Saturday morning miscellany

[judecorp]

I've had a pretty relaxing and productive morning but I still have a couple of things I want to do before I head off to babysit for a million hours, mostly the cat box. I already scraped and rinsed off Jen's breakfast pan, put clean towels away, and changed the sheets on the bed. And ate a sandwich. I can't believe I'll be essentially working all day today after a full work week. I really signed up for this to get a couple of hours here and there, bleh, so hopefully Kid and I will have a good time and make the effort worthwhile.

I woke up pretty early (as is my standard) and wasted some time watching a couple of documentaries I took out of the library: Sound and Fury (about cochlear implants and the Deaf community) and Roger and Me by Michael Moore. I have to say I enjoyed the former far more than the latter, especially when Michael Moore was filming a woman killing and skinning a rabbit. Yuck!

I have such conflicting feelings about the cochlear implant debate. Even though it's been going on for years now, I feel like I'm still formulating my feelings about it. I work with an infant now who has auditory neuropathy and is a good candidate for a cochlear implant, and she will likely get one as soon as she turns 1. Her parents are definitely 100% pro-speaking-only and that makes me sad. If I had a deaf child who was a candidate for the implant I would probably end up getting it also, but I can't imagine raising a deaf child without giving him/her the opportunities and experiences of Deaf culture. It was weird to watch the movie, though, because it was filmed mostly on Long Island and that's where I learned to sign, so it was neat to see some of the locations I was familiar with.

I suppose I should finish getting chores done so I can head over at 1:00. I feel like I spend half my life picking up around here. Ugh.

Comments

[calledmara.livejournal.com]

I saw the Sound and Fury in theaters a long time ago, it was the first I had learned of the cultural debate about all of that.

I like Roger and Me, it's probably my favorite Michael Moore movie. It's probably because I'm from a similarly burned out Rust Belt area. I worked at a video store when I was 16 and rented it because it was one of our few documentaries and it probably ended up being the most influential film that I had watched because it was the first thing I had seen like that and I was a youngin' when I saw it. And rabbits are hella tasty!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had a hard time connecting to Roger & Me probably because that sort of town death is out of my range of experience. In my dead town we watched the closing of endless textile mills rather than one large corporate factory. Still, the closed-up shops and depressed parades look the same all over, I guess. (Minus the preachers.)

And yeah, rabbits are tasty but I don't really like being surprised by a rabbit being clubbed over the head repeatedly. I know it happens, yanno... but I'd like some warning so I can totally hide.

I like the other Michael Moore films because of the spectacle aspect of them. This one was much more subdued. You can see how he's honed his style over the years. Interesting stuff.

[prettyvacantone.livejournal.com]

I can't believe you had never seen Roger and Me before!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. I remember hearing about it when I was younger and I knew that it was about the auto industry... and that's why I never saw it. I really couldn't get into Ralph Nader and all that jazz, and couldn't relate to the auto industry. At the time it came out, I wasn't entirely sure what Michael Moore was all about. Now that I've had a bunch of years to get to know him and his style, it was neat to watch Roger & Me to kind of see where he came from.

[poopsmoothie.livejournal.com]

Ooh, my housemate Kat is teaching us sign and she was talking about The Sound And The Fury. I want to see it.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Definitely see it. It really just follows around a handful of real, emotional people... which always sucks me in.

[being-homeless.livejournal.com]

good_karma recently got cochlear implants. she's 22 and was born deaf. she's written a bit about it recently. you might want to check out her LJ. she was also raised in foster care. I've known her for a few years.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I checked her out a little bit (thanks for the tip!) but it's hard to follow along with her "one-entry-per-page" style. (I'm all about the masses of info.)

I think I'd get more out of her if I ever chatted with her. I bet she has a really interesting story.

[being-homeless.livejournal.com]

January/February she wrote more about it since she got it turned on at the end of January. I think if you read it in your style (I forget how) you can get more than one entry per page).

She's also a parent to a little boy born with cleft lip/cleft palate.
I remember like 2 years ago she wrote n entry about sitting in her doctors office and her son was crying in the waiting room, but of course she couldn't hear him and didn't notice, and other people were giving her dirty looks for not tending to her child and how frustrating it was.

My uncle is also deaf but can hear some with a hearing aid. no one knew he was deaf til he was 7 because he learned to read lips. He was born stillborn in 1967 and they revived him. (I believe he was one of the first stillborn babies revived and was written up in medical journals) although they never realized the potential outcome.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

That's horrible, that story about the waiting room. Gosh. :(

[whirledpeas.livejournal.com]

With the onslaught of Sarah's ASL classes these past two quarters, and becoming friends with Amy & Erika, we've really been able to have big conversations around audism and deafness....signing...the culture...the history...cochlear implants, etc.. It's been great, and while our answers are always fluid, we usually come back to one thing.

