As a young child, I had this good friend, I'll call her Carol. She was deaf, like me, and signed in mostly SEE [Signed Exact English]. However, her writing skills among other skills were severely challenged due to a learning/memory disability. She had a hard time even remembering me if she did not see me for a while. I remember in grade one when we both returned to school. I greeted Carol like nothing changed and she looked at me blankly, and then signed to her mother, "Who's that?" She explained to Carol that I'm that girl who would come to her house and play with her. She then smiled and gave me a hug, I don’t know if she really remembered me or not but, that didn't matter. We were still the friends I knew and loved. I will confess though, that I was not always the best friend. Carol also was bald, and wore a wig. I would occasionally snatch the wig off while everyone laughed at her . . . She would laugh along with us. I was only six years old but I feel horrible about that now.
Later, I was mainstreamed, and was the only deaf girl at school and did not have any d/Deaf friends outside of school until I met Anna during the summer after grade four. I remember meeting her at the 'Hands On' day camp for the Deaf. I was instantly enthralled by this girl. She signed beautifully, and was so expressive. I could not understand her very well because she communicates in ASL [American Sign Language] but we seemed to bond right away. Immediately, I stared to sleep over at her house during weekends. I slowly began to understand her without any problems and she taught me how to sign in ASL. Before her, I barely even knew that ASL existed. She was the first Deaf girl I befriended who was truly Deaf in every way, very involved in the Deaf community, had a Deaf parent, and was strongly fluent in ASL. I adored this girl, and she was my best friend.
After a while, I noticed that her writing skills were very bad, we were in the same grade at separate schools. So I often would bring homework to her house during the weekends. I would look at her homework and notice that the things she was learning were at least two grades behind mine. I did not really understand why it was like that, as Anna seemed to be a very intelligent girl to me. When Anna needed help for homework, she would come to me instead of her mother, and I wondered why. Eventually I noticed how Anna's mother would often ask that I help Anna with the homework. I tried to help Anna but I’ll admit, sometimes I got impatient and just did the homework for her so we could go play! I did not care that she was grades behind, I still considered her one of the most interesting people I have met. I often would communicate for her to the hearing people who were not ASL signers, I would act as the middle person, often writing what she said to the hearing person who could not sign.
I remember one day I came to stay with Anna for a weekend. I just learned about the process of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and was very excited about it. I decided that Anna had to learn about it too, so I sat Anna down. I told her that I learned something very interesting in school. I explained system to her in [flawed] ASL [keep in mind I am translating this into written English]:
Zoee: We all breathe air right? But there are two types, one that humans and animals inhale and one other that plants inhales.
Anna: *nods* [note: Anna did not know that there were two types]
Zoee: Humans and animals inhale oxygen [I formed circles with my hands to represent oxygen], and then we exhale something else out which is Carbon Dioxide [I then formed flat circles to represent Carbon Dioxide] . . . Now where do the flat circles go? Plants! They inhale the flat circles and then exhale circles again!
Anna: *nodding rapidly, understanding*
Zoee: So this is why we need plants, if there are no more plants. What will we do? We will have no more circles! Also the plants need us, because without us, there are no more flat circles!
Anna understood right away and then went to tell her mother about it. I wont say that the mother did not work hard with Anna at all as she may have when I was not around but, I wondered to myself why the mother did not tell Anna about this already? The mother definitely already knew about this. I could see that Anna was intelligent enough to understand anything as long as it was signed to her. I don’t know if she had a learning disability that made it difficult for her to write and read, but she definitely had no problems understanding things via ASL. I honestly think the responsibility falls on the parent and the schools that Anna attended and they clearly failed her.
Anna moved far away in the seventh grade. I went on and made a few d/Deaf friends in grade eight when I attended a school that had a program for the deaf. Some were able to read and write with no problems, and some had difficulties. Anyway after grade eight, I returned back to my usual life where I interacted with only hearing people most of the time due to the fact that I returned to a school where I was the only deaf student.
