All The Young Dudes

On Being Me [But A Mask Is All You'll Ever See] P2

My last post,On Being Me [But A Mask Is All You'll Ever See], invoked a long forgotten memory of mine.

I can’t remember the year, but it was the early 1980’s, and I had signed up to do the summer school, with the Australian Theatre of The Deaf. It was an enjoyable experience, and while it was one aspect of my foray into the arts, it really was one step along the road towards finding Deaf community.

One exercise stands out however. One that taught me alot about me, only that it wasn’t obvious at the time. It involved the use of masks.

A selection of different masks were provided. The exercise was to choose a mask that attracted us. We were to pick up the mask, look at it for a few moments, before putting it on. The idea was to allow the character of the mask into yourself, and you were to interact with the rest of the group as that character.

I didn’t last very long before I took off that mask. I felt I was being taken over, and my real self being suppresed. My instinct [as always] was to fight it. I wasn’t receptive at the time to any analysis of acting and how the actor is supposed to use that, not be consumed by that feeling.

Another exercise, that I wasn’t aware of its significance, but I found more enjoyable, was creating short, postcard style scenes - think stills -, which had to communicate a theme, action or situation. We were divided into teams of three. I ended up as the director/ creator. This exercise was far more satisfying than the masks.

Fast Forward to 1994, the UK, Leadership Training Parts 1 and 2, with Friends For The Young Deaf [FYD - now sadly defunct, swallowed up by the National Deaf Children's Society, much to everyone's relief, where it sank into obscurity]. One of the oft repeated comments was how I didn’t like authority.

It’s true. I still don’t. Especially positions of authority occupied by boors.

Further Reading:

On Being Me [But A Mask Is All You'll Ever See]
What’s This Choice, That People Speak Of?
DEFINITION: Poison Person/ People
ASSASSINATING ALISON BRYAN - The Foaming Jaws Of The Poison People: The Prequel
ASSASSINATING ALISON BRYAN - The Foaming Jaws Of The Poison People: The Sequel To The Prequel.

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On Being Me [But A Mask Is All You'll Ever See]

I’ve always maintained that one of the hardest things you can do is, to be yourself! I always have this conversation with G.O.D. “Why the hell is it so hard to be yourself?” She’s at loss for words, and maintains that because I am older than her, I should have the answer!

I’ve always played smoke and mirrors with people. A lot of which is to do with body image, sexuality, enculturated [or is it inculturated?]fear, and of course, deafness. Confidence and esteem, were never constant companions of mine. My journey on the road towards autonomy was dotted with potholes, mines and cluster bombs. But you could say that is the same for all of us.

One could be forgiven there are forces conspiring against us becoming autonomous beings. It doesn’t behoove the dominant society that we become individuals. With independent thoughts. So forces, both covert and overt, are set in motion to that undermine that tendency to autonomy. And it takes a strong minded and willful personality to challenge and overcome those forces.

You look around on the streets downtown
Every face has got its evil side
They gather here below round midnight
Creeping like a black king tide..[Too Long, Don Walker]

Ben chides the Deaf Community for not being open to diversity. While I understand what he is saying, and have experienced some of the same things he describes, I don’t agree that the Deaf Community is not open to diversity. He isn’t being fair in his analysis. The Hearing world that he longs to embrace, is just as riddled with intolerance as the Deaf community he seemingly sees as lacking the necessary qualities of openness and tolerance.

I do empathise with Ben’s struggles.

My experiences with the Deaf community in Australia and in the UK, have been positive. That is not to say they were free from conflict. I’ve had my share of bullshit, backstabbing and being sidelined. But they are par for the course when interacting with people. It seems more intense with the Deaf community, because it is smaller. It is easier to find an enclave of like minded people in the Hearing world because of sheer numbers.

Ben’s story, The Truth about Me: A Personal Letter, made me think of a friend who had made a dogged determination to find his niche in the Deaf community,  but was met with continual rejection. The end result was he decided to seek a place in the Hearing world. To increase his chances and opportunities, he decided on getting the cochlear implant.

For all my ambivalence about the implant, and stalwart advocacy of Deaf culture, I do empathise with my mate. He wanted to fit in somewhere. He wanted friendships. He wanted relationships. He wanted a meaningful life. A simple desire. If the Deaf world wasn’t going to give it to him, then damn them, he will seek it in the Hearing world.

