Monthly Archives: November 2010

People who are hearing vs Hearing

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Posted by maxporter on November 30, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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Hello everyone. I got three hours of sleep, then travelled for a long time to get back home from visiting family, then went to class. Alas, I do not have a scheduled post, so I was despairing the prospect of writing one from scratch… then along came David, who remarked that:

I think capitalizing “hearing” is a bit odd, as there is no community built around the ability to hear, though there are many communities that use spoken languages and that tend to assume people can hear.

Emily also asked me to clarify the capitalization of “Hearing” a week or so ago on gchat.

Thank you, Emily and David, for giving me a post idea! Now I can type up a quick little post while my rice cooks and then collapse into bed.

So, like I said in Capitalization vs Lower Case a few days ago, I don’t really think that capitalization vs lowercase is a useful distinction in all cases. But I do sometimes refer to Hearing people as opposed to hearing people.

It’s true that there isn’t really a Hearing culture per se. However, there’s a set of attitudes that are often called “audist” – basically, audism consists of assuming that one needs to have hearing in order to do anything. Audism consists partly of what David mentions – the assumption that people can hear – but it goes beyond that and considers deafness to be a mark of inferiority. So, when I talk about a Hearing person, I sometimes mean an audist person. Come to think of it, I probably should just go ahead and say “an audist” in those cases.

Sometimes I use “Hearing” to refer to people who are ignorant. Ignorance is not problematic in and of itself – I meet very few hearing people who instantly understand everything about deafness from the word “go.” Ignorance only becomes a problem when the person does not make an effort to educate him- or herself or doesn’t use common sense to think about how to interact with someone who is different. I’ve been lucky with my friends, but I’ve had one or two friends who continue to “forget” that I am deaf and/or don’t use common sense. This means that I have to choose between explaining yet again the realities of deaf life – for example, “You should not cover your mouth when you talk so that I can lipread you” – or just standing there awkwardly while I wonder why this person keeps forgetting the basics of interacting with a human being who happens to be different from him- or herself. I’m not a demanding person – I understand that not everyone will come to the table with a full knowledge of deaf issues, and I’m okay if somebody occasionally forgets to face me or whatever. When it comes up in every single interaction that we have, it becomes insulting. All I ask is that a person knows how to read a situation in order to determine the best way to interact with others who are different.

So, to talk about a hearing person who refuses to educate him- or herself in order to sustain prolonged interaction with me… I’m not sure what I’d call that. Perhaps “privileged,” since this type of behavior usually comes from a person who is ignorant of his or her own privilege. But that doesn’t really work perfectly. My sleep-deprived brain isn’t coming up with anything, and the rice is boiling over, so I’m gonna end the post here. Do any of you lovely readers have any ideas?

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Weekly AYA: Books

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Posted by maxporter on November 29, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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So, my last AYA was pretty lukewarm. What’s up with that? Was it too inane of a theme? Too upsetting and personal? Whatever the case was, I’m sorry. I hope this one is better.

As always, these questions are guidelines rather than hard & fast.

  • What are some of your favorite books?
  • Do you have a favorite genre to read? If so, what?
  • On average, how quickly do you finish books?
  • Do you consider yourself a bookworm?
  • When you are choosing a book to read, do you focus mostly on the words or do you consider the actual book itself as well?

Thanks :)

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Capitalization vs lower case

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Posted by maxporter on November 28, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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My weekly review post is scheduled to happen today. But I don’t have many of my books or movies with me, and I like to have the media next to me so that I can look through it while writing up a review. So, here is a rough post that I wrote up a few days ago:

The more I think about it, the more unsure I am as to if the distinction between deaf vs Deaf or hearing vs Hearing is such a useful one.1

For me, the primary problem that I have is that it creates a binary. I generally dislike binaries, preferring to think in shades of grey. And, in this case, there’s a lot of shades of grey.

For example, I personally don’t fit very snugly into either the ‘deaf’ or ‘Deaf’ category. I grew up mainstreamed and many of the people that I currently know and love are hearing. Yet I know ASL and the only reason that I don’t interact with culturally-Deaf people is because there aren’t very many where I live. And what about my sister? She was born hard-of-hearing, then gradually went deafer and deafer, until she got a cochlear implant. She doesn’t know sign language and doesn’t use a translator. Culturally, she’s more hearing, but her audiogram doesn’t indicate that.