Somehow, during this time, my attitude toward d/Deaf people who could not read or write well, changed. I started to look at d/Deaf people and refusing to be friends with anyone who I did not feel that was at least as smart or almost as smart as me [smarter was even better]. I avoided people . . . I even avoided Anna when she moved back to my hometown when I was a teenager. I am sure I hurt her feelings, and I feel quite bad about that now. However, at that time, I was very idealistic and stubborn. I repeatedly told myself, if this person cannot read or write that well, how can this person even begin to converse with me about issues that I am passionate about?
I was a part of the hearing world, and I expected them to meet the expectations I had for my fellow hearing friends, who had to write to me in order to eventually learn how to sign in SEE. I carried this attitude for years. I actually began to realize my errors recently, when I pondered on how there are Deaf people who would choose to not accept me as a part of their world because my ASL is obviously very flawed. If it was wrong for them to not accept me because I was unable to sign in their language, then how could it be right for me to not accept them because they cannot write the way I do? If one does research, they will see that ASL was never supposed to be based on written and/or spoken English, so it would be unfair to even attempt to compare English to ASL. However, I must make this clear so there are no misconceptions. ASL does not mean one would be bad at writing in English. Many native ASL signers are one of the most brilliant people I have ever known, and would make me feel embarrassed of my writing skills. It's really an issue about the parents and school system that did not push the child hard enough to succeed.
Another thing that made me realize how wrong I was to do this, was the discovery of the term ‘Deafhood’ and ‘Crab Theory’. I was pushing my own people down because I thought I was better than they were because I could read and write better. What good comes from this? Nothing. I was doing nothing except hurting the Deaf community by choosing to behave this way and my actions would then reflect onto my hearing friends who knew nothing about the deaf community and Deaf culture. They would see that I dismissed any Deaf individual who did not have good writing skills, and then in turn, behave the same way. I was doing serious damage to my own community and people. Deafhood taught me that we all are deaf, and we all came from different backgrounds, and that we need to help each other. Encourage each other to succeed.
While thinking about all this, I began to recall moments where hearing people would look down at me because my writing skills did not match theirs. As a child, I definitely made many errors while writing. My journal from grade five was just terrible. I remember how much it hurt me to know they thought I was stupid because I was unable to write as well as they could and that it took me a bit longer to realize how to spell certain words and how the English grammar system worked. Even to this very day, I still make grammar mistakes [I bet you can find several here!!], and use certain words too often, which would make English elitists want to vomit all over me. So how dare I pass judgement on others when I am obviously not that perfect either?
I was an audist in a way without even realizing it. I apologize to everybody that I may have hurt because of my actions. I don’t expect forgiveness. I am simply happy that my eyes are finally open.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
A Deaf Girl's Thoughts on the Term 'Deafhood'
I just wrote an article on the term 'Deafhood', it's more about my life as a d/Deaf person and what Deafhood means to me so far. It's non-exclusive so i can post it here...
A Deaf Girl's Thoughts on the Term 'Deafhood'
A new term in the Deaf culture is 'Deafhood'. I have just recently discovered it myself, and was completely clueless as to what the meaning was. From my knowledge, the term 'Deafhood' comes from a book called 'Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood' which was written by Paddy Ladd. Ever since this book was published, the term has been spreading through the Deaf community. Once I discovered the term and read about it. I had to sit back and think to myself. What does Deafhood mean to me? In order to figure that out, i have to look back to my experiences while growing up.
As a child, I grew up in a hearing world most of the time. My entire family was hearing, with the exception of my grandma, who was hard of hearing. Although she did attend a Deaf school when she was a child, she can speak and lipread pretty well. I was very lucky to have a family who, while were hearing, encouraged and accepted sign language. I was raised using Signing Exact English (SEE2). I attended this preschool for the disabled which had a class for the Deaf. Then for kindergarten and grade one, I attended this small school that mixed hearing students with Deaf students in equal numbers and the hearing students knew how to sign. The teachers taught in SEE2. Most of the hearing children's parents were interpreters or Deaf. During this time, I began taking speech therapy at school. I don't recall too much about this except having to read Cinderella out loud with this huge microphone in my hand. However, my mom was very concerned about the quality of education I was receiving and decided to transfer me to a public school where I was the only Deaf student among a thousand hearing students or so.
