victimhood verses humor
I was made fun of extensively in high school. I learned to deal with it by understanding what they found funny and laughing about it myself.
It's a kind of personality trait that I've found hasn't made it into this thread yet so I will weigh in.
In my life despite deaf being 10% of the US Population the first deaf person i ran into was at high school prom. He was the date of my dates friend. I had forgotten how to finger spell. I tried but realized I had forgotten. no one had paper and it was an awkward 15 min of no communication as there was no paper and his date was too busy to involve us in any of the conversation.
In my time ever since I have met more deaf people, I have tried to understand more. I have found that most jokes are not funny to a deaf person because they have to do with miss understanding a word to mean something else making it funny.
If we talk about people at adult or high school level. Many people that are not bullies laugh about things that make them nervous or joke about them. I laugh and make jokes about my clumsiness when I trip. I do that same thing with my friends and they know it's not to be mean we both have a good laugh.
I think many times deaf people have a harder time understanding hearing humor or laughing with it.
I also think many deaf people over estimate their ability to read lips. I have been fascinated by it and have been trying to test how good it is and what it is affected by. The people I have known can all of a sudden understand the exact opposite of what I said because of my sentence structure. The more I learn to sign the quicker we catch problems. If lip reading is so difficult, especially when it's still weak in a young child, they may have the same problems hearies have with mis-understanding what they over hear. The biggest problem I've had with the deaf people I know is facial expressions. how I feel shows on my face sometimes incorrectly even if it has nothing to do with them. I have to make my face go blank some times so they don't think I'm angry and yelling at them, when I'm only irritated at something else.
I wouldn't think the bullying is anything more than it would be for wearing glasses. the question becomes how does a deaf person react to living in a hearing world. If their voice would give the wrong first impression, maybe they should write till the people get to know them. Maybe they need to ask questions to make sure they understand what is being communicated. This is especially true if what they heard doesn't make sense. Maybe they need to ignore facial expressions when dealing with certain people.
Maybe the key is for there to be more communication between the deaf and hearing world so more hearing people understand the things that would seem weird to them connected with being deaf. Maybe also deaf people need to learn more about how they come across to the hearing culture so they don't make a bad impression.
When in Rome be as Roman as you can.
Deaf and hearing when isolated from each other are separate cultures that have different rules for behavior. If they interact more there will be fewer unique traits that will cause hardship for those involved.
Metamantis
