Monthly Archives: April 2011

Deaf Mentors

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Posted by maxporter on April 26, 2011 – 3:18 PM
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Like 90% of Deaf people, my parents are hearing. They are culturally very Hearing – before I was born, they had never had any experience with a Deaf person. So one of the things that they had to really think about was how to raise me so that I could be self-actualized as a Deaf person.

Basically, my parents understood that there was no changing the fact that I’m deaf. They wanted me to be able to communicate with hearing people – most importantly, themselves – but they also wanted me to be able to find a home in Deaf culture.

One of the things that I really appreciate is that my parents found “Deaf mentors” for me when I was a child. They realized that Deaf culture and ASL are both so complex that there was no way that they would ever be able to learn them well enough to teach them to me, and they also realized that there were a lot of aspects of deafness that they would never be able to understand because they are hearing. So what my parents did is, they reached out to the Deaf center in my home state and asked if anybody would be willing to hang out with me.

An older couple answered the ad, and they were the most wonderful and sweet couple ever. I saw them maybe once a month or so.1 My parents would usually drop me off at their home and pick me up in a few hours. It was very informal – they didn’t lecture me about Deafhood or anything like that. They just interacted with me like they would interact with any other Deaf kid and just let the lessons happen organically.

Sometimes I would ask them questions like: “When did Deaf people first appear?” They would give answers like, “We are as old as the stars.” Basically, they let me know that there have been Deaf people all throughout history and that there will be more in the future. It really gave me a sense of community that I would not have gained otherwise – I was mainstreamed in a small town and knew no Deaf people in the town other than my younger sister.

The key to making all of this work was that it benefited all three parties. My parents gained babysitters, the Deaf adults gained the opportunity to teach a mainstreamed child about Deaf culture, and I learned a lot about an important part of my heritage.

Now that I’m an adult, I really appreciate that my parents did that. I also appreciate the fact that the Deaf people were accepting of the fact that (A) my parents used oral/manual communication and (B) I got a cochlear implant when I was eight years old. I’ve lost touch with them, so I can’t go ask the Deaf couple what their opinions on things like cochlear implants are, but I never felt judged.

If any of you identify very strongly with the Deaf community and you want to make it grow, I would encourage you to seek out a mainstreamed child to mentor. All too often, those of us who are mainstreamed are lonely because we are the only Deaf people in a crowd of hearing people. We have to worry about things like lipreading and whether we’ll be made fun of for talking funny or using a pen and paper to communicate. And, when we go home, there’s no guarantee that our parents will understand – I remember having to explain things to my parents. Even though they were flesh and blood, we still didn’t understand each other’s experiences completely. It is so nice to just forget all about that for a day and hang out with Deaf adults who “get it.”

I realize that it sounds kind of like I’m telling my readers what to do without actually doing it myself, so let me outline my plan. Personally, I plan to get back into the Deaf community first. I have not been involved in the Deaf community to nearly the same extent as the queer community, so I really want to make that a priority. Then – we’ll see. I would love to hang out with a kid and let them know that there are people in the world who understand what they are going through.

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  1. I lived far away from the city, which is where the couple lived, so I couldn’t see them more often. [↩]
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Communicating Block

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Posted by maxporter on April 22, 2011 – 3:23 PM
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Recently, I’ve been having a bit of a writers’ block. Now, I’m not talking about having problems coming up with story ideas or anything like that – I don’t really care about writing stories anymore. The problem is that I’m having issues stringing together ideas in a way that is pleasing to read. To be honest, it’s a little scary.

I usually feel comfortable in my ability to put together words in the English language to create sentences that flow nicely. I enjoy written English and I usually am able to reflect that in my own writing. Even before I listened to music, my writing style had a pretty distinct cadence to it. But the loss of musicality in my writing is not what scares me. No, what scares me the most is the fact that this is usually the form of communication that I feel the most comfortable with.

A large part of being deaf is choosing how to communicate.1 When I want to communicate, I basically have four choices:

