tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6495205444562241273.post3471612724924918538..comments2024-03-20T21:06:34.109-04:00Comments on That Crazy Crippled Chick: Sweet Nothing In My EarCara Liebowitzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11860032209178249016noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6495205444562241273.post-29023387891638672802008-04-26T20:26:00.001-04:002008-04-26T20:26:00.001-04:00Good post, and these are interesting questions for...Good post, and these are interesting questions for any disabled people to debate and consider.<BR/><BR/>Just wanted to make the note, however, that with Deaf people what makes it so much more complicated is that it's not just a question of "Is this really a disability?" or "Am I really that limited by being deaf"? <BR/><BR/>I think to really understand exactly why some Deaf people find the idea of cochlear implants so abhorrent you have to understand that for many Deaf people, being Deaf is a CULTURAL CHARACTERISTIC. It gives us entry to a community that has its own language (BSL if in the UK, ASL if in the US or English-speaking Canada, Auslan in Australia, etc.) It is a culture with its own set of "oral" (signed) literature, jokes, poetry, cultural norms and expectations, etc. Deaf people feel about as passionately about their language and cultural identity as pretty much any other linguistic minority.<BR/><BR/>So when you suggest that a Deaf person should be "cured" (and especially when it comes bundled with so-called medical advice to stop signing to your deaf child -- and it appears that there are some doctors who actually REQUIRE parents to stop signing as a condition for getting the implant) then that's a threat to their cultural and linguistic identity in a way that I think is very different from the kind of threat that other people with disabilities feel. <BR/><BR/>What you're talking about is I think more a kind of a bodily identity -- this is my body, this is the way my body has always been, and that has shaped the way I experience the world yada yada, so changing my body would profoundly affect my concept of self as it relates to my body.<BR/><BR/>Or for a person with neurological differences -- ADD, autism, bipolar, whatever, then you'd have to put it differently. This is the way my brain has always worked, yada yada.<BR/><BR/>But with the Deaf community, there's a much wider identity issue at work: This is what ties me to friends, possibly to family, to a whole wider community of people with whom I share so much in common (NOT just the shared experience of Deafness but the CULTURAL shared experience -- common stories and jokes and history and heros and norms and expectations, and of course the language itself); this is why I learned to use the language in which I think, breathe, make love, work, play, sleep, dream, live, give birth, and just BE. <BR/><BR/>I do respect that there is certainly a disability community also. To some extent even a disability culture. This is something I admit I didn't understand a few years ago before I started exposing myself to more cross-disability communities and experiences. And I have come to very much value that. But it's still not a culture in quite the same sense (or intensity, I think) as you see with Deaf culture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6495205444562241273.post-3058965225819595692008-04-26T20:26:00.000-04:002008-04-26T20:26:00.000-04:00Good post, and these are interesting questions for...Good post, and these are interesting questions for any disabled people to debate and consider.<BR/><BR/>Just wanted to make the note, however, that with Deaf people what makes it so much more complicated is that it's not just a question of "Is this really a disability?" or "Am I really that limited by being deaf"? <BR/><BR/>I think to really understand exactly why some Deaf people find the idea of cochlear implants so abhorrent you have to understand that for many Deaf people, being Deaf is a CULTURAL CHARACTERISTIC. It gives us entry to a community that has its own language (BSL if in the UK, ASL if in the US or English-speaking Canada, Auslan in Australia, etc.) It is a culture with its own set of "oral" (signed) literature, jokes, poetry, cultural norms and expectations, etc. Deaf people feel about as passionately about their language and cultural identity as pretty much any other linguistic minority.<BR/><BR/>So when you suggest that a Deaf person should be "cured" (and especially when it comes bundled with so-called medical advice to stop signing to your deaf child -- and it appears that there are some doctors who actually REQUIRE parents to stop signing as a condition for getting the implant) then that's a threat to their cultural and linguistic identity in a way that I think is very different from the kind of threat that other people with disabilities feel. <BR/><BR/>What you're talking about is I think more a kind of a bodily identity -- this is my body, this is the way my body has always been, and that has shaped the way I experience the world yada yada, so changing my body would profoundly affect my concept of self as it relates to my body.<BR/><BR/>Or for a person with neurological differences -- ADD, autism, bipolar, whatever, then you'd have to put it differently. This is the way my brain has always worked, yada yada.<BR/><BR/>But with the Deaf community, there's a much wider identity issue at work: This is what ties me to friends, possibly to family, to a whole wider community of people with whom I share so much in common (NOT just the shared experience of Deafness but the CULTURAL shared experience -- common stories and jokes and history and heros and norms and expectations, and of course the language itself); this is why I learned to use the language in which I think, breathe, make love, work, play, sleep, dream, live, give birth, and just BE. <BR/><BR/>I do respect that there is certainly a disability community also. To some extent even a disability culture. This is something I admit I didn't understand a few years ago before I started exposing myself to more cross-disability communities and experiences. And I have come to very much value that. But it's still not a culture in quite the same sense (or intensity, I think) as you see with Deaf culture.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com