Hi everyone,
I have continued to think about identity for the past few days and how it impacts us. There are many parts to my identity but how do I prioritise it. Sometimes I wonder what should come first. How do I decide what should even be included in my socialized identity? Normally I identify as a young Deaf queer woman, in that order too.
Young, why does it get to come first? It is certainly not the most important, or even a remotely important part of my identity. I suppose it holds more importance if you were to read a bio on me. I have done a lot in my life for an 18 year old. That is the only time when ‘young’ seems to be a significant part of who I am, when I am flaunting it. No, flaunting it isn’t the right word. When I am proving myself seems better.
Deaf, now that is important. Deaf is more than just part of my identity, it is my communication needs. Communication is paramount to success in our world and by highlighting the importance of ‘Deaf’ in my identity you also highlight my communication methods and needs. I use ASL, I speech read, I speak (but not like a Hearing person) and I use more visual information than others. ‘Deaf’ is also one of my cultures, my friends, and where I feel comfortable.
Queer, I suppose this is important. ‘Queer ‘used to hold much more significance in my identity than it does now. My life used to revolve around ’queer’ ! When I first moved to Toronto I didn’t even speak to straight people. This wasn’t intentional but that is how it ended up. I segregated myself within this community that I felt comfortable with. For the first time it was okay for me to be queer. I wasn’t ridiculed and I felt safe. I embraced ‘queer’ as much as I could. Now, a year later, I am not sure how important it is to me. I definitely am still heavily involved in the Queer community but it is starting to take a different shape now. I no longer feel a need to have queer friends and community for strength and support. They are there but they are just people. There are new young queer people, who are just ‘out’ and ready to fight. Don’t get my wrong, I will still fight when needed but I am no longer militant about it.
Woman, this is a tough one for me. I am a feminist and will openly proclaim that. I am involved in the feminist movement and I will fight for womens rights until the day I die. How important is my female identity to that though? I realise that is a dangerous statement for me to make but it is the truth. My female identity changes by the day. I used to identify as more ‘gender queer’ than female, though I am not as fluid in my gender expression as I was back then (certainly not to the point that I identify as ‘gender queer’) I don’t always feel as though the label ‘woman’ is true for me. Today it is part of my identity, but not as much as it was on Saturday.
Those four parts of my identity ‘Young’, ‘Deaf’, ‘Queer’, and ‘Woman’ are only that, parts of my identity. They are not the only parts of my identity either. There are certainly more but for some reason they get left out of my brief synopsis of who I am. ‘Young Deaf Queer Woman’ certainly defines me as the media, and activism communities see me but that isn’t me. Sometimes parts of it get dropped too. When I am doing Queer rights work, Deaf often gets dropped from my list. Rarely by my choice, normally it is done by the media, for some reason it becomes unimportant.
The previous paragraphs were really a lengthy introduction to a concern about Deaf identity. There are millions of people in North America with hearing loss, yet only a marginal few embrace their hearing loss as an identity.
I am reading a book right now called “Deaf Sentence” by David Lodge. It is about an older retired man who is very hard of hearing and how it effects his life. The main character, Desmond, considers his hearing loss to be a very negative thing. At one point in the book the main character comments that he has no idea who could find anything good about hearing loss. This got me thinking about why all people can’t embrace it as part of them.
There is certainly a negative stigma attached to hearing loss. There is a fear of being noticed and not ‘passing’ as a hearing person. There is the fear of someone noticing the rather large, awkward, plastic things encasing your ears. There is the constant use of the phrases “What?” ,“Pardon?”, and “Sorry, I missed what you said.”. There is the occasional isolation when you are surrounded by Hearing people who are talking and you have no idea what was said. Yes, hearing loss can be negative, I won’t deny that. It can also be positive too and very few people see that.
There is an entire community rallied around the fact that sometimes peoples ears just don’t work at full capacity, or at all. There are people who are proud to be Hard of Hearing and rally together because of that. There are people who are proud to be Deaf and rally together because of that. There are groups where Hearing, Hard of Hearing, and Deaf all overlap because of a common language, ASL (or another Sign Language). With this community out there, and readily available, what stops people from embracing it? There is no one answer to that question but I would like to attempt to provide a few different ones.
One obvious answer is age. Many people end up with hearing loss later in life. At this point they are often well established with a social group and feel no need to seek out a new one. This is the only reason I am not going to criticise. [When I say criticise I do not mean that all other peoples reasons aren’t valid but this is simply one I am planning to leave alone].
I would like to propose that audiologists create this segregation between the social/cultural model of disability (capital ‘D’ Deaf) and the individual model (lower-case ‘d’ deaf) . Not to say all audiologists do this, or that it is even a conscious action on the part of the profession. When someone goes to an audiologist they are normally going because they are having difficulty hearing. The audiologists does some tests, finds that the person does indeed have any degree of hearing loss, and then they set out to “fix” them. Sometimes that means hearing aids, cochlear implants, or ENT referrals. While I have nothing wrong with “fixes” they are mostly temporary solutions, and they rarely actually “fix” the problem. They are more like an annoying band-aid that keeps falling off.
Audiologists see people with hearing loss as something that is broken. They see me as someone who is “hearing impaired”, not as someone who is Deaf. They tell me that my quality of life will improve with cochlear implants and I will have more opportunities. Who are they to judge me! Audiologists are experts on hearing loss, not lives.
I would be curious to know how much training and information about hearing loss as an identity and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities audiologists are given during their masters programs. To me that should hold great importance for the profession. I don’t care if some audiologists will only encounter a few Deaf people in their practice, there are still that few and there needs to be an attempt to learn and understand us.
I have a feeling many Deaf people view audiologists the same way as they do interpreters, a necessary evil. I do at least. Here is the difference though, interpreters try to understand and respect us. They see our hearing loss and communication differences as our identity and culture, not our disability and not something they are there to fix. Well, some interpreters might not but the Deaf community would reject them pretty darn fast.
I think it would be great if there was an opportunity to bridge the gaps between audiologists and the Deaf community. Perhaps someone who would speak to audiologists and do education sessions on Deaf culture sensitivity. Clinics could have someone come in to speak with their audiologists about Deaf culture and how it overlaps with their profession. Give them tips on how to be sensitive to the specific needs of this community and provide them with extra resources.
I am not going to blame it all on the audiologists. The Deaf community likes the call them audists and them move on. Yes, many of them are audist, but what are we doing to change that? Education and advocacy are the keys to changing things like this. We need to battle audism within the field, not just point it out. One way of doing that is making ourselves heard through education. Perhaps it is a silly idea, perhaps it has been tried, but there is still a massive problem and we shouldn’t stop fighting for the respect our identities deserve.
Having just said all of that I will acknowledge there are a precious few audiologists out there that are respectful of Deaf identity and culture. I have met two in my life time and one of them was Deaf themselves. I didn’t like her at the time because I was about 7 or 8 and she was just as stubborn as me. She won all of my battles with her and it made me mad. I respect her for that now though. The other one is Hearing, but willing to learn and listen. That is all I want, a willingness to learn and see me as the person that I am. Not as something broken that needs to be fixed. I have been doing this long enough that I know what needs to be fixed, and I will tell them what that is. I know that thing isn’t me though, so back off and let me be Deaf!
Jenny
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