A WORD TO THE WISE: This post is not to be taken as a perfect illustration of the opportunities afforded by the implant. Furthermore, the decision to get an implant is not to be taken as an absolution of the Hearing world’s own prejudices and intolerances, and an indicator of its benevolence towards Deaf and deaf people. Nor is the acceptance of the implant to be taken as a negation of the Deaf as a culture and community, for its rejection of my mate.

I do envy my mates dogged determination. He is a classic case of, “Feel the fear and do it anyway!” However, his implant, is changing the dynamics of our relationship. How could it not? Not so much my rejection of him because of the implant, because I haven’t rejected him. But that his implant will take him, is taking him, down a road, that I won’t be travelling with him.

But that is OK. The shift in polar opposites demands that you renegotiate your responses.

And my responses to the never ending conflict between deafness and hearing are different. While I do know the opportunities and temptations of technology, I am not convinced by their promises. I am too well aware of the fact that the onus of the technology success falls on the Deaf/ deaf person. More pertinent to this conflict, is the tension between who I am and becoming someone else in order to fit in or increase your chances at happiness.

A Faustian bargain if there ever was one. A bit overwrought perhaps, but nonetheless, still a case of all that glitters is not gold.

In The Tree Of Knowledge, and The Idol-Maker: David Lodge - Deaf Sentence, I spoke about Deaf and Hearing being polar opposites. The same thinking can be applied to our sexuality, our gender, our race, culture, art, music, senses, et al. The decisions we make are the result of contemplation opposing forces and arriving at a decision that usually rejects one for the other, where often the happy medium is somewhere in the middle.

In a sense this is what my mate has done, rejected one world for the other. Ben, doesn’t want to reject one for the other, but his experiences are forcing him down roads he doesn’t want to travel. Meanwhile, I sit on the fence singing:

Look like nothings gonna change,
Everything still remain the same,
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do,
So I guess I’ll remain the same, yes…[Dock Of The Bay, Otis Redding]

Further Reading:

What’s This Choice, That People Speak Of?
DEFINITION: Poison Person/ People
ASSASSINATING ALISON BRYAN - The Foaming Jaws Of The Poison People: The Prequel
ASSASSINATING ALISON BRYAN - The Foaming Jaws Of The Poison People: The Sequel To The Prequel.

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Tales Of The Deafhood - Oral Vs Deaf

I meant to post a response to CAN IT BE A GOOD THING TO BE DEAF?, but recent visits to various forums, and reading of blogs, forced me to repsond with this post. I know I am repeating myself, and at times I feel like I’m bashing my head against a brick wall, but this particular issue never dies. Which I’m sure many of you will agree. The issue I am referring to, is never ending the tensions that exists between deaf and Deaf people. The reasons for this so called war, and tensions, are not  what people commonly believe them to be.

Whenever people gather to discuss and debate issues about deafness, the responses often betray other underlying issues, which propel the debates into slanging matches, avoiding the issue being discussed, shifting of the goalposts, ignorance, superficial analysis, refusal to engage the questions asked, and outright dishonesty.

The tensions that are continually being played out, are not the result of two opposing camps, with two opposing views. They are the direct result of hearing hegemony [or control and influence if you like] in deaf and Deaf peoples lives. The medical model of deafness. This is underlying cause of tensions between, and the wedge that divides, deaf and Deaf people.

If you really step back and analyse the dialogue between deaf and Deaf people, you will notice that issues like poor self esteem, poor education, low literacy, disenfranchisement, disengagement from society, fear, late onset of deafness, unable to deal with life change, confused identity, and even sexuality and gender, are being played under the guise of choice in communication methods, the right to choose the best methods, use of technology, parental rights, and a morbid fear of being an outsider, all of which have very real detrimental effects.

Let’s face it, the oral program is alive and well. Built on the medical model that decrees that we shall be fixed, and that the precious gift of eharing will be ours to savor. It uses technology to hide behind. Sometimes it is very blatant, such as the cochlear implant, and sometimes it is more subtle, such as in communication choices [or more facetiously, giving the inexperienced child the wither all to make a choice, when it is impossible to make an informed choice if they are exposed to one or two methods!]

It is a common re-occurrence, throughout all the forums I visit, such as The Tower Of Babble, and the blogs I read, such as, At The Rim. The reasons why I write. Deaf People’s Oppression of CI People? Give Over!, MEDIA WATCH: DeafRead and Oppression?, Does Deaf Militancy Really Destroy Sign Language [ASL] and Deaf Community, MEDIA WATCH: A G Bell Letter [The Original Letter], and in my continuing Tales Of The DeafHood series, are part of my own desires to clarify the issues. Both for myself and others. I write to better understand the forces that drive deaf and Deaf people. To better understand the forces that work to divide us. AND TO CRY FOUL, when organisations such as A G Bell, try to bluff, bluster, and bullshit.

