What matters deafness of the ears, when the mind hears?

Pretty cool! I love music and I LOVE music, in particular, Chinese pop and folk songs from the 1980s to 90s (which - sigh! - shows my age).

If my hearing loss ever goes down the drain to profound, this is something I will definitely get!

In a twist of fate, Sandy Mintz, an audiologist with medical device designer Advanced Bionics, lost her hearing about 10 years ago. Now, she is working with Samsung to help develop a wireless MP3 system so the deaf can enjoy music.

Read on…

Last in the series of personal essays.

Note I am a special education teacher in a deaf school in Singapore, and the ‘kids’ referred to are my students. :)

*** 

As I’d said, I used to have an identity crisis.

I was clearly not part of the world around me–the one in which people understand one another effortlessly even though they don’t always face each other when they talk, where they had no problems in group conversations (which was a miracle to me), where they can actually(!) use the telephone and do other oh-so-ordinary everyday stuff which was oh-so-inaccessible to me.

I was ‘different’ because there was something wrong with my ears. I couldn’t hear like other people. I still can’t.

What, then, was I?

*****

I thought I found the answer some years back. In fact, not very far back–perhaps 2 or 3 years ago.

I am Deaf.

With a capital D.

And I am Proud of it.

With a capital P.

For too long, I’ve felt ashamed of my so-called disability. Other ‘normal’ hearing people say so, hence it must be so. That I never knew or saw any other deaf folks only served to reinforce that.

“That’s not a big problem–Learn to lip-read!”

“Pay more attention in class and you will understand the lessons.”

“But you wear hearing aids. Why can’t you hear me?”

“Don’t pretend! You CAN hear me!” (And if I tried to explain that yes, I could hear him but I couldn’t understand his speech, it only made things worse: “Huh?? Can hear me but can’t understand me?? You dunno English??!”)

And so on.

The nonsense accumulated. And I willingly took it all in.

I tried so hard and so intensely to be a Hearing person. (And yes, I make no apologies for the capital H.)

And it was all in vain, a futile effort doomed to failure from the very start, simply because I never was one to begin with and I never could be one. Ever.

But I don’t aspire to be a Hearing person anymore.

Does that sound weird?

Why?

Oh sure, it IS a disability, but only as far as I allow it to be.

I’ve stated before that I don’t care what label people want to pin on me, and I’ve been stuck with numerous labels through the years–hearing-impaired (the most common tag, used by doctors, teachers and relatives), hard-of-hearing, have hearing loss, have hearing problem, deaf (small ‘d’, as a form of mockery by certain people) and half-half (the “h-h” sign favoured by some Deaf people to refer to those whom they see as ‘in-between’ hearing and deaf).

And I don’t bloody give a dam.

Go ahead, feel free. It’s your right to call me whatever you want.

As long as you understand the bottomline: I am functionally deaf.

I am functionally deaf with or without my hearing aids.

I am functionally deaf even with my good speech. (Since when has good speech got to do with deafness anyway?)

All that debate over my status can be distilled to this one simple fact: I am functionally deaf.

And if you ask me, that is, if anyone bothers to ask me my opinion of my own status (assuming s/he is interested in my opinion of MYSELF, instead of being busy stating their opinions about MY condition), I say: I am Deaf.

Of course, even this assertion wasn’t to be allowed to pass without challenge, from both the Hearing and Deaf worlds.

Some Hearing and even Deaf people objected, “You can’t be deaf! You speak soooooo well! You have excellent speech!”

Some Deaf people think: No way, he is oral. No way, he is half-half. No way, he doesn’t understand Deaf Culture cos he isn’t from our community. And so on.

So I took in a lot of rubbish from these camps too.

Man, I should’ve been a rubbish collector. (No offence to rubbish collectors.)

But some short people, let’s call them hobbits, saved the world from being overran by rubbish-spewing human grown-ups.

My kids, erm, I mean, some hobbits, took the position that I am Hearing or H-H at first.

Gradually, the months passed, and….

… they saw my hearing aids (when I did use them, and which were so such more inconspicious than theirs),

… my ability to understand their rapid-fire signs, my willingness to dump SEE and code-switch to their signing style and structure (ahem, officially not allowed.. so please, shhhhh.. I’d have tried anything to make them understand my lessons and anyway that’s the Total Communication philosophy after all),

….the ‘deaf characteristics’ I shared with them (like, whenever hearing colleagues called me from the door while my back was turned, the hobbits always had to tell me cos I inevitably failed to react) and…

… the times they were ever-eager to tell me it was “recess!” when the bell went and I happened not to be wearing my aids.

Me: “Is it? But it’s still 9.55.”

“Clock slow! You didn’t hear bell?? Recess now!”

Me (teasingly): “Oh. Of course I heard it. I’m hearing.”

“NOOOO!! YOU ARE DEAF!!!”

I’m still not sure if they know the distinction between Deaf and deaf.

But I know they now see me as deaf, just like them.

Perhaps that’s all that matters.

Hooray for hobbits!

Another essay I wrote years ago. And did I sound fierce.. whoa!

*** 

For years and years, I denied that I was deaf.

Oh no, I wasn’t deaf.

How could I be anything else when everyone else around me isn’t deaf? I blamed not being able to hear on my not trying hard enough (perverse though this may sound), and this was reinforced by teachers who assumed that I wasn’t paying attention rather than me being unable to catch their speech. (And so much for the doctor’s letter certifying my hearing loss.) I got into trouble many times cos of this–at school, during NS and even at home.

