I don't know where to post this. Admin can change it wherever he wants if it's not the right place...
It's a small text I wrote.
Spanish version can be found here-
http://www.cultura-sorda.eu/resources/Gauthier_carta_a_un_sordo_2010.pdf
Comments are welcome.
Letter to a Deaf.
The other day, I was watching TV with my wife, and watching an advertise with a famous soccer player, making a gesture to defy the crowd to continue insult him after scoring a goal, the sound suddenly turns off... I knew something bad was about to come.
The gesture with the arched hands in the ear area, along with the sudden silence, made me realize that would be something related to the deaf.
I wasn't wrong. Check yourself.
Riquelme solidario, gracias a su célebre Topo Gigio - lanacion.com
"Life without sound, is another life"
"Change their life with your help"
Fundación F.A.N.D.A.
"How FANDA was created
One day I was visiting a country school where hard of hearing children assist, and I saw the angst in the eyes of a a 4 years old girl who tried to explain me something... and saddly, in that intent, full of gutural sounds and stereotyped gestures failed, one more time, adding to that angst a deep sadness and issolating.
While I was putting all the equipment together to start working, the girl came to me again, and while she back to her fight for communicate, thousands of meaningless words were going on in my head... Until I realized that we both were looking for a "way"- she in communicate and I in help her.
I thought also in the ear aids, unaffordable for families with low economical resources, in the long treatments these children need to move forward, wich requires from them to be constant, and from their families careness, support and resources .
This situation motivated me to found FANDA, with the primary aim to promote and improve the hearing health for children and work for the right of health to dissabled children, having as main objective a social medicine.
Audiologist Luisa Emilia Romano
President and founder"
(note: bolds are mine)
Statements like these are, were and will be all around. Also, famous people, celebrities, politicians and companies/business men that support these kind of endeavours.
Audiologists? Ear aids and CIs manufacturers? Research to cure deafness? I think so. And we don't see nearby the future, those will decrease.
Now. I wonder.
How do you fight against such message? When I watched the ad, I thought in all the Deaf that, like you, fight for your right for your culture and language to be recognized (have you seen the Ryan Commerson's documental?), all that came to my mind. Also the work of social scientists working for the SL and deaf culture all around the world.
It came to my mind when everyone asks "why is the deaf discriminated, dominated, humiliated and controled?". And I realize. The machinery that leads the normalizing ideology of the hearing to the deaf is "a big monster, who's footstep is strong".
Lets note how the founder of the mentioned institution thinks about you-
"stereotyped gestures"
Do I need to quote, again, concepts and ideas about the deaf that were stablished back in the times of 1880? So few happened in these decades, that we have to keep standing at this terminology?
"while she came back to her fight for communicate, thousands of meaningless words were going on in my head"
Why we have to read and stand to their efforts to makes us beleive that the "girl was trying to communicate" and the other person wasn't?
"I thought also in the ear aids, unaffordable for low economical resources families, in the long treatments these children need to move forward, wich requires from them to be constant, and careness, support and resources from their families."
I think about the day that those families will realize what can they do with all those resources, not to normalize you, but tu deliver your ideas to the world. To help social scientists and profesionals that fight constantly for you, who ground their investigations in answering "why is the Deaf discriminated, when he's just different than me?" or "why the sign language is a language?". Instead, to help them to teach you to teach other deaf people.
That we try to interchange knowledge, that you teach us about your way of looking at the universe, and we could learn together sciences, arts, religion... and stop to believing that we are here only to give you, and start to believe that all these professionals have to start learning your language in order to understand you.
Please, read this carefully-
"Life without sound, is another life"
"Change their life with your help"
Why keep allowing these people to make profit of something you're not making profit of? Whom did you ask for help for changing your life? It's not the case that you asked to your friends, teachers and family to learn your language?
Please, you need to realize that fighting against this monster, is not impossible. Make yourself known.
Join others with the same goals and purposes than you. Record videos in your own SL, ask for help to subtitle them (if you don't know) in the local oral language. Deliver your ideas. To inform, to teach. To teach that your hearing deficiency makes you a unique "disabled". That others should take advantage of your knowledge and points of view from your visual understanding to sum and wide our own vision of the world. If you're a hearing interpreter that's reading this, talk to your deaf friends. Make them understand that this is their fight, not ours. This is their time.
Dear deaf friend, teach us to have no fear.
If there's no fear, there's no hate. Because we'll know you and understand you. We'll understand. And then, all those resources used to try to make you speak, will be used to teach you how to read. To teach other deaf like you, to teach.
You might feel my letter a bit melodramatic. That's beucase I, like others, am tired of this situation, and we might not know how to express ourselves.
Then make your own destiny. Express yourself.
Fight against this monster. Make your footstep stronger than his.