At such a young age, I didn't think about how I was Deaf, or how it affected the people around me. I was Deaf. I was proud to be Deaf. I would tell people I did not want a cochlear implant because I loved being Deaf. I did not feel afraid about being at a school where I was the only Deaf student. I taught my classmates how to sign. Granted, I did receive some really silly questions, the infamous one would be where a classmate asked me through my interpreter "Do you know you have hiccups?", I simply answered "Yes . . . I feel the hiccups." I made friends very easily. The girls would flock around me, wanting to learn how to sign. The boys would be the difficult ones to befriend. I moved from school to school several times, and I was always the only Deaf student. I started to get tired of having to leave my class to do speech therapy, and decided to quit after grade three.
I did not really have any close Deaf friends until the summer of my fourth grade when I attended this ‘Hands-On' day camp for the Deaf. There, I met Anna [name is changed to protect her identity], a Deaf girl who was strongly fluent in ASL. At first we had a hard time understanding each other, but I slowly adapted to ASL. I recall so many nights where we'd have a sleep over and I would be enthralled by all the stories she would tell me in ASL. Anna attended a school that had a program for the Deaf and she would stay in a dorm during the weekdays and then fly back home during weekends. I would always run over to her house after school on Friday and spend the entire weekend with her. I discovered that her writing skills were so great and would often help her with homework and take the time to explain certain things to her. The mother would even ask me to go help Anna with homework. Anna was my first and only Deaf best friend.
As I entered my pre-teenage years. Ah yes, puberty, don't we all love that time of our lives! I started to rely on communication more than just playing with my classmates. It was then, when I started to notice the lack of communication I had with most of my friends. I had to rely on my hearing best friend to interpret for me. I started to feel isolated and lonely for the first time in my life. I felt different, which was something I never really experienced before. By then, Anna moved away, so I had no Deaf friends anymore. In my seventh grade, I decided that for next year, I wanted to attend the high school that had a program for the Deaf, which had about maybe fifty Deaf students or so. I begged, I cried, I demanded my mom to allow me to attend. It was a stretch as I would have to fly there every Sunday and back home every Friday. But she said yes!
Eighth grade was the experience of a lifetime. I stayed at a dorm for the Deaf and got to interact with more Deaf children than I ever had the opportunity to beforehand. I had my first short-lived Deaf boyfriend. I had several close Deaf friends. I had crushes on Deaf boys and flirted with them. I attended Deaf events where cute boys would ask me to dance with them. I got to really interact in group discussions/conversations for the first time in my life. However, I will note that at first a good number of the students could not understand me as I still was not very good at ASL. I still remember this one experience where I was telling a story about something, to two girls. One was nodding and the other looked confused and when I finished. The confused girl turned to the other girl and said "I didn't understand?" So the girl then translated what I said in fluent ASL. My ASL definitely improved but I don't think I ever became 100 percent fluent at all.
By the end of grade eight though, I got tired of flying back and forth, so I decided to transfer back to a local public school. Once again, I was the only Deaf student, and this time, things were a lot different. I was a teenager. You know teenagers, we all want to feel like we belong. I rebelled like most teenagers do, but usually there's a group for every type of teenagers, the popular kids, the jocks, the art kids, the band kids, the geeks, the druggies and so on. I had friends in a few of these circles but I never really felt like I was truly a part of any group as most of the people did not talk to me. They acknowledged me. They waved ‘hi' and ‘bye' to me. Maybe the occasional note. But mostly I spend time only talking to my best friend[s].
