| | Protest or Censorship?
The response to my blog "Enough with blogs about CI surgery!" was interesting. Not only were there both pro and con responses on the blog itself, it spilled over into other blogs as well.
http://aslci.blogspot.com/2009/06/enough-with-ci-blogs.html
http://radio666fm.com/mephisto/?p=828
The first responses were positive. It touched a nerve in other Deaf people also sick of blogs about CI surgery and its skewing focus in the lives of d/Deaf people. Then came rather defensive responses: some saw it as an attempt to censor DeafRead to eliminate CI blogs, asserting instead that it is a part of the d/Deaf experience and that it definitely belonged in DR, and that one can simply skip over them using the Custom feature of DeafRead.
No suggestion was made to censor at all. My blog was a protest: The CI surgery blogs imply that hearing is necessary in order to become a competent individual. Effectively, this is a medical model that ignores all that Deaf people have accomplished through the generations without aids.
It also seemed that DeafRead was moving away from one of its original premises: to showcase the culture and accomplishments of Deaf people. Cultural topics were losing ground to medical topics. I wondered if uninvolved people reading these blogs might get information that supports a disability perception by the majority.
A Call for Respect, not an Attack
Some also viewed last week's blog as an attack on CI users and mentioned radicals such as those in DBC, AFA and the Deafhood movement.
Far from it. We know that CI wearers are increasing in our cultural community and that future generations will have an even larger percentage of CI users than our hearing aid wearers. As for "radicals", we must define the term first. Offering my definition as a starting point: a radical is a person who is unreasonably one-sided and does not take others' viewpoints in consideration. A radical is an extremist, favoring drastic reform immediately.
While the views of these individuals may make others uncomfortable, they all are after the same goal: respect for deaf people, respect for American Sign Language, and inclusion of ASL in early childhood education. If some of their leaders are critical of the CI, they are saying it is overused, hyped, and involves a restrictive therapy that allows no sign language. Does this criticism make them radicals? Are they representative of the organization?
Part of the problem is that these Deaf groups do not have a clearly written position representing their organizational view, so people are attributing extreme anti-CI sentiments of a few members to the whole organization. By labeling them radicals, they are then dismissed as crackpots. Their original premise, RESPECT AND INCLUSION, is lost in the confusion.
Violence?
The topic then abruptly shifted to violence, brought up by pro-CI bloggers who said they had been threatened, and following that, another respondent said she had heard of five CI parents who had been threatened.
http://aslci.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-is-line.html
http://radio666fm.com/mephisto/?p=835
My initial reaction? Skepticism. Up to now this had been mentioned vaguely, without facts or reports to cite, and seemed intended to validate their position as heroes fighting Deaf radicals for the good of humanity.
Well, I don't know.
We've seen in the news sickos causing deaths on campuses and in workplaces. We've seen extremist groups attack buildings, killing people in them. Who am I to say that this cannot happen in the highly polarized d/Deaf community? Hmmm? Well...
..........
I came across a nutcase known for blog rants against the CI. It was at a Deaf festival and this person seemed an unlikely candidate for the term "crackpot" at first. Within the first few minutes, though, it became obvious this was no normal-thinking person. An emotional, determined, on-a-mission obsession. Histrionics of "I will fight for defenseless babies who are innocently born to parents who not accept them as God made them!" "I will not give up on hard fights!" These were the milder things this person said, but the eyes held a glint of paranoia. This is not who Deaf people want to speak for them, and this embarrassing person has been banned from online forums. Personally, I don't think this one is actually planning anything worse than verbally making it difficult for others. (Unfortunately, the diehard CI blogs use this person as a blanket example of "Deaf Culturists" that they must fear and fight against.)
..........
So, it would be safer to err on the side of taking threats seriously, just on principle.
While we are talking about threats (which was brought up in a divisive way,) we have a right to ask for more specific information. Names? Locations? Cyber addresses? Background? What led up to this threat? Who are these people and what harm can they potentially do? How many people, or is it just one or two? What can we do about them? How can we discourage and disclaim this so that people will listen to us?
The reason many of us did not respond to past mention of threats is probably that it is foreign to our experience. We just did not see any, and wondered if those who mentioned it somehow exaggerated it or brought it on themselves by their provocative comments. That doesn't make it right, though. Violence is never acceptable, no way, nohow. (If those so inclined individuals are reading this, please know you are hurting the cause of Deaf respect and acceptance, and are actually being used by some CI extremists to discount the rest of us.)
Discourse is Healthy and Progressive when one Listens.
An advantage of sharing blogs with opposing views is that we tend to come together on points of agreement. Examples:
I personally have come to accept that the CI has some value but still hold out on how this value is measured and by whom.
Certain CI bloggers have come out and said that ASL has value, but still reserve judgment on who needs it.
Parents have said that the "radicals" have important lessons to pass on about past mistreatment in education, but they still say today's young Deaf generation is different than any in the past.
More Deaf people are accepting that ASL is not for everybody, but still believe that it belongs in the child's first offerings.
Parents, regarded at first to be unwitting and credulous people desperately trying to find a cure, are now seen as mostly involved people asking questions and making informed choices.
The dialogue needs to continue, and fences that stop it need to be taken down.
|
