Resistance is Futile: Part Two
Posted by ShelJan 11
This posting is in response to a commenter in my last posting, Resistance is Futile: You will be Assimilated, who stated that he did not see that much resistance from the Deaf community in relation to the cochlear implant, and that the cochlear implant industry did not use force whereas the Borg did.
I wasn’t referring solely to the cochlear implant in my last posting. In actuality, I was referring to the entire orchestrated attempts at a systemic level to assimilate Deaf children into the Hearing society, and to mold them into the ideal “Hearing” image or at least a facsimile thereof.
I agree with the other commenters that there IS resistance against the CI. I would qualify that sentence, and reiterate there is plenty of resistance, especially against the tactics employed by the oralist establishment.
Perhaps you aren’t working in a field that works directly with children or survivors of assimilationist attempts to get them to “listen and speak”? Many who are in the front lines working with these survivors will tell you horror stories of delayed language acquisition and related consequences due to the desire of the majority to get them to “listen and speak”.
Speaking for myself, I am against the IDEOLOGY behind the cochlear implant (and AVT) industry, which perpetuates the myth that Deaf children DO NOT need ASL because it hinders speech development. This is another attempt at linguistic genocide, and that is what gets my dander up.
Many parents want their children implanted “to give them the best in life that they can.” That is how many parents see the cochlear implant. Many do not understand the necessity for children to have VISIBLE access to language, and that is ASL.
Since the system is already implanting children OVER THE OBJECTIONS of the Deaf community, I used the term BORG to describe the oralist system. This establishment is a juggernaut… which steamrolls whether people object, get hurt or not.
As for the use of force:
“Borg uses force to assimilate other people (and destroy people that it considers obsolete) while the technology of cochlear implant does not use force itself on people.”
I beg to differ. Force comes in many different forms. One is obvious: Physical coercion and subjugation. There are more subtle and insidious forms, such as rejection, which can be emotional as well as physical. Indoctrination, and emotional/mental coercion, and especially fear, are other forms. These forms of force CAN be done with such finesse that people won’t see them coming until too late. Many AVT therapists have threatened to cross families off their clientele list if they signed with their Deaf children.
When implanted children do not show that they benefit from AVT programs, they get “weeded out”. This phrasing was coined by the mother of a certain blogger that no longer comes to DeafRead.com. These children are considered obsolete and swept under the rug while “successful” AVT children are showcased.
If those weeded-out children did not have access to ASL while attending AVT therapy, their optimal potential has been damaged if not outright destroyed in some cases. Language acquisition then becomes a race against time.
Now, I see cochlear implants as astronomically expensive and invasive hearing aids. However, there are quite a number of parents who get their children implanted, and STILL want their babies to acquire ASL. As long as the children DO actually grow up bilingual with a strong start for language acquisition…
My primary concern is that children have access to ASL, and are NOT hindered in their acquisition of visible, accessible language, and for me that means ASL, as well as another language, whatever that is.
As for your contention that we have not truly seen how the technology of cochlear implant will affect the Deaf Culture and ASL, the impact is ALREADY being felt in the front lines as I mentioned earlier. The cochlear implant is only ONE tool in the entire Oralist apparatus in its goal to eliminate ASL and make us forget that we are Deaf.
THAT is Borg assimilation in all its glory, with finesse added.
Postscript (Jan 11 at 7:15 p.m.):
REMINDER TO COMMENTERS:
You are all welcome to comment here, but I request that from now on, please address the topic at hand and refrain from attacking or labelling people personally when you disagree with a viewpoint that is being brought up.
Thank you.
10 comments
Comment by Ella Lentz on January 11, 2009 at 9:25 am
Beautifully presented! keep them comin’!!! thank you.
Comment by Jeffrey on January 11, 2009 at 9:38 am
The truth never lies.
Comment by MM on January 11, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Are parents all oralists ? They make the decision. If I may draw attention to the deaf past when all deaf children were mainly sent to deaf schools, which were little more than institutions. There was no choice for them then. They weren’t sent there because society felt all deaf should be together, they were sent there because society didn’t want to know.
Mainstreaming today offers the more able deaf a chance to raise their game, deaf schools didn’t cut it. Many CI people actually use ASL and here in the UK BSL too, we have an active and thriving CI/BSL sector here.
The ideology you talk about is not oralistic, but, choice. Very simplistically if you have a chance of sight via an operation instead of being blind, then all deaf people would take that operation. What is suggested is a hierarchy of ‘disability’.
