Thank you so much.
DeafSweetMind

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.

However, in the future, labelling and personal attacks will NOT be published on my blog.

Please refrain from attacks in the future.

Thank you.

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 !

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.

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.

You said it beautifully!

Deafchip

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.