  • ASL. My ASL skills aren’t so great – I can understand my interpreters, but I often have to speak English to them in order to communicate with them. Besides, I don’t know any Deaf people around me who speak ASL. I feel that if I were immersed in a Deaf environment again, I’d pick it up again, no problem. But I don’t have access to that right now.
  • Spoken English. My spoken English is okay. When I was a child, my speech was so unclear that my own parents didn’t even understand what I was saying. After twelve years of speech therapy with one of the the most wonderful and amazing human beings to ever exist in the entire world, I attained a speaking style that was more or less understandable. But I haven’t been to speech therapy since I graduated high school in 2006 because I ended up with a terribly queerphobic speech therapist. That’s probably another story for another post. Since 2006, my voice has changed a lot and I have adopted certain speaking patterns – for instance, I don’t speak ‘proper’ English all the time whereas I used to care a lot more about grammar. (Today, I said, “I don’t got no change on me.” My fifteen-year-old self would have been appalled.) And I’ve taken to mumbling/whispering, which I know is a really bad habit, but I just don’t feel confident in my spoken English.
  • Manual Communication. I still feel extremely comfortable with MC. It isn’t a language – it’s simply a visual representation of English. But MC plus reading books is how I acquired language in the first place, and it’s still a tool that I feel very comfortable with. However, the problem is that nobody uses it. It’s an extremely rare form of communication. I can count the number of times on one hand that I have been around non-family members that use it. Hell, I’m not even giving you guys the real name of the tool because that’d make it too easy to identify me.
  • Written English. Written English – or, to be more specific, typed English, since my handwriting isn’t super awesome – has historically been the form of communication that I’ve felt most comfortable with. All throughout school, I never spoke in my classes. I simply let my essays speak for themselves rather than trying to participate in a class discussion. This is the largest reason that I felt most comfortable communicating with others online – I am kind of embarrassed to admit this today, but I went through a period in my life where I would communicate with people in the same house – the same room, even – by using instant messaging.2

I’m not sure why I’m having such a difficult time putting together words lately. But it’s really annoying to feel so stymied. I just don’t feel like I can communicate my ideas clearly right now.

Have you ever had a writers’ block, or felt tongue-tied, or felt otherwise inhibited in terms of communication? How did you deal with it?

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  1. Or having others make that choice for you. [↩]
  2. Unfortunately, most people put none of their personality in their written English and depended on their body language to convey their meaning, so it ended up being a trade-off. [↩]
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Making Academia More Democratic

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Posted by maxporter on April 15, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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Sometimes I wonder about the relative value of academia. I ask myself: Is this just intellectual masturbation, or does it serve a greater good?

On one hand, there is a lot of value in critically analyzing everything. How can social progress be made if we do not seriously ponder the parameters that confine us in everyday life? However, I have two main problems with academia: the barriers to accessing it and the lack of self-awareness among academics.

I have been in several classes where I sit and wonder, “What is the ultimate value of these straight, white, class-privileged dudes arguing about these things?” In other words, if academia is so homogeneous, how will progress ever be ensured? If it’s just a bunch of straight wealthy white dudes sitting around talking about dead white men, nobody’s ideas are challenged in a meaningful way. If nobody’s ideas are challenged, the discussion will become stagnant and will not change.

To foster intellectual progress, we need a greater number of voices. And there are many barriers to that. Just think about how expensive any college is. Right there, you already have a barrier to entry: class. Now think about how class correlates with things like race, disability, US citizenship status, and so many other things that the list would be miles long. In my experience, many people who attend the public university that I currently go to are studying for a degree in something more “practical” than academia. I can respect that: it’s sometimes difficult to see the worth of a degree in an abstract subject that leads to fewer jobs as compared to a more concrete and reliable field.

I do think that there is a problem with an overly strong focus on a ‘practical’ degree, but I blame the system, not the students. If society valued philosophers and artists, maybe more people would feel that they had an actual choice between studying because they want to or pursuing a degree that will net them a “real” job – but this is not the case today. So it is understandable that, given a false choice between academia and a “real” job, people want to put food on the table instead of reading Sartre.

Another factor that contributes to the inaccessibility of academia is the fact that academic language is overly dense at times. I understand that academics sometimes have to create jargon in order to discuss complex concepts. How else can you talk about semiotics, for example, without using words that are tailor-made for discussing it? I do feel, though, that there is a point where language becomes a way for the author to impress the reader with his or her sheer brilliance rather than a way to communicate. Or, worse, a way to veil bad ideas with pretty language.1

In addition to the problems of being inaccessible to the external world, academia sometimes becomes confining for the people inside of it. Instead of going into academia because they truly want to, some people go into academia because they have based their entire self-worth upon the fact that they are very good at analysis. Even if they dislike doing it, they go into academia because they do not know what else to do with their lives. (I almost did this.) Have you ever had an instructor who seems to dread waking up every day because he or she is so tired of teaching? I have; it sucks.

Alternatively, instead of burning out early, some academics end up devoting their entire life to study rather than improving the world. Academia is like a gigantic clique sometimes: academics forget what the “real” world is like and become comfortable in their Ivory Tower. Sometimes, instead of ensuring progress, this is another route to stagnancy. This ultimately harms academia.

Personally, I find inspiration in bell hooks. She is an academic because she really wanted to be one – instead of having a prestigious degree handed to her by birthright, she worked extremely hard and scrimped a lot to be able to attend University. Instead of hiding her work in an obscure scholarly journal that very few people even know about, she ensures that it will be disseminated widely by publishing it in magazines and books. And, although she does use jargon, she explains the core concepts and mixes her jargon with colloquial language so that she is able to communicate to a wider range of readers. I really think that any aspiring academic should draw inspiration from her.