It’s easy to talk about ‘integration’ and ’standing up for yourself’ and ’self-esteem’ and ‘being responsible and proactive for oneself’. Those are all true and valid. And I have attempted to do so, ever since I was old and mature enough to.

Though I’ll really like to see those who advocate deaf children doing that explain exactly how it is to be done, surrounded as these kids are by hearing people who has no understanding of their condition.

I say it’s ‘easy’ cos it’s usually said by those in positions of privilege sitting comfortably in their cushy armchairs, those who never ever had to undergo all that rubbish, who has no real idea of what it entails, who doesn’t have to spend his entire childhood, teenage years and early adulthood–every single day of 20 long years–experiencing life in a goldfish bowl, forced to be cut off from normal human interaction, able to see what’s happening around him but unable to make sense of the sounds and unable to understand what’s happening.

Despite it all, I survived, as did many others. Wheras those sprouting such patronising advice never had such an experience in the first place.

So pardon us if we appear disdainful of such seemingly sensible and reasonable words–it’s just like how a battle-hardened sergeant naturally finds it difficult to respect a newly-minted officer who has never seen combat but thinks nothing of ordering the soldier around.

I wrote this 4 years ago. I grew up in an oral environment and picked up sign relatively late in my early 20s. Naturally, my lack of a deaf-schooling and signing background made some in the deaf community look askance at me, at my identification of myself as a deaf and Deaf person.

Both deaf and hearing people tended to stick a convenient label on me, and this was my response.

*** 

I am deaf.

No no, some people say, you are not deaf. You are hearing impaired. Or hard of hearing. Or have a hearing loss.

Words. Only words. They aren’t me.

What do they know?

How do they know?

What I know, cos it’s me–myself–I’m talking about, is I can’t understand speech at all without my HAs. And with–repeat, WITH–my HAs, I still can’t catch speech in the vast majority of situations.

If I seem to understand and am nodding my head like you’re really getting through to me, it actually means one of these:

1) I’m pretending that I understand you
2) A lucky (and extremely rare) alignment of the stars resulted in *favourable conditions whereby I can hear and understand you
3) You are icqing, smsing, emailing, writing on paper to me
4) I’m very used to you–a long-time friend or family member–and can lipread you
5) You are signing to me

There, it’s very simple. Covers pretty much everything except what hearing people use: their ears and sense of hearing.

Me, I don’t depend on my hearing much simply because I can’t. Physically can’t. You can threaten me at gun-point and I still can’t.

I don’t care a mite and don’t mind the least which label people want to stick on me as long as they understand the above.

So much for semantics. Bleah!

Footnote: *favourable conditions = one-to-one, face-to-face, quiet place without background noise, eye contact at all times, clear and reasonably loud voice, having the patience to repeat (and repeat and repeat) what you just said. Nothing much to it, eh?

 

This is a vblog (video blog) response to the previous posts on the ‘Solitaire’ phenomenon, of whom I count myself as one.

The video is subtitled so no worries for non-signers.

It’s a commentary by a deaf signer on his feelings after reading through the blog posts of deaf people who grew up in oral environments and late-deafened adults. In it, he makes a great analogy from the perspective of a deaf ASL user: Imagine you wake up one morning, and find that you have lost your fingers..

Watch - and read! - it…

This comes from another forum related to deafness. Interesting but the klutz in me don’t really get some of the technical aspects of it, heh. (I am a Mac user, not a programmer.)

Why am I writing about this? Not everyone has money to burn. Here’s a few alternatives to the UbiDuo, something I call the "poor mans communications device." This will use something you most likely already have or can get for cheap. This particular method can be used as both a captioning *AND* communications device.

Read on…

Scholarly but readable and well articulated piece on the concept of deaf identity and culture, by "Lennard J. Davis, who grew up with deaf parents, is a professor of English, disability and human development, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago."

Well worth a read.

The construct of the deaf as a linguistic, ethnic minority is attractive, but flawed. Yes, it has removed the biological stigma of deafness; for the most part, the deaf are no longer viewed as "handicapped" or "disabled." Deaf people get to be a sociological group, a "community." But there is a negative side: The idea of an ethnic group or minority is tinged with the brutal history of racial politics. There is a sense in which slavery, apartheid, miscegenation laws, and medical experiments have forged the apartness of the racialized minority and in which the oppressor group has created the oppressed. Is that the best model on which deafness should base its existence?

Read on…

After a long hard winter of struggle and exaggeration of the reasons for my absence, I’m back.

And the links resume.

Enjoy! 

This is a book review by a hearing-impaired girl. She writes of how much and how deeply she relates to what the author of the book wrote, because the author is deaf too, and grew up in an oral world too, and what these facts so heartbreakingly mean.

And that makes there of us - every word and every experience and every feeling described is true for me as well. (Erm, except for the part about never being asked out on dates with boys.) Almost all the excerpts make me want to yell: "Hey! That’s me in there! She gets everything exactly correct! She understands perfectly!" (Except I am very much not a girl, ahem.)

If you want to understand me that bit deeper, read on.

P/S: Oh, I will be checking if I can get the book at Kino or Borders - I want it!!

 

I hate being unknown and feeling helpless to do anything about it. It is the worst feeling. When I shared my predictament with others, it was all to easy for them to encourage me to "just" initiate, reach out to people, become more involved, speak up, disclose, and "stop being a whiny victim". After all, I certainly looked and behaved normally enough- people would like and include me if they just knew me. But it was getting to the part where I was known that seemed nearly impossible to me. This something that most others took easily for granted was something that eluded me.

Read on…