Show up for those who can't show up for themselves
Let your own self-advocacy ripple out onto the world
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As a Deaf person, I continue to have difficulty receiving information. Even though I wear a hearing aid, it isn’t a substitute for my hearing; it’s simply an assistant. I remember multiple hearing aids that I had as a toddler and young child. In fourth grade, I received a bone conduction implant. That same year was the first year that speakers were installed in my classroom. These speakers were installed after another parent of a Deaf child requested them to be installed in the classrooms. This meant that my teacher could use a microphone to create better accessibility for all the kids in our class.
This made things easier and more accessible, and as it did, the schools implemented this be used in every classroom. I remember, though, that some of my teachers would refuse to use these microphones. “I’m already loud” or “I can pronunciate clearly enough” were some of their excuses. They’d even ask me questions like “well you can hear me since you have a hearing aid, so you don’t need this right?” and before I’d even respond, they’d simply not use it. As a child, I didn’t have it in me to advocate for my needs. I thought I would be disrespectful if I combatted what my teachers said.
I kept having “issues with focusing.” I look back now as an adult, though, and realize that teachers’ refusal to accommodate my needs by simply using a microphone caused these issues. Coming into adulthood, I found myself really having difficulty still following conversations. I had years of speech therapy as a child that unintentionally masked any sort of speech differences that would give any clue of my needs. My hearing aid is discrete. It wasn’t like the ones I’d worn before fourth grade that involved me wearing a headband or a device directly on my ear. While these very well-meaning modalities of access were nice, they erased more of my visible Deafness because I grew up in a society that already doesn’t prioritize access as a whole.
I had to be molded into other people’s ways of living versus others’ simply doing work for me to be seen and treated as a Deaf person who has needs and who is different than others. This led me to have to overcompensate to meet Non-disabled people’s needs. The constant conditioning I’d receive to mask my Deafness made me a product of eugenics. I was assimilated to be viewed as “normal,” and thus, others would constantly avoid my need for better access. I have seen people think that me calling myself “Disabled” is a bad thing when it’s not; it’s simply me trying to get my needs met. Any time I would then try to mention my deafness, I was always met with comments like “you don’t look deaf” (which, what does that even mean?) or “oh I don’t see you as that!” I witnessed other people’s shame about Disability manifest in front of my face. Their own internalized ableism. Their fears of becoming like me. Their dismissiveness rippled to dismissing overall access for myself and any other Disabled people they may encounter. Comments like these as a kid, made me feel this weird pride that I didn’t “seem” Disabled. It created internalized shame. It created an unsafe space. I no longer carry that pride, for that was simply my own internalized ableism.
All of these points took me 32 years to get to. The catalyst to getting there was understanding fully that I needed to advocate for my needs. I really didn’t even get there until my late 20s. It’s still an ongoing unraveling and discovery. Earlier this year, I started taking ASL classes with my partner. I hadn’t learned or grown up with sign language as a child, and when my hearing aid abruptly broke last year, it was a huge wake-up call for me to learn it. According to Boston University, “Approximately 90 to 95 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents who often don’t know sign language and therefore will likely struggle to teach it before their children enter school.” One of our classmates is a CODA (child of a deaf adult) who told me that his mother didn’t learn ASL until she was an adult due to the similar assimilation that I had navigated.
Being in community and movement spaces, I have begun to challenge accessibility. I have begun to speak up for myself when I couldn’t hear something. As I started doing so, I noticed others coming up to me saying, “I, too, am having issues hearing because of XYZ.” When I speak up, I may not always receive reciprocity and a proper solution to my access needs. I do though, see more people discovering themselves through me asking for more accessibility. These needs ripple, and sometimes we don’t have the words just yet for our needs until somebody else comes along to share theirs.
While I was in a meeting the other night, a community member & friend brought a portable microphone for all of us to pass around for all of us to understand each other. The ripples of self-advocacy came back to support all of us.
Four things for you!
My dear friend Chiomma needs community support. Please consider donating to their GoFundMe and sharing it with others.
is one of my favorite writers and has really helped me learn more about my own Deafness and Deaf history. Her article on “Dinner Table Syndrome” has deeply helped me figure out how I should advocate for myself in social situations.
Image Description: A tweet from Imani Barbarin that reads, “You have to understand: between Covid neglet, funding multiple genocides and mass shootings it should be clear to everyone that America feeds off of mass death and has zero desire to change any of it. Yes, even the politicians who claim to be the ‘good guys.’” Free Palestine!
Self Promo Things
Thank you for supporting my Oracle Deck, greeting cards and my print shop this year!
As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my newsletter, and I look forward to sharing things with you soon! I hope that you are staying safe and well. <3
