[stylist] A New Member

[John Lee Clark]

Judith:

I think we have some fundamental differences in our perspectives, but that's
okay.

For me, neither my deafness nor blindness is a disability.  I consider it a
natural part of being human to be blind and deaf, as well within the range
of variations in the human race.

However, mainstream society holds deafness and blindness as disabilities.
In fact, society repeatedly makes it a point to make sure that those
differences are disabilities.  Blindness or deafness is not the disability;
rather, deaf and blind people are being disabled.

I am sorry you think the signing community is on an island.  It is not.
Like many other cultures, we do seek each other and enjoy being together, as
do black people with other black people, Latinos with other Latinos, people
of a religion with others in the same faith, and so on.  But by no means are
we isolated.  We all participate in society on different levels.

The biggest question is on whose terms are you operating in society and
whether or not the terms respect who and what you are.  Women, for example,
have long existed "smoothly" with sexist society.  No, they were never
"'wrong" to do so.  They needed food, they needed security, and they
certainly wanted to be liked, admired, and even loved.  So of course they
"had to" wear corsets, stay out of politics, take care of the house.  Some
may even have been perfectly happy with such a situation.  But the fact
remains that it was under the sexist terms, not their own terms that they
were in harmony with society.

But for many women, it was incredibly stressful, overwhelming, suffocating,
and a lose-lose situation.  That's why there were the two major feminist
movements, to shake things up to make some room for women to eventually
exist in harmony with society but under better terms for women.  I know full
equality and respect is not here yet.  Sexism is still in force, and some
women are totally subject to this, but more and more women can assert
themselves without being totally rejected.  

This is only one example.  There are many other examples.  But anyway, the
simple and pure fact is that lipreading is under the terms of hearing
society.  If there were a real island populated only by deaf people, do you
think they would have a spoken language and be lipreading one another?  If
there were a planet made up entirely of women, do you think they would be
under all those silly pressures and expectations to look a certain way?  

The deaf signers enter into mainstream society all the time, every single
day--to work, to shop, whatever--and have all sorts of relationships with
hearing people--employers, subordinates, clerks, dentists, whoever.  But it
is far more often under the signers' terms that they interact than it would
be for the lipreading deaf.  This has nothing to do with what is right or
wrong, because there are always unique circumstances.  But from a
sociological standpoint, there are obvious differences in power relations
and what kind of a deal is agreed to between the parties.

This stuff can be impossibly subtle.  Before the Deaf Pride movement, which
peaked in 1988, for example, most deaf people carried a notepad and a pen.
Whenever they needed to communicate with a hearing person, they'd write on
the notepad and start the conversation that way.  But after the movement,
without anyone noticing it, the notepads and pens vanished.  Since then, the
hearing person is responsible for providing the pen and paper.  The deaf
person gestures to the bank teller, "write," and the bank teller looks for a
scrap of paper and pen.  This is an interesting shift, but it reflects how
the Deaf Pride movement helped deaf people be more assertive than they were
previously, and also in a different way, this reflects society's willingness
to negotiate more under the terms of the deaf person.

This is about burden, the transfer of burden.  The black person used to be a
slave, a human beast of burden.  But over time, and after the revolutions
and movements, the weight has been transferred off the black person's
scarred back, for the burden to be distributed in increasingly equal ways.
Women used to be veritable pack animals.  But through their asserting
themselves more and more, the chores, childrearing, provision of sexual
favors, etc. have been redistributed, and nowadays many fathers help carry
the diaper bag and there are such creatures as Mr. Moms that would have been
beyond the wildest dreams of Mary Wollescraft!

The deaf have succeeded a great deal in making sure they don't carry too
much weight.  Although not all of the weight rejected by the signers are
picked up by hearing people, leaving a gap of unresolved weight, the signers
are not putting that back on their shoulders.  They do pay a price for that.
But at least they don't feel personally oppressed or down, but feel good and
know it's society's problem and loss, not theirs.  Now, the oral deaf, they
carry a lot of weight.  The weight has lessened some what over time, but
it's more on society's initiative that it accommodates the oral deaf in
certain ways to take responsibility for some of that weight.  But the oral
deaf are not rejecting any of the weight and just are very grateful for any
lightening of the burden that society extends to them.

If that didn't make any sense, let me give you an example.  I have a woman
friend who was married to a hearing man.  Kristen is a very skilled
lipreader.  She spent twenty years in speech therapy and was proud of her
extraordinary skills.  The only two things you need to do are to slow down a
bit and in group conversations, pause between turns to give her time to
catch who's talking next.  Her husband, Tom, is a chef and likes to have his
friends over for dinners to test new recipes.  All of the friends are nice
people.  But they always forget that Kristen needs them to do those two
small favors.  She had to remind them repeatedly.  Finally Tom exploded and
said, "Kristen, you can't expect us to do that for you all the time!"