In many ways, the dialogues  between Deaf and deaf people, are very much like the dialogue between the right wing and the left wing. The right wings, the more extreme and nuttier they are, the less credible and more rabid their arguments are. There is little or no serious analyst or thought that goes into their viewpoints. This is what I seriously think of the oral, people of the little d camp. This leaves us little old lefties, the people of the big D. Even there though, more thought needs to go into opinions expressed.

Our debates are not really about the best communication methods, or best means of education, or the right to choose, or any other insinuation of choice and the right to self determination. They are really about belonging [which is what we all desire and is perfectly natural] and a morbid fear of difference, being different, and being seen as different.

The oralies, as exemplified by A G Bell, see the signing Deaf as the personification of that very difference they wish to avoid, so the signing become  a target for their fears and frustrations. The Deaf camp on the other hand, view the oralies, the sole preserve of the select few, from which they, the Deaf, have been excluded, rejected and forgotten. So, the oralies become targets for their fears and frustrations. To cap it all off, both camps have to deal with the frigging hearing world.

We are all fighting the same battle to find ourselves and our place in the world. It is just that one method is more holistic than the other!

Further Reading:

Empathy Isn’t Always A Natural Instinct When One Is The “Default”: Part 2
Empathy Isn’t Always A Natural Instinct When One Is The “Default”
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Three
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Two
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part One
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities: Deaf Gays And Lesbians
Tales Of The Deafhood - The Epiphany
Tales Of The Deafhood - An Introduction
More Thoughts on the Deaf Blogosphere
What is Deafhood?
Deafhood: A Process Of Self Repression
Many Tribes
In One’s Own Image: Ethics and the Reproduction of Deafness
Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
Informed Choice and Deaf Children: Underpinning Concepts and Enduring Challenges

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Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Three

As I wrote in the post, Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Two,setting the agenda for debate is major theme in chapter two of Paddy Ladd’s Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood, and is a question that is overlooked in the debates that rent the Deaf and deaf communities. Not only are we so conditioned to think in terms of “it is us who are lacking” and that many of us don’t ever question this conditioning, the terms of reference are so narrow, and deliberately so, that we never consider the questions of class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality. We are defined purely by our “hearing loss/ impairment”, and any other issue is deemed irrelevant.

But Deafies as a minority group are not immune to influences from the dominant culture. More to the point, we are the product of that culture, and class, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality affects not only how we live our lives as “hearing impaired” people, but also how we define ourselves as Deaf people and the kind of culture we are create. More pertinently, the oppression that results from class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality, adds to the oppression we receive as Deaf/deafies [this is a post for another time].

As it stands, there are many who dismiss the Deaf Identity and Deaf Culture under the patronising guises of people who HAPPEN to be Deaf, freedom of choice in communication methods, we are all the same whatever our hearing loss, we all should share the same goals because we all have a hearing loss, and so on. This attitude is further reflected in how funding is targetted, which further influences the types of projects that are created to secure this funding.

This can be best exemplified in the numerous projects that target YOUNG people. In one fell swoop, paying no regard to those of us who are not young, and further compounding the disadvantages that older Deaf people have experienced in their lives.

The differences of class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality are keenly felt, but they either are dismissed  as irrelevant to deafness, or dealt with in a superficial manner, in a manner akin to the patronising we are all equal, let’s put all over differences aside and get along now shall we! This has the added affect of stifling honest debate.

Which brings us to the question, in the success or failure of various projects and initiatives targetting the Deaf and deaf communities, what the terms of reference when analysing these successes or failures. Particularly the failures? Are issues of class, age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexuality factored in when giving and receiving feedback?

When discussing and researching deafness the question of sexuality.This is the driving force behind the survey I wrote about in Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities: Deaf Gays And Lesbians. While the survey itself is specific and targetted at  Deaf Gays and Lesbians, we have been encouraging our Deaf heterosexual, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters to participate in this survey, as it was recognised that deafness has ramifications on all Deaf and deaf people and how they learn about their bodies and their sexuality, and how they access this information, and whether this information is created and made available.