It’s OK to address blindness, it is not OK to address deafness. I haven’t seen BSL being driven out as a result of CI’s here, BSL is everywhere these days. CI people are very aware of what they can and cannot hear, and use sign to supplement, what they don’t do, and what irks the BSL purists, is they won’t use it 100%, but they don’t need to. Many sign users lip-read too, and it is perfectly acceptable.
The influx of CI People into the deaf world is a bit of a cultural shock to some, but the CI Person realizes they are still deaf without them, must we isolate people by degree ? It is simply practicing the same unacceptances you level at oralists.
Parents may well SPEAK and HEAR, mine did, that doesn’t make them discriminatory oralists against you. The need and desire to hear is still quite strong with most, that is because only 2-3% are hereditary deaf people, and, because most deaf or very deaf people today, once had hearing of some degree, or are losing it now.
It is entirely natural they want to regain, what they lost, that doesn’t make them oralists either, it is a perfectly natural desire, and this desire fuels research.
Comment by David on January 11, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Shel
You said it beautifully!
Deafchip
Comment by John on January 11, 2009 at 11:17 pm
MM,
The Deaf children were doing fine at the Deaf Schools until your peer group(?) “Audist and Assimilationist Coalition” group changed the Deaf children’s lives into what you are seeing today starting back in 1880 when the Deaf teachers were removed from their jobs because they were not able to teach speech according to the ideology of the “Audist and Assimilationist Coalition” group that disregarded ASL as a natural visual language for the Deaf and ever since then promoted and propaganda-ized that sign language is a farce communication method for the Deaf.
MM, you are actually one of these confused “oralist” deaf people that don’t know their identity and continue to rant your problems out to those that have a normal communication skills(ASL) to interact with other Deaf people at the same data flow rate as hearing people.
Shel, please keep up your truth about what makes Deaf people tick and hope that this unfortunate, assimilated MM will eventually realize why he is so frustrated with who he is.
Comment by Joseph Pietro Riolo on January 12, 2009 at 1:27 am
While your analogy of Borg seems to be plausible, it is far from being an accurate explanation of what is happening. For example, there is no hard evidence that the people and organizations that you are speaking of are on the mission to destroy ASL as Borg does with the societies that are in its way. A more likely accurate explanation is that they have no ethical, legal or moral obligation to preserve ASL. If ASL disappears due to the lack of the users, they will chalk it up to natural process of language like many oral languages that became extinct due to the lack of the speakers.
I learned from the book “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” by Neil Postman many years ago that it is usually the technology itself that alters the culture that uses it. A good example is clock that many societies adhere to. Imagine how the societies will look like if clock is banned. It would be a much different world.
The book also explains how a technology can sell itself to be accepted by a culture or society. The Amish people know this very well and this is why they are extremely rigid in accepting any new technologies. An example of how a technology can sell itself is videophone. Videophone is becoming very popular among the deaf and heard-of-hearing people all just because the technology of videophone can sell itself to these people very easily. This is what is happening with the technology of cochlear implant. The technology itself has what the hearing parents want to see in their deaf children and as the result, it is becoming more popular among the hearing parents. The organizations (and entities) and professionals just go with the flow of the technology and provide the support and training for the technology. There is nothing like Borg in all of this process.
This is how we differ. In any way, I do respect your well thought perspective that has some merits in it.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
Comment by MM on January 12, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Thanks for the cod psychology John ! I am fully aware who I am. I do think perhaps your obsessions with ‘D’s and oralists is what holds YOU back and a number of others, ‘without fear nor favour’… hard isn’t it ?
My only annoyance is with those (CI or ‘Deaf), who use personal abuse, at least stand up for what YOU believe in, and not be an echo to the mob rule… There’s no ‘We’ or ‘Us’ there is you, there is me. I’ve never found a need for a label,they look good on jars, not so good on me !
Comment by Shel on January 17, 2009 at 5:35 pm
John and MM, I let both your comments be published because I did not read John’s comment in its entirety before clicking the publish button, so I take responsibility for that.
However, in the future, labelling and personal attacks will NOT be published on my blog.
Please refrain from attacks in the future.
Thank you.
Comment by Dianrez on January 29, 2009 at 4:45 am
Thanks, Shel, for your drawing upon analogies to better understand our status in the world’s communities. Keep it up!
Students of cultural anthropology, take notice…this is another way to gain insight into cultures: the Deaf culture deserves a place alongside other cultures and even alongside the philosophical cultures created in fiction.
Comment by SweetMind on January 29, 2009 at 6:23 am
Whew! Excellent job you did. Truth must stay with us as forever.
Thank you so much.
DeafSweetMind