Kristen's jaw dropped.  "But I worked so hard for twenty years just so you
need only slow down a bit for me to understand!  And you can't do that?"

Judith, this is not rare.  This is classic and happens all the time.  The
responsibility for making communication work was all on Kristen's shoulders.
She carried all the weight and the others only need to carry an ounce.  She
went all the way across the bridge to the last two feet, and the others only
needed to make two steps to meet her.  And as much burden she carried, many
of them wouldn't do their part.

They were all nice people with perfectly good intentions.  But it just
didn't happen often that it would work.  At work, Kristen's boss had serious
problems with providing her with a TTY, with an interpreter for staff
meetings, etc.  "Oh, you don't need that.  You can understand me just fine.
You have such a beautiful voice."

Many oral deaf people accept this and swallow it, all in order they would
remain in seeming harmony with hearing people.  The oral deaf mother, for
example, makes many sacrifices on her maternal instincts to know what's
going on with their children and decide things, because their husbands are
hearing and the children talk with their father over her head or behind her
or through walls or across the car seats or to each other during movies or
whatever.  In order for the oral deaf mother not to rock the boat, she has
to be less of a mother.  An oral deaf son or daughter has to be less of a
son or daughter to keep the family peace.  They want to know what they're
saying around the dining table and ask but they tell them, "I'll tell you
later."  Later is never.  Try harder, they anger their parents.  Bored out
of their minds, they go away to read a book.  But they say, "What are you
doing?  Come here and talk with your uncle and aunt!"  You understand, they
cannot assert their place, as employee or wife or daughter, because the
terms were already signed and in the favor of the hearing, and any breach of
this contract would result in a violent reaction.

But deaf signers don't have to compromise their places as spouse or employee
or relative or friend, because their being signers means a different
contract.  Before the employer decides to hire the signer, it's already
known that an interpreter would be needed for meetings.  Before a hearing
person marries a signer, he or she knows sign language is required and they
will carry half of the responsibility for communication.  Yes, there are
unwilling employers and unwilling potential partners, and so the contract
doesn't get signed, but the bottom line for the deaf person is that he or
she is not compromised.  

Tragically, there are unwilling parents.  It does happen that the deaf
person splits from the family.  This happens when the parents refuse to sign
a contract under terms more fair to their deaf offspring, and the deaf
offspring refuses to accept a lesser role and privileges compared to their
hearing siblings.  This is though when it happens that way, but if the deaf
followed the parents' contract, it means swallowing a lot of crap, a lot of
stiff smiling, a lot of being looked at and not understood or respected.
But it is wonderful if families do have good contracts going.

Back to Kristen.  After we met and she learned more about the Deaf world,
and she was moving to a new state after the divorce, I encouraged her to NOT
let interviewers know she could speak and lip-read.  She agreed to give this
a try.  She requested for an interpreter for each job interview.  A few
balked immediately and said that the job was now closed and thank you for
your interest.  But the others were cool with it.  She was soon hired and,
still not making her oral skills known, many colleagues immediately wanted
to learn ASL.  A few months later, the company decided to hire an ASL
teacher to teach interested employees over six months.  The company also
hired two other deaf people.  And in her love life, she has been much
happier.  She still has panic attacks, but dealing with them well--it's hard
to undo the stress and the emotional abuse of thirty years.

So, Judith, while I will not judge your friend or any individual cases, I
will have to seriously question the wisdom of lipreading, even if inclusion
in society was the goal.

You may find this strange, but there is actually a scientific theory to
explain why.  You know, in animation--or cartoons or computer generated
images--it has been proven that there's this special scale.  On one level,
it ranges between the images being very different from the human body to
images that resemble people very closely.  So there are different cartoon
characters that fit somewhere between having really big heads and tiny arms
and legs and stuff like that, all the way to quite detailed images that are
lifelike, like wax sculptures of famous people.  Now, along this range, as
you move from one end to the other, the level of the images' appeal changes
dramatically, but not in a linear way.  The line goes up to very cute, goes
down to gross or creepy, then up again to beautiful, then it swoops down
sharply as it grows more humanlike, plunging down to horrific and scary, and
it continues plunging until it jumps up to acceptable at the very last
minute as the images reach that of real people.

Now, when Kristen speaks and lipreads, she is almost hearing, so advanced
are her skills.  Yet this doesn't help her much.  Friends forget.  Services,
rights, and accommodations are denied her.  People often shy away.  But all
that changes when she signs, or should I say, more different.  

Could it be that, if you're too much like them but not quite, you're in a
very bad place on the appeal scale.  But if you move away from being too
much like them, could it be that your appeal level is better?  

If so, then the thing to do if you happen to be incurably different is to
embrace that difference in such a way you will be appealing, regarded as
beautiful, different yes, exotic maybe, but nonetheless beautiful.

Gee, I better stop now!  I have many other points to make, but maybe I just
should go and write a book!

John
  




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