There are naysayers who claim that audism is not a valid term because it doesn’t even exist in the dictionary, and it doesn’t exist, period.  It has been said that audism is too vague to enforce, and overused as a term.  Overused as a term?  Indeed? Not from where I am standing.  Hearing people (including co-workers, friends and relatives) tell me they had never heard of the term before, and at first confused it with the term autism.  Once the term audism was explained to them, they immediately accepted it.

The fact that audism is not in the dictionary has not stopped websites or organizations from developing policies to combat it.  To wit, websites like ASLRocks and DeafCube.com have adopted anti-audism policies. Organizations that have been set up in service to the Deaf communities, especially Canadian ones, have begun to do the same. The Canadian Hearing Society (CHS) in Ontario has an excellent definition for audism. Below is an excerpt I have copied and pasted here from page 2 of the CHS position paper on discrimination and audism which has ASL translation for each paragraph. (You will need to click on the link provided above to take you to the website itself.  Beside each paragraph you will find an ASL button.  Click on it for the ASL translation.)

Audism (Ô diz m) n. 1. The notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears. 2. A system of advantage based on hearing ability 3. A metaphysical orientation that links human identity with speech.

The CHS then goes on to explain how the organization developed its definition.

The first is the initial seed planted by Tom Humphries (1975). The second is adapted from Wellman’s (1992) discussion of institutionalized audism. The third definition was presented at the Deaf Studies VI conference by Bahan and Bauman (2000).

The CHS delves further into what audism is, and the basis for it:

Audism is a form of discrimination based on a person’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears, including the conveyance of beliefs that a hearing person or a deaf person who behaves in a manner more similar to a hearing person, in appearance, communication and language use, and/or function, is more intelligent, qualified, well-developed, and successful than another individual who may be more culturally deaf and/or have a preference for the use of a sign language or a communication mode dissimilar to that used by hearing people.

Like all forms of discrimination, audism is grounded in misconception and misunderstanding: “…often disguised in sentiments of concern for safety, unawareness of accommodations or perceived undue financial hardship in providing accommodations.” (Malkowski, 2003) “…the belief that life without hearing is futile and miserable…and that … deaf people should struggle to be as much like hearing people as possible.” (Pelja, 1997).

This paper also states the rationale for CHS’s position on audism.  To support the CHS position, they point to these seven significant Canadian pieces of legislation:

  1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982)
  2. Canadian Human Rights Act (1985),
  3. Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Disability and The Duty To Accommodate: Your Rights and Responsibilities 2007.
  4. Ontario Rights Commission’s Policy and Guidelines on Racism and Racial Discrimination (2005)
  5. Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Guidelines on Disability and the Duty to Accommodate (2000)
  6. Ontario Human Rights Code (1990)
  7. Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (2005)

(For more information on each piece of legislation above, please go to the CHS website. )

Based on the choice of legal decisions to buttress this organization’s position on audism, it is clear that the CHS is of the view that Deaf people are not only disabled, but also an ethnic (race) minority, with their own language, culture, history and social construct, and because of this, we, the Deaf people, face attitudinal barriers in the form of ableism and racism.  I will expand on this in another post, but the point here is that audism is indeed a valid term, with a clear definition, and requires an anti-audism policy that is enforceable on both racial and disability grounds.