What Genuine Inclusivity of Signing People Needs To Be Like In Social Justice Circles/Events
[Disclaimer: I write this as a degreed Deaf-Signing person who has speaking and hearing capacities, is sighted and able-privileged, works in academia, and uses textual English in ways that can absolutely exclude people. I am available for making the content of this piece more accessible in ASL, sign language, via clarifications and restatements, and other forms of text-based English.
I also ask that readers and rebloggers of this not decontextualize this piece from the experiences that they are rooted in. This was written in the context of QTPOC communities.]
Last week, I attended a QTPOC event that sparked my desire to write this. I write this also in inspiration from MANY other community workers in my Signing QTPOC community who are too, feeling burned as hell from the hypocrises we keep experiencing over and over. I write this with all our stories in mind and heart.
Before getting into this, I need to start off with some definitions first:
“Hearing” people are people who are not Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, Hard of Hearing, Late Deafened, and Cochlear Implant Using Signing people.
American Sign Language , known as ASL, is the dominant signed language in the U.S. and one could argue, on a global scale as well. But in no way is it the only signed language in existence.
Audism is the systematic oppression of Deaf, DeafBlind, DeafDisabled, Hard of Hearing, Late Deafened, and Cochlear Implant Using Signing people.
Phonocentrism is the widespread, if not global, supremacy of hearing and speaking above all other expression and existence.
And I’m tired of this shit continuing to happen in areas where you believed that people were working at full capacity to not carry out oppression and harm towards others. So fucking tired. The hypocrisy is weighing on me and many others.
I’m tired of feeling fearful of asking many event organizers for an ASL interpreter and being perceived as a financial burden, another headache for the to-do list.
I’m tired of going home after events and meetings feeling disconnected, uncared for, ignored, and excluded. Embarrassed that I asked for language access but still feeling so socially isolated. Feeling like I wasted everyone’s time and money. Sinking in the bathtub with a ball of shame in my stomach that reverberates through my body. Checking my email and absolutely no check-in from event organizers to see how we felt.
And I’m tired of seeing others in my Signing QTPOC communities feel the same way, and express their rage at the inconsistencies going on in “social justice communities.”
I live in the goddamn corner and none of y’all are doing shit about it.
Yes, talk of accessibility does make the rounds thanks to a handful of well-known hearing QTPOC Disabled activists, speakers, and workers. Their work forces us able-privileged Signing people to realize how we carry out Disability exclusion within our own communities as well, especially when the older generations still grapple with the trauma of having worked with mainstream disability advocacy, only to have been abandoned when they asked to join forces against systematic audism and denials of ASL rights. But what happens when hearing non-Signers start assuming that Signing people and Signing communities merely need access is a total flattening of the complexities that are existent among us.
Access is one intersection of our experience. The other intersections are languages, cultures, and a myriad of systematic oppressions and inner-group privileges that complicate how we interact and connect with one another, let alone how we deal with non-signing hearing people. Reducing all the other intersections of experiences that we have into just “access needs” is exactly why your events will still have a group of Signing people making do in the corner while many of you experience a couple minutes of awkwardness and discomfort before phasing us out completely. It is because it’s assumed that once a body or two who knows ASL or sign language is present, they will become responsible for all the access needs of the people who “don’t talk.”
Many social justice organizers make the grave mistake of considering/including Signing peoples’ needs under the overall umbrella of disability access. Is it easier and more simplistic to stop there? Does it help you feel like you did your Minimum Access Requirement of the Day if it’s just about finding any person who’s willing to stand in front of a bunch of people, wave their hands around, and sweat? Then you can like, get back to the more important stuff for the event/meeting?
This means that the Signing people will *definitely* still be in a little huddle way over there in the corner while y’all keep smiling awkwardly at us if we occasionally make eye contact. This means we need to make damn sure we bring another Signing friend with us to ease the shame of social awkwardness and isolation. We will always feel like we are on the fringes, watchers, not players.
Reducing Signing people’s needs to only an access issue wipes out any consideration of other intersections at play. I cannot tell you how many times I got so excited to attend a QTPOC event, only to realize that the event organizers did not think of to look for QTPOC Interpreters. Can you imagine what it feels to be attached with one of the few white people in attendance when you are looking to build bridges and connections with other QTPOC? Or how it feels when you all STILL talk to the whitebread interpreters more than you will talk with us Signing QTPOC?