Further Reading:

Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Two
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part One
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities: Deaf Gays And Lesbians
Tales Of The Deafhood - The Epiphany
Tales Of The Deafhood - An Introduction
More Thoughts on the Deaf Blogosphere
What is Deafhood?
Deafhood: A Process Of Self Repression
Many Tribes
In One’s Own Image: Ethics and the Reproduction of Deafness
Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
Informed Choice and Deaf Children: Underpinning Concepts and Enduring Challenges

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Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part Two

As many [or some] of us are aware, The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, is currently a hot topic. Fueled by heated rhetoric, many blog posts, articles, forum entries and emails are currently discussing the issue, but they all share a glaring  incongruity between what the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is actually about and what people are actually responding to.  Emotionally charged and polarised responses, that are ignorant of the bill and the source material.

An exquisite irony that is lost on the hearing [and Deaf and deaf] respondees [it should be respondents, but respondees sounds rather apt].

Inspite of their access to information and explanations regarding the Deaf response to the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, via the STOP EUGENICS campaign, the editors of the [Sunday] Times Online CHOSE to frame the article in terms of Designer Baby Chic! The whole concept is encapsulated in the title of the article, Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children.This had the effect of inflaming rather than encouraging debate. It created a spectacle whereby blog readers, forum attendees, email posters, and commentators were responding the terrifying image of mutilated children and selfish Deaf people, conjured up by the words: Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children, so much so that the rest of the article, let alone the actual Bill and other source material, is irrelevant .

I have already posted an analysis,and my concern here is the issue of who sets the agenda when discussing Deaf and deaf issues, and the terms of the debate thus laid out. Setting the agenda for debate is major theme in chapter two of Paddy Ladd’s Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood, and is a question that is overlooked in the debates that rent the Deaf and deaf communities. We are so conditioned to think in terms of “it is us who are lacking” and this process is encouraged, that many of us don’t ever question this conditioning.

This process is so ingrained in many Deaf and deaf, that they can often [sometimes?] be found on the same side as uninformed hearing people when engaged in debates such the The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill: follow the links in the Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two, particularly the FARK thread. Also of note, is the stubbornness of  a poster in the Engineering Deaf Babies For Deaf Couples US and Britain Debate The Selection Of Deaf Embryos and Adopted Childrenblog post.

But the more pertinent point is the unwillingness to question the mainstream accepted assumptions of disability, Deafness, language and culture [which goes along way to explaining the many conundrums that populate discourse - dialogue, debate - between people].

With regards to The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the terms of the debate has been set by an article written by a hearing person, and published in a hearing newspaper and website, encapsulated in the words, “Deaf Demand Right To Designer Deaf Children”. The ensuing debate has been hijacked by hearing people whose understanding of disability and disability issues is uninformed and ignorant. Many of the respondees [lovely word] are vehemently reluctant to entertain any other ways of looking at the disability issue other than the “something is missing or not working” variety. This is not helped by popular media who abdicate their responsibility to INFORM, and engage in sensationalism and spreading FUD [Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt]

Which makes engaging with Hearing world all the more problematic. Many people’s favourite pastime is to blame the Deaf person for the ill effects of living under the yoke of Hearing assumptions. Further blame is apportioned to Deaf people for the failure of any attempts to engage with the Hearing world. All this ignores completely [turns a blind eye to] the Hearing world’s own culpability in the process. A culpability that is willful.

As it stands, current debate in the Deaf and deaf worlds [and indeed between them] is so fragmented. Emotionally charged and polarised and intellectually lazy. A reflection of our mainstream culture. Which is a Hearing one.

There is blame [and accountability], but that is an issue for another time and another post. There is one more post discussing the major themes in chapter two of Paddy’s book, which I hope will shed further light in understanding Deaf Culture.

Meanwhile,

If I say “Woof!”
They say, “Speak English.”
To which I reply, “Exactly!”

Further Reading:

Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities Part One
Tales Of The Deafhood - Deaf Communities: Deaf Gays And Lesbians
Tales Of The Deafhood - The Epiphany
Tales Of The Deafhood - An Introduction
What is Deafhood?
Deafhood: A Process Of Self Repression
Many Tribes
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It! Part Two
“Stop Eugenics!” = Anti-abortion?
Media Watch: Hearing People Still Don’t Get It!
Not quite with the Times …
Sunday Times article & my communication with the Sunday Times
In One’s Own Image: Ethics and the Reproduction of Deafness
Ethnicity, Ethics, and the Deaf-World
Informed Choice and Deaf Children: Underpinning Concepts and Enduring Challenges

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