Deaf-initely Different

SAB is a touchy subject for many-a-Deaf-person.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s that great. They miss the mark more often than they hit it. 

Firstly, it started this kind of trend to have a Deaf/deaf boyfriend/girlfriend/friend. Like we were the new accessory. I don’t necessarily think that you can blame the show for that. It got popular, and thus so did having a deaf friend. But it’s annoying being constantly compared to a fictional TV show. That’s not real life. It’s fiction. Most of our lives aren’t the complicated, and we don’t all want what those characters want. 

The show is supposedly meant to support and raise awareness of Deaf culture and deafness. Yet it’s made for hearing people. They don’t keep the camera on the person who’s signing (unless it’s one of the hearing people signing….), but instead pan to the person they’re talking to. So if you actually KNOW AND USE ASL, you can’t see what they’re actually saying. OR they place the subtitles over the signer, obscuring the view of the signer’s hands. They “support” deaf culture, but don’t actually want you to see the Deaf people using ASL fully. Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

I don’t like Katie Leclerc as a choice for the deaf daughter. She’s hard-of-hearing, not Deaf. While she does sign, she signs more PSE (not that big of a deal.) However, she also tends not to sign in interviews. If you’re going to parade a show about exposure and awareness for a disability, you should be doing that on and off screen! Sign! It would help the Deaf community respect her a bit more. Many Deaf people feel that they should have cast an actual Deaf person to play the part of Daphne. I agree with them. 

They misrepresent the struggles in everyday life. I’m not saying my life is hell or anything. It’s not. But they do like 1 episode where Emmett has to struggle to lipread. After that, he’s a lip-reading god! People will say really odd things to him, and he picks it up without a problem. Lipreading doesn’t work like that. It’s a lot of work, and the amount of guess work it involves is huge. He doesn’t use hearing aids or any other type of listening device, so theoretically he can’t hear anything/almost anything when listening to someone. But he lipreads like a pro! It’s just not that easy. He never seems confused. 

There’s an episode where Daphne is by a lake and Wilke throws her into it. No one with hearing aids is going to be careless enough to leave their hearing aids on a dock that extends into water. Those things are EXPENSIVE! I would freak out if I was near a large body of water with them (and often do!). 

That being said, they do get some things right. I like that they portray Carlton (the school for the Deaf) as struggling financially. Most deaf schools are right now. There are maybe a handful that are honestly secure when it comes to money. They show Kyle (I think that’s his name… I don’t remember) as having a sort of sucky home-life. No one in his family signs, and they all just kind of scream at him. That’s pretty common. Not overly common (I hope) but it definitely happens. Kyle’s attitude is not an uncommon one in the Deaf Community. 

I watch the show. I’m interested in where it’s going. I don’t like that it’s like a Soap Opera more than half the time, but there’s really no helping that. I wish they would take a bit more care with the show. It’s not very realistic. I’ve done other posts about it in the past. I’m sure you can find them if you search my blog tags for it. (I usually spell it out though, rather than say SAB). 

I think it’s doing some good. But I also think it’s doing some harm. If Emmett can lipread so well without hearing aids, why can’t I when I have them? Things like that. It doesn’t always give an honest representation of Deaf culture or deaf people and the struggles we are up against sometimes. I don’t like being treated like an accessory. I don’t like seeing “omg! I want a deaf friend so much!”. You shouldn’t want a friend just because they’re deaf. That’s not a friend. 

Also, learning ASL just to get a deaf friend is total bullshit and I’m willing to bet money that over 2/3 of the people who said tIhey want to learn ASL (in regards to this show) won’t keep it up or go through with it. I kind of feel like it’s the equivalent of Supernatural fan (which I am) saying they want to hunt demons. It’s a cool fantasy, but you’re not really going to do it. Some will, I’m sure. But most won’t. 

I’m usually pretty annoyed by it, but am happy when they get things right. It has a good amount of very respected Deaf actors. (Marlee Matlin and Anthony Natale are fantastic! I’ve followed their work for years and have a great amount of respect for both of them). 

In general, my feeling is “meh.” It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s pissed me off on several accounts. 

Hope this helps. And like I said, it can be a hard thing to answer for a Deaf/deaf person. I know lots of people who don’t want to talk about it. We get asked about it all the time. “You’re deaf right? Don’t you just love Switched at Birth?!” We’re a sensitive community when it comes to this kind of thing. We’ve experienced a lot of oppression over the years, so we’re very careful about how we want to appear to the public at large. The show is popular (great!), but it also projects these assumptions onto the public, and we, the Deaf community, are the ones who have to put up with those projections and the fallout they may bring. 

thelegalizeddeafies:

Dear ASL students,

Every single days, you are used to seeing No Voice Policy (NVP) in your classroom. Yet you are still complaining why your grades were no-good. Well, welcome to ASL class—where your whole world turns upside down.

Let me tell you something. ALL ASL teachers are require to have…

ALL OF THIS!!  ^^^

I gave my high schoolers a HUGE lecture about their continued disrespect. I also went so far as to tell them that if they don’t take it seriously and start studying, I will email their parents when they have a quiz. That way their parents can sit down with them to help them study like they’re in third grade again.

I am also rather tired of seeing them laugh and snicker when they sign. Or do it overly-exaggerated because they think it’s funny. Like clapping REALLY LOUDLY when they sign school. It’s my language! Show some respect. It’s not really that funny… I apparently don’t get the joke. 

I’ve told them repeatedly to get used to turning off their voices. Starting next quarter, they’ll get points deducted from their grade every time I see them talking. EVERY. TIME. This class seems to have absolutely no self-control. They are by far the most dis-respectful class I have ever taught. 

