Take a look at this picture.
Which did you notice first, the blue tape or the beautiful girl?
This beautiful girl is actually Deaf, or if you want to be politically correct, hearing-impaired.
Our society is fixated to "fix" us.
How do you think our society is trying to fix us?
By forcing us to be like you.
By forcing us to use hearing aids or cochlear implants.
Forcing us to go through surgery to sacrifice whatever hearing we have left to be completely PROFOUNDLY Deaf when the cochlear implants are off.
You made us to be a part machine.
By forcing us to speak like you.
Countless hours perfecting the spoken words by speech therapy.
Sacrificing our childhood and basic education only to speak.
Banning us to use our native language.
Forcing us to adjust to your desired choice of language, using your different methods such as Signed Exact English (SEE), Cued Speech, and just speaking orally while we could have just used ASL.
ASL is the strongest language in the Deaf Community.
By forcing us to match your needs where we obviously cannot do well, this is called Audism.
You oppress us.
Deafness isn't just a handicap.
Deafness is what makes us to be an often unseen culture.
Yes, we're a small community where everybody seem to know each other.
Yes, we are a minority.
It didn't stop us from accepting everybody who grew up in different backgrounds, thus creating a diversity among us.
We unite by many things, but our experience as a Deaf individual is the primary unity.
You rely on your ears to hear, but we rely on our touch and seeing sense to hear.
We experience miscommunications with hearing people.
We experience misunderstanding with hearing people.
Those misunderstandings can lead to lawsuits. (Just a FYI.)
We experience more loop holes than a normal hearing person do by requesting for interpreters, more paperworks, vice versa where a hearing person could just leap through one hoop and have whatever they needed.
(For more information, check this link)
We experience being left out of the conversations.
"Oh, it's not important."
"I will tell you later."
WE HATE THOSE PHASES.
By not having access to closed captioning, we face this scenario.
You wonder why we aren't interested to interact with you?
You leave us out.
So, when you see us having our Deaf time, it's best to leave us alone.
We have our own culture norms,
such as arriving late, and staying longer than the time the event ends.
We have our games where we can be involved only by knowledge of ASL.
(This game is King Monkey/Kong. It's one of a bunch of the games.
Basically, you have to call another person's animal sign and try to accomplish the King Kong spot.)
However, we know you are not a bad person.
We are aware you (normally) unintentionally oppress us.
That is okay.
Now you are somewhat aware, we can work together as humans and get rid of Audism.
All it requires a different way of thinking.
And…
Probably an interpreter.
(Thank you for paying!)
Thank you 40+ volunteers for making this project a success!!!
