Teresh said:
This is exactly what I'm talking about. The problem with the Deaf community is that it insists on staying with an old model of disability. Don't want to be labeled as disabled? Fine. But don't use rhetoric that implies weakness, inferiority, or helplessness on the part of people who have non-dhh disabilities. In fact, I would say that although I use a wheelchair to get around, the wheelchair isn't the issue - the issue is that society insists on building high curbs, steps, etc. This is the central argument of the social model of disability, as opposed to the old-fashioned medical model.
And I, too, am making this choice to learn ASL, although I suspect I have not gotten as far as you have - yet. But even though it's just in the hobby stages right now, that's not denial - it just wouldn't be useful. I am going to school in the hearing world; the majority of my friends are hearing; and I can understand them pretty well right now. Inserting an interpreter into the mix would just confuse things, so ASL, for me, really isn't all that "useful". But again, my beef is not with DHH who don't want to be labeled as dis; it's with DHH who take that desire, and express it by making disability into something it's not.
My first language is English; I speak conversational German, and I know bits and pieces of French. I know what it takes to learn a language, and the fact of the matter is that it is far easier to learn a language as a child than as an adult. It's certainly possible to become fluent in ASL as an adult, and that is my goal; but it is not going to happen overnight, and for some, it is not possible at all to devote the necessary time, energy, and even money.
Again, equating disability with a desire for sympathy or pity. I am HOH, as I mentioned before. But I am also disabled; I am less than a meter tall at my full adult height; I use a wheelchair; I wear leg braces; and I have various medical issues I won't go into here, some minor, some very serious. But I am also functioning "at a very high level, the same level as [my non-disabled] peers". Do I want sympathy or pity? No. But I am disabled, just as you are dhh. It is part of my identity, just like being dhh is a part of yours. It is a cultural identification, though perhaps not to the extent that Deafness is.
You mention that Deaf do not want accomodations or exceptions. I would point out that this is emphatically not true. What rights have the Deaf spent years fighting for? The right to be educated in a visual language, even though most of the population is educated in an audial language. The right to an interpreter in certain situations, even though this doesn't apply to the rest of the population. These are accomodations. And what about the right to equal opportunities for employment? To take advantage of the hard work put in by disability rights activists on the ADA, section 504, IDEA, and so on, yet simultaneously reject the idea that you have anything at all in common with the disabled, and beyond that, to claim that disabled cannot "function at a very high level", while criticising hearing for claiming the same is true of Deaf" - that is not right.
