The Deaf Card (A wee Rant)

Sat, 5 May 2007 15:30:20 -0500

So, I got very fine feedback on the Bonefolder article this week, got to hear from many far-flung friends, and I got one anonymous phone call. It said, as far as I can remember or tell, something akin to “You may think you’re great, but no one would look at your shit if you weren’t deaf.”

Asshole.

It hit a nerve, though, because of my associative synapses; I immediately connected it to a comment made a couple of years ago, when my hearing loss was also referred to in print,
“You seem to be playing the deaf card a lot”.

This may turn into a rant, so here’s the short answer:

If I get dealt the card, it’s mine to use.
What you get dealt is yours.

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There’s a disturbing subtext to these two comments; it’s
that I shouldn’t talk about my lack of hearing.

If you think I should feel some type of shame, just leave. Now.

If you feel uneasy or have some sort of guilt because you’re “normal”, don’t. The truth is this: humans can only be temporarily abled.

If you think I’m looking for pity by being vocal, think again.
You can’t see deafness. If I don’t tell you, we waste time: you get frustrated because you think I’m ignoring you, I hate you, I’m a snob, I’m stupid. You want to call me on the phone, and don’t know why I’m e-mailing you. I need you to know. Period.

(Digression: yes, this rant was started by a phone call; my work phone is amplified but that doesn’t often function well for me; neither does the captioned phone at home. It was just my luck, to be able to hear this call. A friend said I should have hit *69 and yelled, “What did you say? I can’t hear you!” Dang. Why didn’t I think of that?)

Artists work autobiographically. Anything that occurs to us gets used outright, extrapolated from, projected onto and into, used as a springboard, or it gets twisted, edited and reshaped into form or metaphor, as we see fit, and as our medium and message requires. We work autobiographically even when we don’t intend to, and even when we categorically deny that we are. Our works are records of our singular responses to stimuli, whether it is intellectual, emotional, experiential or physical in nature.

My deafness is part of who I am, and it’s actually interesting, even fascinating to experience, this waning of a sense, traversing from one mode of knowing to another. It can occasionally be frustrating, but one thing it does NOT do is handicap me.

Read My Lips: Working in a large school proves to me every day that being a hearing person definitely does not guarantee either the ability to communicate or the capacity to understand.

My tenured colleagues frequently receive nice fat faculty grants to travel, in order to have rich experiences from which to distill their work. This equally rich experience of traveling into deafness is mine daily; I am never without it.
I work with it, and outward from it.

End of rant.
That felt good.
(Be glad you read the edited version).

Blahg

The Deaf Card (A wee Rant)