During this time, there was a lack of interpreters and in grade nine, I spent most of the year with several interpreters and when there was no interpreter, I had a note taker. There was even times when I had no note taker and I'd sit in the class and wonder why I was even there? What was the point? The worst thing was that the teachers did not seem to recognize that this was a problem, they still expected me to understand what was going on, even though I had very little lip reading skills. This year was very frustrating and I started to become prone to skipping school. My personality drastically changed. I started to feel embarrassed to be deaf. I would get anxious when my friends would say "Oh she's deaf" to strangers who would try to talk to me. I did not want to be seen as different. I wanted to be the same as my friends. I wanted to hear and speak, more than anything else. I'd feel more and more lost during group gatherings and so alienated to the point where I just gave up on socializing altogether.
I struggled with this feeling for years and still do to a small extent deep inside. The feeling that it was somehow a bad thing to be noticed as a deaf person. I knew it was not bad but I could not help but to feel embarrassed, and anxious around new people. I did not want to attract attention toward me at all. There were many times where I would stop signing when a person I did not know, stepped into the room, as I did not want them to notice me.
Fast-forward to when I was twenty-three years old, I finally met a Deaf girl that I knew for a while online. Through her, I also met a Deaf boy with a cochlear implant, who lived close by. I started to occasionally spend time with the two whenever the opportunity arose. Once again after a long time, I was able to be around Deaf people on a fairly regular basis. I forgot how much I enjoyed signing in ASL, granted, I know my ASL is quite flawed, it still felt amazing nonetheless. I remember a day where this girl and boy and I spent some time together and I was hit with this giddy feeling. I just felt so happy to be understood effortlessly, and to have a group conversation for once. It was like a wonderful drug.
Now I have moved away and once again do not have any local Deaf friends, but I hope that will change soon! However, I stay in touch with my Deaf friends on the internet. Then the Gallaudet protest started, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt an urge to get involved with the Deaf community. During the protest, I learned a lot of things about the Deaf community and the culture that I was just so painfully oblivious to. It is correct, when people say that the protest has truly united a great number of d/Deaf individuals, as I am one of these individuals who just floated around in this world with no strong connection to the Deaf culture and community. Right now, I feel like I am a part of the community, and have the urge to learn as much as I possibly can about the Deaf culture, and to finally become fluent in ASL.
Now, with all that said. My entire life story, really. I will go back to the term ‘Deafhood'. What does Deafhood mean to me? I like to think it is about each d/Deaf person's experience of growing, discovering, and accepting who they are, as a d/Deaf individual. It also is about accepting other d/Deaf people and realizing that we are all deaf with very diverse backgrounds. Some of us grew up oral, used SEE/SEE2/LOVE/CASE/etc, used ASL, or various other sign languages. Some of us came from a fully hearing family, or a family that has many generations of Deaf relatives. Some of us had full access to good education and some did not. Some of us have good writing skills and other do not. Some of us were born d/Deaf and some became d/Deaf later on in their lives. Some use deaf, and some of us use Deaf. Some of us choose to not get cochlear implants, and some do. We are of all different colors in this world, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, and gender identities. It is about acceptance, helping each other, and being united. We cannot judge or push/pull each other down because of their choices as a d/Deaf person, instead, we have to accept, support, and encourage the person to succeed. Only then, will we be truly united. Have I truly embraced my Deafhood? I think I still have some work to do, but one day I hope to be, once again, that little girl who fully embraced the fact that she was Deaf without question or shame.
---
Soon to come : Confessions of a Deaf Girl Who Had an Audistic Attitude
such as: judging others based on their English writing skills
A new term in the Deaf culture is 'Deafhood'. I have just recently discovered it myself, and was completely clueless as to what the meaning was. From my knowledge, the term 'Deafhood' comes from a book called 'Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood' which was written by Paddy Ladd. Ever since this book was published, the term has been spreading through the Deaf community. Once I discovered the term and read about it. I had to sit back and think to myself. What does Deafhood mean to me? In order to figure that out, i have to look back to my experiences while growing up.