In this blog I’ve capitalized terms. I’m not so sure if I’ll keep doing that. I guess that saying “culturally deaf” is more useful. I’ll try to do that more often in the future.

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  1. In a nutshell, if it’s capitalized, it denotes a cultural affiliation; if it’s lower-case, it simply indicates auditory status. [↩]
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When fluent communication =/= home

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Posted by maxporter on November 27, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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A few days ago, in A Definition of Home, I defined home like so:

Many people that I know feel most comfortable within a community of like minds, but I’ve decided that I personally feel at home wherever communication is fluent.

Well, I just realized that that’s not 100% true. One of the things that I really like about blogging is the fact that you can go back and say, “Hey, actually…” a lot more easily than other forms of writing.

Upon thinking about it, I remembered my time at a fundamentalist Christian school. Everybody in my grade knew how to use MC and many of my teachers knew it too. People would frequently gather into little clumps and speak verbally, but my best friends were usually good about making sure that I understood what they were saying. So, according to my previous definition, I should have felt at home, right?

As it turns out, the answer is: “hell no.”

When I think back to that time, the teacher who was most diligent about using MC was also the most screwed-up of the bunch. I don’t really want to go into it all in such a public space, but let’s just say that he was inappropriately fond of some of the children, would make fun of the ones that he didn’t like, and was fired in the end. So, technically, in this case, communication was fluent, but I think that my teacher had sadistic intentions when he picked up MC because I was one of the kids he teased most. The fact that he learned MC in order to better communicate to me just facilitated his mistreatment of me, which is pretty damn fucked up if you think about it.

As a result, I’m gonna have to revise my definition of home slightly. Thinking about it, respect is a really important component. I don’t care if I’m in a community of like minds as long as everyone respects each other. Communication also doesn’t have to be 100% fluent, as long as people respect each other enough to work through whatever communication barriers arise. It’s pretty rare to find people who respect each other as equal human beings, so I guess that that’s one of the most important criteria I have for building a home. Everything else can be built around a foundation of respect.

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My answers: Holidays

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Posted by maxporter on November 26, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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For this week’s AYA, I asked the following questions:

  • Do you celebrate holidays? Why or why not?

    • If you celebrate holidays:

  • Do you celebrate the same holidays that you grew up celebrating, a different set, or a blend?
  • What is your favorite holiday? Why?
  • What foods do you associate with this holiday? Pictures highly encouraged but not required.
  • How do you usually celebrate it? With whom?

I do celebrate holidays. Most of the appeal lies in the fact that my family lives really really far away, so holidays are a convenient excuse to see them. My family celebrates Christian holidays plus generic American secular holidays like Thanksgiving, New Year’s, and mother’s/father’s day. Since I’m an atheist, I don’t feel connected to the Christian holidays. I don’t celebrate Easter at all, for example.1 As for the secular holidays, I’m too cynical for them – they often feel useless. Mother’s Day, for example: shouldn’t I already be thanking my mom every day for being a good mom, instead of thanking her on one specific day of the year? As for celebrating a different set of holidays, I have considered it, but in the end, I don’t really see much of a point because I am an atheist.

If my family didn’t live so far away, I don’t think I’d get so excited about holidays. Left to my own devices, I’d just have themed movie marathons with friends, but that’s about it. So I’m not sure what my favorite holiday would be.

However, I suppose that my favorite holiday would be New Year’s because it’s a nice excuse to just laze around with people that I love. It’s one of those rare holidays where nobody I know has any obligations, regardless of religion or work schedule or schoolwork or whatever. It’s also in winter, which is one of my favorite seasons. I don’t really have a set schedule for New Year’s: I’ve celebrated some New Years’ with my family; some with my friends. The food that I associate with New Year’s is usually Christmas leftovers. We don’t actually have traditional Christmas foods, but we usually eat rich food: meat as a main course and side dishes that consist of vegetables + cream sauce. Beverages are pretty consistent from year-to-year, though: eggnog with nutmeg on top (and rum, for some family members) or hot chocolate.