Unfortunately, they’re about to learn the hard way that I take my job seriously. It’s not a joke to me. I love what I do, but it’s getting to be way too much! I would never accept that behavior from my college students; so I have no idea why they think I’ll put up with it from them. 

It would have been so much easier if I was their teacher from the beginning instead of coming in at the middle of the year….. Oh well. 

TURN OF YOUR VOICE! IT’S ONE OF THE FASTEST WAYS TO HELP YOU LEARN IF YOU ACTUALLY USE IT! IF NOT, DON’T EXPECT TO IMPROVE AS FAST. Without fail, the students that follow and respect the NVP are the ones who improve the fastest.

cowboydan2:

I honestly do not get why deaf people on tumblr have so much against cochlear implant patients. But if you think about it. It works. I am currently in my freshman yr in college and I speak and hear pretty well. Its not perfect but WHO CARES. I went through speech therapy and all…

So… I have a lot of things to say about this.

First of all, most of us aren’t against Cochlear implants. We’re against parents deciding to implant young children and then never introduce them to Deaf culture. Parents telling the child who they are and what their life will be like without consulting the child first. 

What we don’t like about them is that they tend to push parents into deciding on oral-only education methods. Children are no longer being introduced to the Deaf culture, and therefore grow up seeing themselves as “fixed” while those who don’t have one are “broken.” 

You said yourself that we have to be “mainstream.” Well, mainstream doesn’t really work for some people. And the idea of “get an implant or your life won’t be as nice” is very audistic. (Not to mention: how would you know? You’ve never lived our life just like we haven’t lived yours.) You’re telling people that a life with one is better than a life without one. That we have to be “fixed” so that we can get a job. Do you know what that’s called? OPPRESSION. AUDISM.

Also:

1. Us saying that cochlear implants are destroying our culture is in no way hypocritical.  
2. We don’t think everyone should stay deaf. We think people should be able to decide for themselves what they want to be: meaning that we have equality in all things whether deaf with a CI, hearing, or Deaf. 
3. You can’t say a single thing about our culture’s views on CIs or their impact because you aren’t part of it. Everything you’ve said about yourself points to that. You don’t use sign language, and you are dependent on your CI to function in every day life. I know how to get by without assistive technology. I don’t need it. 
4. If you know anything about hearing loss, you know that it varies greatly from person to person. No two people experience hearing loss the same way. What works for you can very easily not work at all for another person.
5. CI’s aren’t always the answer. I know more than one person who has had a very negative experience with their CIs. One hates them and finds them more distracting than helpful. The other has been suffering from dibilitating headaches since the surgery. I also know people who have them and love them. 

I have nothing against anyone who has a CI. But I also think that if you have one and are NOT a part of the Deaf culture, you don’t have any right to talk about our perspective on them. You aren’t in the culture and you clearly don’t understand it. I don’t talk about black or Hispanic cultures and their perspectives on things. Because it’s not my place. I’m not part of those cultures. The same goes for Deaf cultures. You don’t know what it means to be Deaf. 

You say that you have no problem with people embracing their culture, but you’ve said some wonderfully oppressive things. 

We don’t fight CI’s. We fight their impact on our community and culture. We fight the fact that more and more our culture is seeing a regression back towards the pathological model of deafness (“Fix everyone; they’re broken! They’re abnormal!”) and oral-only education. The problem lies in the fact that that sort of thinking leads to oral-only acceptance. All the sudden deaf people who sign are “less-than” because other deaf people can speak. 

I won’t say that CI’s are destroying our culture. I WILL say that they are impacting it. It’s people like you who say, “I don’t get what your issue is! It solves all your problems!” Like you said, not everyone wants to be deaf. But guess what- not everyone wants to be HEARING. 

We have struggled so long against this idea that we have to be like everyone else to survive. I think that idea is old. It’s out-dated. We don’t. We should have the freedom to be ourselves and not have to make sacrifices to our identity in order to do that. Yes, maybe I will have more struggles than you do. But I’m also more than willing to fight for my rights and equality. Not only for myself, but for people like me. People who don’t have CI’s, and don’t want them for themselves, or people who DO have CIs but want to be able to use ASL to communicate and be themselves.

People who know me know that I don’t have ANY issues with anyone because they have a cochlear implant. I know MANY people that have them, and they all use them with varying levels of success. But you can’t walk around saying “But my life is better and you have to fit in or else your life will suck.” You should be fighting along side us and supporting us! God forbid anything happen and your internal implant breaks. Now you’re really deaf and there’s no ‘being in line with the hearing community.’ How will you survive? We know how to, and we’ve all learned it the hard way. And we’re stronger for it. Whether or not to get an implant is an EXTREMELY personal decision, and I don’t think anyone has the right to walk around telling people to get them. I’ve had enough people suggest that I get them (or go as far as to tell me that myself and all deaf people should be forced to have them) to make my head spin. People I don’t even know! People on the streets, who are hearing, and have no idea what my life is like. 

We survive because we fight together. Whether or not someone has an implant means nothing. The fight is about the perspectives it sends to everyone. That oral-only education is the only way to go. That you can’t be successful if you can’t hear. That everyone wants to be fixed, because why would anyone want to stay deaf?! That idea goes hand-in-hand with the idea that deaf people are somehow “less than” hearing people. That we’re broken because we don’t speak English. Because we don’t do things the way you do. We’re different, and that’s not okay in their eyes.

Don’t hold us back; support us the way we would support you if all the sudden your implant didn’t work anymore. We’d support you if you came to our community and said, “I want to learn ASL. I want to know about Deaf culture.” Instead you’re telling us we’re wrong and hypocritical. 

THAT’S why there’s controversy around CI’s. It’s not about whether or not someone has them. It’s the way society and the parents of young children see them as the salvation of deaf people everywhere and the assumptions they project onto the public at large.