay retard, we can help solve this issue
 
I was at a conference once and one of the seminars offered was how to deal with deaf people in the healthcare setting. That's when I found out how absolutely full of themselves deaf people are. Such attitude and smugness.

I've also worked with a couple of deaf people when I was in retail, and they BOTH were varying degrees of asshole. Dunno if that was necessarily related to being deaf or not, but I imagine so.

One of those guys use to sit in the break room with his hearing aids turned all the way up so that it kept making feedback noises. I asked him (rather nicely I thought) to turn them down once and I got the biggest stink eye from him. He turned them down, but acted like a big fucking sourpuss toward me the rest of the day.
 
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