I am deaf, no matter what you say
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?
Hey, it doesn’t matter really what others wanna view you as, and don’t be too bothered by it. As long as we can communicate effectively, i see you just like any other person/ friend that i have. i have been working with persons who do not have speech abilities or maybe do not have the cognitive abilities to understand like most people do, but i’ll use whatever other available ways i can to do so. To me, communication is important, in whatever ways. Some people can hear and speak but still can’t get what i mean anyway! (you know the phrase, Hear but Never Listen?)So it may not be the most effective communication at all.
remain cheerful & brave my dear friend!
We will grab every opportunity to educate the public as much as we can… hopefully it’ll help our next generation.
Comment by Kim — March 20, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
Thanks, Kim.
You know that and I know that. Let’s hope people know that too. :)
Thanks for your wonderful support!
Comment by Dictatorial Editor — March 21, 2007 @ 12:16 am