As a child, I grew up in a hearing world most of the time. My entire family was hearing, with the exception of my grandma, who was hard of hearing. Although she did attend a Deaf school when she was a child, she can speak and lipread pretty well. I was very lucky to have a family who, while were hearing, encouraged and accepted sign language. I was raised using Signing Exact English (SEE2). I attended this preschool for the disabled which had a class for the Deaf. Then for kindergarten and grade one, I attended this small school that mixed hearing students with Deaf students in equal numbers and the hearing students knew how to sign. The teachers taught in SEE2. Most of the hearing children's parents were interpreters or Deaf. During this time, I began taking speech therapy at school. I don't recall too much about this except having to read Cinderella out loud with this huge microphone in my hand. However, my mom was very concerned about the quality of education I was receiving and decided to transfer me to a public school where I was the only Deaf student among a thousand hearing students or so.
At such a young age, I didn't think about how I was Deaf, or how it affected the people around me. I was Deaf. I was proud to be Deaf. I would tell people I did not want a cochlear implant because I loved being Deaf. I did not feel afraid about being at a school where I was the only Deaf student. I taught my classmates how to sign. Granted, I did receive some really silly questions, the infamous one would be where a classmate asked me through my interpreter "Do you know you have hiccups?", I simply answered "Yes . . . I feel the hiccups." I made friends very easily. The girls would flock around me, wanting to learn how to sign. The boys would be the difficult ones to befriend. I moved from school to school several times, and I was always the only Deaf student. I started to get tired of having to leave my class to do speech therapy, and decided to quit after grade three.
I did not really have any close Deaf friends until the summer of my fourth grade when I attended this ‘Hands-On' day camp for the Deaf. There, I met Anna [name is changed to protect her identity], a Deaf girl who was strongly fluent in ASL. At first we had a hard time understanding each other, but I slowly adapted to ASL. I recall so many nights where we'd have a sleep over and I would be enthralled by all the stories she would tell me in ASL. Anna attended a school that had a program for the Deaf and she would stay in a dorm during the weekdays and then fly back home during weekends. I would always run over to her house after school on Friday and spend the entire weekend with her. I discovered that her writing skills were so great and would often help her with homework and take the time to explain certain things to her. The mother would even ask me to go help Anna with homework. Anna was my first and only Deaf best friend.
As I entered my pre-teenage years. Ah yes, puberty, don't we all love that time of our lives! I started to rely on communication more than just playing with my classmates. It was then, when I started to notice the lack of communication I had with most of my friends. I had to rely on my hearing best friend to interpret for me. I started to feel isolated and lonely for the first time in my life. I felt different, which was something I never really experienced before. By then, Anna moved away, so I had no Deaf friends anymore. In my seventh grade, I decided that for next year, I wanted to attend the high school that had a program for the Deaf, which had about maybe fifty Deaf students or so. I begged, I cried, I demanded my mom to allow me to attend. It was a stretch as I would have to fly there every Sunday and back home every Friday. But she said yes!
Eighth grade was the experience of a lifetime. I stayed at a dorm for the Deaf and got to interact with more Deaf children than I ever had the opportunity to beforehand. I had my first short-lived Deaf boyfriend. I had several close Deaf friends. I had crushes on Deaf boys and flirted with them. I attended Deaf events where cute boys would ask me to dance with them. I got to really interact in group discussions/conversations for the first time in my life. However, I will note that at first a good number of the students could not understand me as I still was not very good at ASL. I still remember this one experience where I was telling a story about something, to two girls. One was nodding and the other looked confused and when I finished. The confused girl turned to the other girl and said "I didn't understand?" So the girl then translated what I said in fluent ASL. My ASL definitely improved but I don't think I ever became 100 percent fluent at all.