Warm regads,
Your hearing friend
It's a small text I wrote.
Spanish version can be found here-
http://www.cultura-sorda.eu/resources/Gauthier_carta_a_un_sordo_2010.pdf
Comments are welcome.
Letter to a Deaf.
The other day, I was watching TV with my wife, and watching an advertise with a famous soccer player, making a gesture to defy the crowd to continue insult him after scoring a goal, the sound suddenly turns off... I knew something bad was about to come.
The gesture with the arched hands in the ear area, along with the sudden silence, made me realize that would be something related to the deaf.
I wasn't wrong. Check yourself.
Riquelme solidario, gracias a su célebre Topo Gigio - lanacion.com
"Life without sound, is another life"
"Change their life with your help"
Fundación F.A.N.D.A.
"How FANDA was created
One day I was visiting a country school where hard of hearing children assist, and I saw the angst in the eyes of a a 4 years old girl who tried to explain me something... and saddly, in that intent, full of gutural sounds and stereotyped gestures failed, one more time, adding to that angst a deep sadness and issolating.
While I was putting all the equipment together to start working, the girl came to me again, and while she back to her fight for communicate, thousands of meaningless words were going on in my head... Until I realized that we both were looking for a "way"- she in communicate and I in help her.
I thought also in the ear aids, unaffordable for families with low economical resources, in the long treatments these children need to move forward, wich requires from them to be constant, and from their families careness, support and resources .
This situation motivated me to found FANDA, with the primary aim to promote and improve the hearing health for children and work for the right of health to dissabled children, having as main objective a social medicine.
Audiologist Luisa Emilia Romano
President and founder"
(note: bolds are mine)
Statements like these are, were and will be all around. Also, famous people, celebrities, politicians and companies/business men that support these kind of endeavours.
Audiologists? Ear aids and CIs manufacturers? Research to cure deafness? I think so. And we don't see nearby the future, those will decrease.
Now. I wonder.
How do you fight against such message? When I watched the ad, I thought in all the Deaf that, like you, fight for your right for your culture and language to be recognized (have you seen the Ryan Commerson's documental?), all that came to my mind. Also the work of social scientists working for the SL and deaf culture all around the world.
It came to my mind when everyone asks "why is the deaf discriminated, dominated, humiliated and controled?". And I realize. The machinery that leads the normalizing ideology of the hearing to the deaf is "a big monster, who's footstep is strong".
Lets note how the founder of the mentioned institution thinks about you-
"stereotyped gestures"
Do I need to quote, again, concepts and ideas about the deaf that were stablished back in the times of 1880? So few happened in these decades, that we have to keep standing at this terminology?
"while she came back to her fight for communicate, thousands of meaningless words were going on in my head"
Why we have to read and stand to their efforts to makes us beleive that the "girl was trying to communicate" and the other person wasn't?
"I thought also in the ear aids, unaffordable for low economical resources families, in the long treatments these children need to move forward, wich requires from them to be constant, and careness, support and resources from their families."
I think about the day that those families will realize what can they do with all those resources, not to normalize you, but tu deliver your ideas to the world. To help social scientists and profesionals that fight constantly for you, who ground their investigations in answering "why is the Deaf discriminated, when he's just different than me?" or "why the sign language is a language?". Instead, to help them to teach you to teach other deaf people.
That we try to interchange knowledge, that you teach us about your way of looking at the universe, and we could learn together sciences, arts, religion... and stop to believing that we are here only to give you, and start to believe that all these professionals have to start learning your language in order to understand you.
Please, read this carefully-
"Life without sound, is another life"
"Change their life with your help"
Why keep allowing these people to make profit of something you're not making profit of? Whom did you ask for help for changing your life? It's not the case that you asked to your friends, teachers and family to learn your language?
Please, you need to realize that fighting against this monster, is not impossible. Make yourself known.
Join others with the same goals and purposes than you. Record videos in your own SL, ask for help to subtitle them (if you don't know) in the local oral language. Deliver your ideas. To inform, to teach. To teach that your hearing deficiency makes you a unique "disabled". That others should take advantage of your knowledge and points of view from your visual understanding to sum and wide our own vision of the world. If you're a hearing interpreter that's reading this, talk to your deaf friends. Make them understand that this is their fight, not ours. This is their time.
Dear deaf friend, teach us to have no fear.
If there's no fear, there's no hate. Because we'll know you and understand you. We'll understand. And then, all those resources used to try to make you speak, will be used to teach you how to read. To teach other deaf like you, to teach.
You might feel my letter a bit melodramatic. That's beucase I, like others, am tired of this situation, and we might not know how to express ourselves.
Then make your own destiny. Express yourself.
Fight against this monster. Make your footstep stronger than his.
Warm regads,
Your hearing friend