This week’s AYA was kind of weird because I usually don’t ask questions unless I know that I have an answer for them. It was hard for me to answer these, and I’m the one who came up with the questions! So I don’t really blame you guys for being so lukewarm towards it. I hope you like next week’s AYA better, though :)

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  1. I can get away with this because spring break usually is not during Easter and my parents understand that I can’t skip class just to celebrate Easter. [↩]
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Deaf camp: a home

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Posted by maxporter on November 25, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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In yesterday’s post about finding a home, I briefly alluded to Deaf camp.

So I figured, I’ll elaborate a little bit on that.

When I was eight years old, I began to go to a deaf summer camp. At the time, I didn’t know ASL. I knew a few signs like “water,” “thank you,” and “please,” but I definitely was not fluent. This is because, when my parents figured out that I was deaf, they taught me some signs but soon realized that they didn’t feel able to teach me a language that they did not know. So they switched to another method of manual communication (which I’m calling MC) to teach me English.

Despite the fact that I didn’t know ASL, the camp welcomed me with open arms. Their philosophy was to welcome all deaf children from all backgrounds: they accepted a wide range of communication modes, from kids who were 100% oral and didn’t know ASL to kids who only communicated in ASL and rarely used English in any form.

This diversity with regards to communication modes is one reason why I felt at home. If a communication barrier came up, we’d just keep trying until we found a combination that worked. Sure, there were some mean kids, like the kid who called me ‘stupid’ because I didn’t sign fluently, but most people truly believed in acceptance.

The first year I went, one of the staff members knew MC, so she was able to translate things for me. The next year, nobody knew MC at all. I loved the camp so much, though, that I kept going back every year. Over the course of the years, I gradually picked up a fair amount of ASL. I could understand the more elaborate ASL stories and used some idioms.1 I mostly befriended staff members or children who also came from an oral background, but I also made several friends with kids from deaf schools who didn’t feel comfortable speaking English.

The diversity went beyond the different approaches to deafness, though. It was not in a very diverse region: the region is predominantly inhabited by affluent white heterosexual Christians. The staff and the campers were a totally different story than the surroundings, though. While I was there, I met people from all walks of life. I really appreciated having that diversity of thought combined with the fluency of communication.

To this day, some of my fondest memories come from that camp.

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  1. I’ve unfortunately become rusty in ASL. [↩]
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A Definition of Home

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Posted by maxporter on November 24, 2010 – 12:02 AM
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I’ve moved around a lot in my life, so I sometimes struggle with the idea of home. Where is my true home? Many people that I know feel most comfortable within a community of like minds, but I’ve decided that I personally feel at home wherever communication is fluent.

I grew up using a rather obscure method of manual communication. You’ll notice that I don’t even name it – that’s because so few people use it that I’d be easily identifiable if I named it. From here on I’ll just call it MC.

My family uses a blend of MC and straight-up speaking to communicate with me, so when I talk with my family, I can understand them completely. It’s most obvious with my younger sister. She’s the only person who’s ever been able to completely understand me fluently from the start and vice-versa – my parents weren’t very good at MC when I was a kid, and my speech or handwriting weren’t very good. So, even though my sister and I are total polar opposites in almost every respect, including appearance, we get along really well. We can communicate easily on a practical level due to MC and we just understand each other instantly because we’re siblings.

Speaking and signing are both things that I learned comparatively late in life. I feel comfortable with both modes of communication at this point, but MC still feels more like my native tongue. That’s not really the right phrase because MC is a visual representation of spoken language rather than a true language1 but I still feel that way.

I’ve felt at home in other places – with my translators who use MC, in Deaf camp, within a trio of queer women (one of whom learned how to use MC), and so forth. But those have come and gone, so my family has probably been the most constant source of fluent communication throughout my life. So, even though my family members currently live in a place with completely unfamiliar flora and fauna, I still feel at home with them. I feel rather fortunate to be so close to my family when many people that I know aren’t.

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  1. Unlike most other modes of manual communication that hearing people have created, though, it doesn’t try to rearrange ASL signs into English grammar. [↩]
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