For me, the problem is not with academia itself – quite the opposite, actually. I think that people should discuss abstract ideas because free discussion of concepts is important to ensure progress. To encourage free discussion, therefore, barriers to access should be lowered significantly and academics should be encouraged to examine themselves as critically as they examine the outside world. When I was an English major, professors would tell us that it was important to discuss concepts in academia because academic theory would “trickle down” to the masses. I don’t think that this is the right approach – yes, there is value in discussing ideas, but it should be more democratic than that. Instead of letting the ideas of the privileged classes trickle down, let’s encourage the masses to come up with ideas.

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  1. For an excellent satire of this, see The Postmodernist Essay Generator. [↩]
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Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley

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Posted by maxporter on April 13, 2011 – 9:35 AM
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Doors of Perception book cover by Aldous HuxleyI recently read Doors of Perception, which is about Aldous Huxley’s trip on a relatively obscure hallucogen: mescaline.

Partly because I knew nothing about mescaline beyond the fact that they referenced it in The Matrix, I didn’t quite know what to expect before reading it. I’d read Brave New World when I was a freshman in high school, but as far as I could remember, it had been rather anti-drug.

Reading Doors of Perception, I came to appreciate Huxley’s mastery of language. Huxley is such a skilled writer that he manages to convey every little subtle revelation that he experienced during the trip and – here’s the key – to make them engaging. He, for example, devotes several pages to how meditating upon the beauty of draped cloth led him to conclude that clothing practically defines every aspect of human culture in such a vivid way that he momentarily leads the reader to the conclusion that the entire meaning of the universe is contained in clothing.

In fact, Huxley was so smooth with his language that I became confused by the narrative at times. He seems to know every single word in the English language (including some that aren’t even in the dictionary), he jumps at every moment to make allusions to a famous work of art that few people have heard of, and he seems to have set the goal to quote passages in at least five different languages. For these reasons, the book can be difficult to follow at times.

The narrative wanders all over the place. Though this may pose a difficulty for some readers, I found that this did not detract from its readability – it is about a drug trip, after all. Moreover, his tangents always end up circling back to the main point. So, despite the fact that he wanders, Huxley manages to convey a clear narrative so that the story does not become overly confusing or disorganized.

As for the actual content of the book, Huxley presents clear-headed and pragmatic ideas about humanity’s relationship with drugs that are well worth contemplating.

Overall: Recommended highly.

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The “Deaf Discount”

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Posted by maxporter on April 11, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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A few times in my life, I have received what I call the “deaf discount.” In a nutshell, this is when a merchant does not accept all of my money or gives me more change than needed because I am deaf.

Here’s an example: Today, when I was buying groceries, I didn’t wear my cochlear implant.1 Near the end of the transaction, the cashier pointed to her ear and made a quizzical expression, which is a pretty universal gesture that means: “Are you deaf?” I nodded. She smiled, then gave me an extra dollar in change and signed “thank you.” I smiled a lot, signed “thank you” back to her, and left.

Another example: A few years ago, I was on the regional railroad. I was buying tickets onboard, and the conductor noticed that I was deaf. Instead of charging me the regular fare, he charged me the senior/disabled fare, which is approximately 25% of the regular fare’s price. Again, I smiled and thanked him.

Now. I’m not going to lie – I personally enjoy it when I don’t have to pay as much. Who doesn’t like saving money? However, sometimes I wonder at the motivation behind these discounts.

First of all, I feel like people make assumptions about my socioeconomic class based upon the fact that I’m deaf. Now, it’s true that deaf people tend to have more difficulty finding high-paying jobs than hearing people. But the fact is, I am able to pay the full price. Weirdly, this makes me feel like I am lying, even though it was the other person’s fault for assuming.

I also wonder: do people give me discounts out of a sense of pity? This thought doesn’t sit very well with me. Now, I appreciate support and help – for me, a large part of life as a deaf person is learning how to accept support when needed, like interpreters, rather than pridefully saying that I don’t need any support. However, I feel much more comfortable when I go through the proper channels to get support, and I’m never sure how to accept help from strangers.

In the end, I take the money because the person is offering it. It does give me mixed feelings, though.

Deafies, have you ever received a deaf discount? How did it make you feel?
Hearies, would you ever give somebody a deaf discount? Why or why not?

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  1. I normally do when I buy groceries, but I was feeling kind of anti-social today. [↩]
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Wild Zero

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Posted by maxporter on April 7, 2011 – 12:02 AM
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Since things have been busy lately, it’s been a little while since my last post. I always feel a little unsure as to what to say when it’s been a while, and I just became a mod of fydeafies.tumblr.com,1 so I am having some stage fright.

I guess I will start by talking about a movie that I recently rewatched: Wild Zero.

