[stylist] A New Member

[helene ryles]

On the subject of lipreading:
I grew up oral. I only started off with a very mild loss with
gradually got worse. I always wished I knew sign language. Up until
recently I didn't think a blind person could learn sign. Now I do.
I've got someone to help teach me tactile sign language. So hopefully
things will change.

Anyway, most orally taught deaf do have some useful hearing. When I
was growing up I did tend to exadurate my hearing loss.

When the rest of my hearing went and I couldn't see well enough to
lipread it came as a releif. People either do deafblind manual or they
write block capital letters on my palm.

Helene.

On 29/12/2008, Judith Bron <jbron at optonline.net> wrote:
> John, When I said groups should go off and live on an island I was being
> facetious.  What you are defining are people who live according to their
> reality which happens to be different from the mainstream.  It doesn't make
> anyone's situation right or wrong.  None of us are black and white
> characters defined according to someone else.  We are all individuals with
> the right to be ourselves.  We live in a society.  That society defines some
> limitations as to what we can or can't do.  For example, I can't walk into
> your house, grab something I want and walk out without facing the
> consequences of that action.  I'm a woman.  I define my role according to my
> religion and society.  I was made a woman, not a man.  I don't look like a
> man, act like a man or stand up when using the bathroom.  This definition of
> me is not suppressed because of what I am, but I enhance who I am by being
> me.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Lee Clark" <johnlee at clarktouch.com>
> To: "'NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 2:59 AM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] A New Member
>
>
>> 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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>> 12:00 AM
>>
>>
>>
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