By the end of grade eight though, I got tired of flying back and forth, so I decided to transfer back to a local public school. Once again, I was the only Deaf student, and this time, things were a lot different. I was a teenager. You know teenagers, we all want to feel like we belong. I rebelled like most teenagers do, but usually there's a group for every type of teenagers, the popular kids, the jocks, the art kids, the band kids, the geeks, the druggies and so on. I had friends in a few of these circles but I never really felt like I was truly a part of any group as most of the people did not talk to me. They acknowledged me. They waved ‘hi' and ‘bye' to me. Maybe the occasional note. But mostly I spend time only talking to my best friend[s].
During this time, there was a lack of interpreters and in grade nine, I spent most of the year with several interpreters and when there was no interpreter, I had a note taker. There was even times when I had no note taker and I'd sit in the class and wonder why I was even there? What was the point? The worst thing was that the teachers did not seem to recognize that this was a problem, they still expected me to understand what was going on, even though I had very little lip reading skills. This year was very frustrating and I started to become prone to skipping school. My personality drastically changed. I started to feel embarrassed to be deaf. I would get anxious when my friends would say "Oh she's deaf" to strangers who would try to talk to me. I did not want to be seen as different. I wanted to be the same as my friends. I wanted to hear and speak, more than anything else. I'd feel more and more lost during group gatherings and so alienated to the point where I just gave up on socializing altogether.
I struggled with this feeling for years and still do to a small extent deep inside. The feeling that it was somehow a bad thing to be noticed as a deaf person. I knew it was not bad but I could not help but to feel embarrassed, and anxious around new people. I did not want to attract attention toward me at all. There were many times where I would stop signing when a person I did not know, stepped into the room, as I did not want them to notice me.
Fast-forward to when I was twenty-three years old, I finally met a Deaf girl that I knew for a while online. Through her, I also met a Deaf boy with a cochlear implant, who lived close by. I started to occasionally spend time with the two whenever the opportunity arose. Once again after a long time, I was able to be around Deaf people on a fairly regular basis. I forgot how much I enjoyed signing in ASL, granted, I know my ASL is quite flawed, it still felt amazing nonetheless. I remember a day where this girl and boy and I spent some time together and I was hit with this giddy feeling. I just felt so happy to be understood effortlessly, and to have a group conversation for once. It was like a wonderful drug.
Now I have moved away and once again do not have any local Deaf friends, but I hope that will change soon! However, I stay in touch with my Deaf friends on the internet. Then the Gallaudet protest started, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt an urge to get involved with the Deaf community. During the protest, I learned a lot of things about the Deaf community and the culture that I was just so painfully oblivious to. It is correct, when people say that the protest has truly united a great number of d/Deaf individuals, as I am one of these individuals who just floated around in this world with no strong connection to the Deaf culture and community. Right now, I feel like I am a part of the community, and have the urge to learn as much as I possibly can about the Deaf culture, and to finally become fluent in ASL.
Now, with all that said. My entire life story, really. I will go back to the term ‘Deafhood'. What does Deafhood mean to me? I like to think it is about each d/Deaf person's experience of growing, discovering, and accepting who they are, as a d/Deaf individual. It also is about accepting other d/Deaf people and realizing that we are all deaf with very diverse backgrounds. Some of us grew up oral, used SEE/SEE2/LOVE/CASE/etc, used ASL, or various other sign languages. Some of us came from a fully hearing family, or a family that has many generations of Deaf relatives. Some of us had full access to good education and some did not. Some of us have good writing skills and other do not. Some of us were born d/Deaf and some became d/Deaf later on in their lives. Some use deaf, and some of us use Deaf. Some of us choose to not get cochlear implants, and some do. We are of all different colors in this world, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, and gender identities. It is about acceptance, helping each other, and being united. We cannot judge or push/pull each other down because of their choices as a d/Deaf person, instead, we have to accept, support, and encourage the person to succeed. Only then, will we be truly united. Have I truly embraced my Deafhood? I think I still have some work to do, but one day I hope to be, once again, that little girl who fully embraced the fact that she was Deaf without question or shame.
---
Soon to come : Confessions of a Deaf Girl Who Had an Audistic Attitude
such as: judging others based on their English writing skills
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