Movie poster for Wild Zero. A trio of musicians dressed in leather stand in front of an abstract portrayal of zombies.

As you can already see, this is an amazing movie.

I’m not going to lie – I love the movie. It’s pure trashy fun at its finest. Basically, it is about the coolest band saving the world from alien zombies. Actually, there is an excellent (and spoiler-filled) summary of what Wild Zero is all about here. I recommend that you go read it right now because Chris Sims is hilarious and does a great job of explaining why I love it.

However, although Chris Sims covered many of the most essential parts of the movie, he did not do justice in his discussion of the character named Tobio. For example, he forgot to include the fact that Tobio and the main character, Ace, end up in a relationship by the end of the movie. So I’m gonna talk about her in this entry. Spoilers follow, of course.

Darth Vader stands with his arm outstreteched, just as he is about to tell Luke Skywalker that he is his father. On the bottom of the image, the text says SPOILER ALERT.

Fair warning.

I’m going to start out by saying that Tobio is a trans woman. When I think about the portrayal of Tobio, I honestly have very mixed feelings. Keeping in mind that I’m not a trans woman, I think it is important to talk about Tobio because trans people are such a marginalized minority in society.

On one hand, Wild Zero’s portrayal of a trans woman is super-positive in some aspects. Most notably, after Ace discovers that she is trans and freaks out, Ace’s mentor / spirit guide, Guitar Wolf, reminds him that he fell in love with this woman and that love “has no nationalities, borders, or genders!”

Guitar Wolf says, "Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders!"

Ace accepts this advice, then goes to rescue her from the alien zombies. A bunch of stuff happens, then Ace proclaims his love for Tobio.

Ace says: "I swear by my leather jacket and by rock'n'roll..."
Ace says, "I love you"

However, there are many negative aspects to Tobio’s character that trouble me.

For starters, she is what Julia Serano calls a “deceptive transsexual,” which is a negative portrayal of trans women in media:

“Even though “deceivers” successfully pass as women, and are often played by female actors (with the notable exception of Jaye Davidson as Dil), these characters are … positioned as “fake” women, and their secret trans status is revealed in a dramatic “moment of truth”. At the moment of exposure, the “deceiver’s” appearance (her femaleness) is reduced to mere illusion, and her secret (her maleness) becomes the real identity.”
-Julia Serano2

Tobio fits this trope perfectly: The audience is not aware of the fact that she is trans until she rips off her clothes in the middle of the movie.

Speaking of, yes, she does rip off her clothes. Actually, it is implied that Tobio is somewhat of a nymphomaniac. When Tobio and Ace find themselves in an abandoned building, surrounded by zombies on all sides, Ace’s first priority is to find a weapon so that they can fend off the zombies. Not Tobio – she immediately gets undressed and tries to initiate sex.
I found this scene to be very insulting. One of the many negative stereotypes about trans people, particularly trans women, is that transitioning is a way to fulfill some sort of sexual fantasy. Think, for example, of Buffalo Bill in Silence of Lambs, who cuts up women to wear their skin after having been denied access to resources to transition.3 Also, gender roles come into play: men are supposed to be sex-driven, and women are expected to be the opposite. If a trans woman is “really” a man, the result is that she is portrayed as a hypersexual woman.
So, portraying Tobio as a hypersexual being who wants to get it on even in a near-death situation is, to me, another example of the insulting trope that trans women are sex-driven.

Despite the fact that Tobio’s portrayal is flawed, one thing that really stands out for me is that Ace came to accept Tobio fully. He fell in love with her and learned to embrace all aspects of her. I don’t know how Japan feels about trans women, but as an American viewer, I am immersed in a society that televises “man or woman?” contests on sleazy television shows, accepts “trans panic” as a legitimate defense for murdering an innocent woman, etc. I sometimes feel so overwhelmed by negative portrayals of trans people or portrayals of trans people being murdered (eg, Boys Don’t Cry) that it was a welcome change to see a happy ending in which a cisgender person overcame his initial transphobia to accept his trans lover.

Ace, voice-over, says "And me, from now on, I'll be with Tobio."

When all is said and done, I feel that Tobio is a better portrayal of a trans woman than many others. But, as I discussed in Finding Personal Meaning in Art, minorities sometimes have to settle for breadcrumbs. The real question is: is the relatively positive portrayal of Tobio enough, or are we settling for breadcrumbs? That’s an open question, and I leave it to you to answer that.

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  1. Check out my intro post here, btw. [↩]
  2. You can read the full essay, Skirtchasers, on Julia Serano’s website here. [↩]
  3. I’ll be honest – I have actually not seen Silence of the Lambs yet, but I hear that Buffalo Bill is actually not intended to be a trans woman. Nonetheless, I’m using this example because Buffalo Bill has dominated the perception of trans women in popular culture. [↩]
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