If we had a baby who was deaf, we'd let them decide when they grew up. Sarah says it's taking "ProChoice" to another level. We'd do everything we could to provide the best environment to make choices in...and let her decide. We'd also work to make sure we were all connected to the community, and we'd move to the school district with the good interpreters (in Cols, there's a few schools with sub-standard interpreters b/c the company the district hires from always outbids the good interpreters by $10 less an hour.) Shitty.

(random) I think I want a baby girl right now. I'd name her McKenna Ruth(/random)

I don't know - I just had to say all of that. I feel chatty.

[whirledpeas.livejournal.com]

btw - if I'd known you knew sign & more about the culture, etc....we totally would have talked more about it when you were here

move back. my heart hurts without you

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, I can say that by the time I hit Columbus I had lost quite a bit of my sign (I last studied ASL in 1996 and you know how things go with disuse). But yeah, I remember hearing about you and supergoat doing Deaf studies and all of that but I never said anything (that I remember). Dunno why.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

When you say "grew up," how old are you talking? (Ha! 'Talking!' I made a pun!) Part of me likes the idea of choice quite a bit, but the other part of me just keeps thinking about the particular situation that my particular children would be growing up in. There is not a single deaf or hard of hearing person in my (or Jen's) entire family... which would kind of serve to isolate any child we might have. Not that my family is full of bad people or anything, but I highly doubt that any of them (except maybe my smurfbrother) would learn to communicate with my deaf child. Since I come from a very small, very tight-knit, immigrant-values family, that sort of isolation would be tough for me (and likely my child) to deal with. For me, it's a lot about context.

However, I can say with full certainty that I would want sign to become an integral part of our small family's life, as would be ties to the Deaf culture and society. I know that an implated child from a hearing family would be at a huge disadvantage in terms of "Deaf status" but I'd be out there trying to make the effort anyway.

In my head, I see the personal debate (how the global debate fits into my personal life) akin to if Jen and I ever adopt a child of another race/ethnicity. I'd really want to work hard to incorporate my child and our family into the communities of their roots/genes/etc., but I know that it would take a lot of work to assimilate. On both sides.

It's a real struggle for me.

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

Since I'm at work right now, I don't really have the time to formulate a long-winded response, so I'll try to hit the salient points as briefly as I can...

As a late-deafened individual in the late 80's and early 90's, I was one of the first viable candidates for a cochlear implant. I did eventually get one because I was emotionally blackmailed into it (that's a story for another time). However, I no longer wear it (and haven't for 10+ years) though I still have the 'memories' in my skull. I usually think of myself as an Implant Survivor. Most folks I know now don't even know that I had the surgery and I always wear my hair long enough to keep the scar hidden.

I have now realized that cochlear implants are the latest invention of the majority to try and get the minority to be "just like us". And I am vehemently against the implantation of innocent deaf children. To me, it's akin to robbing the child of an identity (especially in cases like the deaf child that Jude is working with now with the 100% oral parents).

To put it another way, if the straight world invented a way to rip into your brain and trained you to become straight, you'd probably be very resistant. But a child would have no such choice in the matter.

Adults have the right to choose and if they choose to have an implant, more power to them. Again, to use my analogy in the previous paragraph, deafness and gayness seem to have some things in common in that both deaf children and gay children are more often than not born to parents that are part of the majority. As they grow, both groups become accustomed to dealing with the hand that's been dealt and some choose to live their lives openly, while some regress into their respective 'closets'.

(Wow, that's longer than I thought it'd turn out.)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Reading your comparison to queer children really gives me a different perspective on the whole thing, especially because I've always compared the possibility of my having a deaf child to the possibility of my having a child of a different ethnicity than me (transracial adoption). In both cases, I would be raising a child starting at a different standpoint than I did, and would be raising a child outside of his/her culture. I try to think I'm a pretty culturally competent and sensitive individual but also a realistic one. I know the family I came from, and I know that a child I bring into my extended family will already be 'different' because s/he comes from a queer home... and then the added difference of entering into an extended family that cannot communicate with you would be very hard for a child.

It bothers me, though, because I can see how implants are seen by the hearing community at large as a way to eradicate deafness (and by result, Deaf culture) and I do not agree with that at all. I find the Deaf community to be rich and amazing, and the people in it equally so, and I would hate to see all of that subculture disappear because of technology. I'd like to think that if I adopt a child of a different ethnicity than me I would be able to incorporate aspects of that child's ethnic identity into our family structure. (I also know this would cause a number of challenges.) I'd like to think I could do this with a deaf child as well.

