Making small talk with hearing strangers

posts from hell said:
lol, i have so many problems with this post.

First of all: Faire Jour provides intellectual simulation in the way of out the box thinking. I see her point clearly - Why pretend you're hearing while you're Deaf? As a Deaf individual I strongly agree becuz I sign to everyone. She's trying to provoke thought.

Second of all: This is putting her down for her thought process, and therefore "normalizing" society which is the core of many problems from deafness to mosques on ground zero.
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I have to disagree...copied and pasted from her post #91 that was offensive to many..



The reason threads like this confuse me is because everyone here says "being Deaf is great", "parents shouldn't be sad for their deaf children", "I would never become hearing", etc...and then complain that every single interaction is a struggle, being around 99% of the population is hard, exhausting work, and that it isn't even worth it.

So, I guess my real question is: which is it?

Is your deafness, NOT a handicap, something to be celebrated by parents of deaf children, ASL and written language is all you need in life, hearing doesn't matter

OR

Does your deafness limit your ability to interact with people every single day? You struggle to hear and understand people? If you had a lot more hearing these interactions would be easier, and you wouldn't struggle to understand people? And that parents of deaf children have a lifetime of misunderstanding, struggles, and disappointment to look forward to for their children?

In the red, she twisted to make it seem like we all are coming here to complain about our daily lives when it wasnt the purpose of the thread. By stating that, it put many of us on the defensive because we get criticized constantly by hearing people and that was NOT what I wanted to see in this thread.

In the pink...that is an audist statement..


In the blue...it is another audist statement because it is implying that being deaf is a terrible thing...

I dont know if you view it that way but many of us do and it was very very offensive and it was not an intellectual stimulation.
 
CJB said:
:gpost::gpost: You nailed it! Thank you, jillio.

Minorities in general get put in this position where they have two options:

1) Play the educator role. Educate people in everything you do. Say upfront that your opinions are your own, your likes and dislikes are your own. Other deaf/HH people have their own opinions and likes and dislikes.

2) Be yourself and let people assume that everything about you is true of all deaf people as a whole. If you don't like to use speech, deaf people don't like to use speech. If you're oral, then all deaf people can and should be oral. If you know sign language, then all deaf people sign. If you had a bad day and get annoyed with the clerk at the grocery store, then all deaf people are pissy people. If you're a kind-natured person, then all deaf people are saintly and wonderful people.

Every interaction that a minority enters into with strangers gives them one of these two options. The first one is better for the group as a whole, but also extremely draining. No one wants to live "on stage" 24/7. The second is being true to yourself but also letting people make assumptions that may not always be true about you, and aren't true about the group as a whole.

This incident is a prime example. Kindly explain to the person that you are deaf and can't understand them? Or nod and smile and go on about your day? If you have good speech, do you risk using your voice and having the people around you assume you can hear? Or do you turn off your voice, and along with it the easier option for communicating in that direction? If you have a "deaf voice," do you risk using your voice and having people think you're stupid? Do you sign to them even though they probably won't have any idea what you signed? If you don't know sign language, do you gesture to give the idea you are signing? All of those involve navigating between 1 and 2. It's a constant decision the Deaf/HH, along with any other minority, has to make. 1 or 2? 1 or 2? Quick! 1 or 2?
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I couldnt have said it better.

Again, it seems like we are justifying ourselves for how we feel to FJ and I am wondering why do we feel compelled to do it if she is refusing to really understand where we are coming from.
 
shel90 said:
I have to disagree...copied and pasted from her post #91 that was offensive to many..



The reason threads like this confuse me is because everyone here says "being Deaf is great", "parents shouldn't be sad for their deaf children", "I would never become hearing", etc...and then complain that every single interaction is a struggle, being around 99% of the population is hard, exhausting work, and that it isn't even worth it.

So, I guess my real question is: which is it?

Is your deafness, NOT a handicap, something to be celebrated by parents of deaf children, ASL and written language is all you need in life, hearing doesn't matter

OR

Does your deafness limit your ability to interact with people every single day? You struggle to hear and understand people? If you had a lot more hearing these interactions would be easier, and you wouldn't struggle to understand people? And that parents of deaf children have a lifetime of misunderstanding, struggles, and disappointment to look forward to for their children?

In the red, she twisted to make it seem like we all are coming here to complain about our daily lives when it wasnt the purpose of the thread. By stating that, it put many of us on the defensive because we get criticized constantly by hearing people and that was NOT what I wanted to see in this thread.

In the pink...that is an audist statement..


In the blue...it is another audist statement because it is implying that being deaf is a terrible thing...

I dont know if you view it that way but many of us do and it was very very offensive and it was not an intellectual stimulation.
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i understand. but you need to look at the word "OR" in the middle. She's speaking from an outsiders perspective.
 
shel90 said:
I couldnt have said it better.

Again, it seems like we are justifying ourselves for how we feel to FJ and I am wondering why do we feel compelled to do it if she is refusing to really understand where we are coming from.
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You feel compelled to justify your feelings because experience has taught you that you have to do that. One of the legacies of the oral environment.

But the fact is, you don't have to justify your feelings. They are what they are. You are entitled to feel anyway you feel. No one can tell you that you are wrong, or that you are not as worthwhile as the next person just because they don't understand your feelings.
 
posts from hell said:
i understand. but you need to look at the word "OR" in the middle. She's speaking from an outsiders perspective.
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Yes, I see the "or"..but that post already brought a negative tone towards us when she stated that we are complaining here when we were just sharing our experiences. As a result, she got a negative reaction and then she gets upset. What does she expect?
 