How do you think it feels when we show up and there is no effort to converse with us in our own modality? When you just go on to speak to us and hope that one of us has a hearing aid or a cochlear implant or speaking abilities to make your lives easier? When we see your eyes flash and neck snap towards the Signing person with speaking capacities? Unapologetic phonocentrism and audism will weigh on us for days, weeks, even years afterwards.
When I found the QTPOC social justice/anti-oppression community, I felt like I was getting close to home. I was getting so close. I saw that I didn’t have to choke down the single-identity and single-issue restrictions that I grappled with in many circles of the U.S. Signing community. When I read Anzaldúa, I said to myself, I am a Neplantera. I travel with home on my back. I felt she was talking to the buried spirit inside me, and was compelling me to let it grow and thrive. My mestizaje, xicanismx was perpetually denied to me because I was always identified as “Deaf First” by hearing and Signers alike. To hearing people: my racial, ethnic, Queer, gender experiences were denied and ranked lower in importance. The fact that I talk with an accent and use my hands for my linguistic expression marked, marks, me Other. My multiplicities were too much for so many, and I would get lost in the shuffle. POC audism hurts me so much more than white audism hurts me because my own communities do not even want to embrace me. How many hearing QTPOC know this experience and pain? Why propagate it onto others?
More and more, with each passing day, I painfully realize, that when the Great Authors wrote their Amazing Connective Healing Words, Signing people were nowhere near their minds. And I know this now because we are still often an afterthought for many emerging Great Authors, Great Workers, Great Leaders in hearing social justice communities. And because many of these Great Authors, Performers, Poets, Workers, Leaders do not even consider the audism and linguicism that happens to so many Signing people, rendering many of us to feel disconnected with text as well as voice. And no one really wants to take up this new language and new set of cultural understandings. It’s easier to leave us in the corner and let us do our thing, and flash us a few awkward smiles with downcast eyes here and there. Are you okay with this? I’m not.
Phonocentrism is REAL in social justice, anti-oppression circles. Hearing QTPOC events usually are based on spoken word/slam performances, musical performances, theatrics, and other kinds of creative performances based on listening to beautiful things. Those who hear have a right to enjoy it. No one is disputing that. But there has to be more centering of those who Don’t-Hear, Hear-Less, Hear-Some, and to acknowledge that we are constantly forgotten.
There is no consideration of seeking out bridges and connections with Signing people. Interpreters are viewed as props for access, bodies that are awkwardly “just there” when performers realize their presence, despite sharing the same space for many minutes beforehand. (Let’s analyze what that feels like to the Signing onlooker—was that an intentional neglect of another body so close to them? How does it feel to have the whole room’s eyes turn on you when a gaffe happens with space-sharing onstage? Let’s get this shit together.)
There is no thought of how interpreters need to work closely with performers for extended time prior to the show, in order for Signing people to best understand the content being delivered in a completely different modality than they are used to. Handing the interpreters print-outs of what will be performed several days before the show instead of inviting them to rehearsals, supporting interpreters keep a Signing Community-centered approach to their work, and pre-planning stage space sharing logistics once again reduces Signing Peoples’ needs to mere access issues. We are complex and deserve holistic treatment and approaches. We deserve to move through the room, freely, happily, and to not stay in the corners, uncomfortable and even fearful at times.
This phonocentric and audist fallacy that exists among many social justice-based, anti-oppression community organizations and workers is staggering and appalling and divisions are going to continue to be deep and rife. What do we do?
Real talk—I have done a lot. I continue to do a lot. Even as I sit here and write with all the pain I have emanating, I know the work I put forth isn’t going to end any time soon, because I still have some remaining threads of audacious hope. And this hope compels me to want my –our-- effort to be returned in intensive and enduring ways.
if we are going to make this work. It does not end with learning the manual alphabet, or learning the minimum 2-hour payment of sign language interpreters, or adding some Signing people on Facebook and liking what we post. It starts with work, real work. And we have to start now.
What will our connections look like now? Feel like? Touch like? We will not know until we start doing—and I want to put these dreams into realities so that those who come after us will not know as much of this pain. Let us think of each other and of them—let us remember each other, constantly, always, in a loving and sustaining change. It starts with us.
multi-mestiza sorda queer femme profesora/writer, 2014.