I agree that implants should be a personal choice, and I applaud your decision to toss yours. And in a perfect world I really do feel that the decision to be implanted should be left up to the individual... but I would hate for my child to later resent me for not making the decision at an earlier time in life, you know? (After all, like you, s/he could always toss it and never wear it again!)

I dunno. It's all so conflicting. I'd love to hear more of what you have to say. I'm wearing an OSU sweatshirt today, too. Go Bucks!

(p.s. I agree that given a choice, a lot of parents would choose to "cure" gayness too. But I don't know how solid an analogy this really is, because "gayness" doesn't usually enter into the family picture for several years, while the hearing issue is often an issue of birth/early childhood. Often, not always.)

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

I realize that you feel, either way, you might lose (the kid later ends up wanting the implant and you didn't do it, or vise-versa). I guess a lot of parental decisions come down to that, though.

(And yeah, the analogy of deafness and gayness isn't perfect because of the age factor, but I thought it was salient enough to use.)

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You're right - I think that's why being a parent is so freaking tough!

[smurfbrother.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I feel about all this, except to say that this thread has made me uncomfortable for a variety of reasons. Now, I'm wholly ignorant of deaf culture and Dude and I tend to differ about lots of social issues, and I don't have an opinion on this, but let me toss this out there, cause I think about parenting a lot, if not parenting a differently abled child.

Don't parents have a responsibility to take steps to make sure that their kids have all the tools they need to succeed in mainstream society? If you had a child born without legs or arms, would you let the child "choose" whether or not she'd use prosthetics, so she wouldn't lose out on amputee (wrong word, I know) culture?

I'm really conflicted on this.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

It depends whether or not you see deafness as a disability. That's at the heart of the audism argument - that the hearing world is oppressing Deaf culture by making the argument that being deaf or hard or hearing is less good. Many advocates of Deaf culture believe this is simply not true. I think that people who are pro-Deaf culture would say that a comparison between Deafness and amputation is just not feasible.

It IS certainly possible for both deaf people /and/ amputees to have full lives even in mainstream society. But there is a HUGE Deaf culture, moreso than any other "disability" category, I'd say.

[smurfbrother.livejournal.com]

I think this is where I start to get upset. I don't see any "oppression." Is there any reason whatsoever why a child can't get implants and still participate fully in deaf culture? I can't shake the idea, and please tell me if I'm mistaken, that choosing implants for a deaf child (assuming it's a medically appropriate treatment) is making a choice for your child (which is exactly what parents need to be doing; I don't buy much of the 'let them choose later' school. Be a parent.) that is most likely to help them succeed the most in later life, and isn't that a good thing?

Nobody is saying that being deaf is 'less good,' that's a classical straw man.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Well, you're really asking the wrong person, since I'm no expert on Deaf culture and really only know shards of this huge debate.

I'm guessing it's more about history than anything else. Deaf people, before cochlear implants, created this rich culture and great society as individuals bonded over their deafness and shared experiences. They created language, a visual culture, their own humor, own schools, etc. Like any minority group, there is a hierarchy of status (deaf kids who have deaf parents, for example, are "cooler" than deaf kids with hearing parents).

Cochlear implants certainly change this experience. Lots of kids who are implanted at an early age never learn to sign, never attend deaf schools, etc. As technology improves, the experiences of Deaf America change dramatically. Deaf culture as it currently exists will likely evolve... and like any culture that is in flux, previous generations have a hard time with change.

I think part of the problem in the debate is that we're most often talking about deaf children of hearing parents when we talk about babies who get implants. Deaf parents who have deaf children do not always feel this impetus to implant, because they're probably already in a household and culture that is rich with sign and quietude. I think a lot of deaf adults feel like hearing parents are in some ways "rejecting" their children's deafness and trying to "fix" them rather than accept them for who they are.

As someone who is not deaf, I can't speak for the Deaf community. I can only venture a guess.

[carina-s.livejournal.com]

Having a deaf mom who grew up outside deaf culture essentially because she was a lipreader and a speaker instead of a signer, I don't know really where to begin.

All I can say is that if a child can have the opportunity not just to hear but to hear music, then it is worth it to have the implant. The longer the wait, the less likely the success of the implant until you have a case like my uncle who had the implant done but still uses hearing aids and speaks like what you would expect from a deaf person.

My mother on the other hand, studied language and pronounciation after her implant, has benefited from the ability to listen to music, and in general is considered a resounding success despite being deaf from birth. It takes a great deal of hard work to make the implant work in deaf folks who have been deaf since birth, that's why advocates are so hard on starting young when the mind is prime for learning how to hear.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you re: music. Music is so much a part of my existance and my stability and I would have a really hard time not being able to share that with a child the way I would like to.