Wirelessly posted

shel90 said:
posts from hell said:
i understand. but you need to look at the word "OR" in the middle. She's speaking from an outsiders perspective.
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Yes, I see the "or"..but that post already brought a negative tone towards us when she stated that we are complaining here when we were just sharing our experiences. As a result, she got a negative reaction and then she gets upset. What does she expect?
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all i was hoping for was an answer. Which one is it? There is an OR because it is a question.
 
faire_jour said:
Wirelessly posted



all i was hoping for was an answer. Which one is it? There is an OR because it is a question.
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Jesus christ. It's Neither! Don't you get it? That's what we've been trying to tell you the whole time.

We don't take issue with the fact that you want to ask a question and understand better, but what you're trying to do, something you do often, is reduce the issue to an either-or solution. It's not that simple, and we've been trying to tell you this for too f'ing long now. If you still don't understand at this point, just shut the hell up.

Your attempt, whether it is conscious or not, to pigeon-hole us d/hoh into giving an answer to a biased and logically fallacious question on a thread where we are just sharing our experiences with each other is highly offensive. Maybe not everyone feels that way, but I know it's more than just me.
 
I am so out of here. A supposedly educated person can't even understand plain and simple English. That's just not right. Something wrong with the education that person got.
 
It's like on Saturday mornings, I love not putting my hearing aids on while I read the paper and sip my coffee, that total quiet is nice. Yet there are plenty of other times when it is not easy being deaf. Apparently it can't go both ways.
 
KristinaB said:
I am so out of here. A supposedly educated person can't even understand plain and simple English. That's just not right. Something wrong with the education that person got.
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Did you notice most of the rest of us around here shut up too?
 
Like I said...this thread is becoming an epic fail of monsterous porportions! :lol:

Fj...everyone has already answered..sorry it is not the answer you were looking for..that's life.
 
shel90 said:
Like I said...this thread is becoming an epic fail of monsterous porportions! :lol:

Fj...everyone has already answered..sorry it is not the answer you were looking for..that's life.
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I would say FJ has unresolved issues with the Deaf community if she is still trying to keep it going.
 
I dunno..but it is not my problem. All I wanted this to be a place for all of us to share about this issue...GRRRR!
 
shel90 said:
I dunno..but it is not my problem. All I wanted this to be a place for all of us to share about this issue...GRRRR!
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Let us all move to Japan-- then maybe even the hearies will be on equal footings, and we can all gripe about it? :laugh2:

Honestly though I have seen these type of threads for international students staying abroad, venting about not understanding people, and the natives don't even post in them because it's not their place to tell them how things work.
 
TheWriteAlex said:
Jesus christ. It's Neither! Don't you get it? That's what we've been trying to tell you the whole time.

We don't take issue with the fact that you want to ask a question and understand better, but what you're trying to do, something you do often, is reduce the issue to an either-or solution. It's not that simple, and we've been trying to tell you this for too f'ing long now. If you still don't understand at this point, just shut the hell up.

Your attempt, whether it is conscious or not, to pigeon-hole us d/hoh into giving an answer to a biased and logically fallacious question on a thread where we are just sharing our experiences with each other is highly offensive. Maybe not everyone feels that way, but I know it's more than just me.
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This is an answer.

When I asked the question, I wanted an answer. I have no idea why asking a question means that I am "hijacking the thread for my own purposes". If it was a "bitch about hearing people thread" (which it was said again and again that it wasn't), then say that.

I simply agreed with PFH, if you struggle to understand people, and this is your life every single day, change something about it. I guess the real part I'm missing is, why do you live with the unhappiness, don't you fundamentally believe you deserve better? If being Deaf (and using ASL) makes you happy, and pretending to be hearing, and misunderstanding makes you unhappy, then stop pretending! I think PFH hit the nail on the head when he said that he approaches every situation with signing. If that is the language you use to communicate, use it. You have the right to communicate, and if an interpreter isn't availiable (like at the grocery store or whatever) you don't have to explain or apologize for being Deaf, just write or sign or say or whatever, "I don't understand" (or something similar) and walk on. You don't have to communicate if you don't care to.

I get that you guys don't like some of the opinions I have...I don't lose sleep over it. But I do continue to come here because I know for every one person who sticks up for me, there are 5 more who agree with me, another another 5 who see where I'm coming from, and another 5 who at least have opened their mind a little bit....
 
You make some points sometimes yes but it still seems that you like to antagonize and provoke people sometimes too.
 
Only if I don't bother those people who have been like deer caught in highlight because their brains were freezing. i am not going to wait or make effort for them so I just tried my part and they didn't. I tend to pick someone else who have NOT "deer caught in highlight". so i have no problem.

Fj, I understand where you are coming from. sometimes your questions make things too complicate when others have difficult time upbringing in their experiences with those anger issues or emotions and have unable to answer you the difficult questions. For me, I don't often answer your questions because your questions sometimes don't make sense.
 
faire_jour said:
I guess the real part I'm missing is, why do you live with the unhappiness, don't you fundamentally believe you deserve better?
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Do you see the audism in this statement?
 
It's like FJ is questioning deaf people's reality. Some times, a thing is what it is. A person lives and has experiences. It's not an intellectual matter. Why should we debate whether a person should communicate with a stranger at the gym?
 
sallylou said:
It's like FJ is questioning deaf people's reality. Some times, a thing is what it is. A person lives and has experiences. It's not an intellectual matter. Why should we debate whether a person should communicate with a stranger at the gym?[/QUOTE]

No shit! :roll:
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