this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
141 points (98.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43757 readers
2316 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Which is why we give deaf students extra attention in schools now...
The issue is the deaf community was forced to be insular for most of American history. And part of that included the stereotype of "deaf and dumb" where if a person was deaf, they were assumed to be stupid.
And some older members of that community see the next generation being treated more inclusivly as a negative, because that means their community will shrink if people aren't forced to only interact with other deaf people. They don't want integration into the larger community, and they want to force future generations to be segregated as well.
And theyre kind of right. Most of the people with that line of thought aren't people you'd want to voluntarily associate with. Wanting to hobble the next generation so you don't feel lonely is pretty low.
Dumb used to mean mute. The phrase meant deaf and unable to speak.
Of course, not being able to communicate leads a lot of people to think someone is stupid, and I imagine that's why dumb is now synonymous with it.
I once met a lady with some severe disabilities, no idea what, in a powered wheelchair at a bar. She couldn't talk, and had a massive keyboard she would sort of flail at until she spelled out the words she was trying to say. It audibly spoke for her.
This lady has two college degrees, writes books, and does art to help promote the concept that disabled people are people too.
Pretty damn impressive. Her and her husband's main gripes were how infantilizing most people are to them. And how expensive good wheelchairs are, lol
Yeah. When people think of Helen Keller they rarely think socialist scholar and cofounder of the ACLU. They think of a little girl being taught to communicate or a manifestation of disability.
I want to give the flip side here. They used to separate us. There was active division based on how bad your hearing was. If you couldn’t hear with effort and hearing aids you were shunted away as a lost cause. But if you could they would tell your parents not to teach you sign language because you’d prefer it. That’s how me, my sister, my mom, and my grandma were all denied our right to a native language that would’ve been easier for us. They didn’t care that by 60 we’d be deaf as a post because our hearing loss was genetic and degenerative. All English all the time, and no acknowledgment that it took effort to hear.
The Deaf community can be insular assholes, but I understand it. Our culture is denied to us. Our language is denied to us. And maybe, just maybe part of why we’re oissed off is because we have some points that nobody wants to acknowledge. Like the fact that cochlear implants aren’t some miracle, they’re great, and my grandparents love theirs, but they’re fucking exhausting to use. Hell, I’m a healthy 28 year old and I have to take my hearing aids out after work because they tire me. And for children born too deaf to use auditory communication with hearing parents, it’s disturbing how few of those parents learn sign language. But every CODA (child of deaf adults) is taught spoken language (and they tend to maintain lifelong ties to Deaf culture)
I’m still mad I wasn’t taught sign as a kid. I’m glad I was given hearing aids but I deserved access to community like me. And if I’d reproduced I would’ve made damn sure my kid was a native signer so that way they’d never grow up in fear of inevitable silence or awkwardly fail to communicate with people who share their disability.