#deafidentity

[processzine-org]

Addendum: Stuttered Speech and Delayed Understanding

While watching EX-020 stutter its way out of the thermal printer, something old surfaced. I remembered my own stammer. I went to speech therapy as a child — part of being deaf, part of not catching the ‘S’ sounds, part of something else maybe. And I wondered: Could that disfluency — the struggle to get a word out — have been more than articulation? Could it have been APD? A quick search later, and: Source: NumberAnalytics blog So maybe that pause, the disjointed speech — it wasn’t just physical. Maybe the machine and I aren’t so different after all.

[courageisacoward]

Deaf and deaf

I recently saw some information regarding the deaf/Deaf issue. It seems that the person who coined Deaf, as opposed to deaf, regrets introducing the term, as it has split the community, and seems to have fostered some elitism in the community. 

While I see their point, and understand it, I support using D and d. Why, you may ask? A lot of Deaf folks don’t learn about the culture/community/language until later on in life. I did not truly start to learn about it until I entered college. I’ll be posting my story later on (in a different post). Going your entire life without really belonging to any particular group of people takes its toll on you. You don’t have shared experiences with others, and you never really feel like you fit in, because people don’t understand what you are going/have gone through. 

Using D to denote oneself as a member of the community and culture is such a wonderful thing for us. We feel like we belong, we feel like we have finally found our place. For the very first time in our life. While it may foster elitism within the community, it’s also a wonderful, powerful thing for many of us. I don’t condone elitism, but it is nice to belong, to understand who you are, to know that you’re not alone. “deaf” is a very, very wide net. I don’t appreciate people comparing me to their dog or grandparents. I am proud to be Deaf. My hearing loss doesn’t define me, but my viewpoints, involvement, and preferred method of communication do. 

[courageisacoward]

Lilo & Stitch

I know this isn't the way the movie was meant to be taken as, but does anyone else here see it as similar to d/Deaf/HOH experiences? I mean, Stitch's voice sounds quite similar to deafspeak, and he's pretty much alone in the world. His creator doesn't want him, and has been ordered to capture him and take him in. He finds family with Lilo & Nani, who are outcasts in and of themselves. Everyone else is disgusted by him because he's not "normal". He finds who he is, and that he has a lot of love to offer, even though he had a lot of difficulty functioning, communicating, and being who others wanted him to be. 

Perhaps it's just me, but I see a lot of experiences that myself and others had to go through in that movie.