I know birch personally - she’s one of my spiritual students and colleagues. She’s a hearing individual with a big heart and a true desire to try and understand the Deaf Community.

Birch has a learning disability that hinders her ability to read and write effectively. Actually she reads pretty well, but when it comes to trying to write, as she says herself…her spelling leaves something to be desired.

It’s not her fault…unfortunately she was never diagnosed properly as a child and thus didn’t get the educational help she needed. Now she’s an adult who struggles with the consequences of not receiving that vital support during her early years.

Certainly she is not stupid - she’s actually a rather intelligent woman with a great sense of humor and a wisdom and insight that I’ve come to rely on. Like I said, she has a warm heart and is always there to help out when I need it.

I think we can appreciate Birch’s struggles, because we’ve seen similar struggles in the Deaf Community. We have all heard the horror stories about deaf children who were misdiagnosed and thrown into MR classrooms. We all know what happens when deaf children don’t get effective education and proper language development.

I applaud Birch for having the guts to come over here and leave a comment - I’m always trying to encourage her to share her thoughts and views, and she’s always a bit nervous about doing so because she doesn’t want people to see her as being “stupid.” (How many times have we all dealt with similar attitudes from the world around us?)

Welcome to the Deaf Community, Birch. Yes, sometimes it can seem intimidating to a hearing outsider who is trying to figure out and understand what the heck we are talking about.

As for learning ASL, don’t be afraid - yes, it can be a challenge and you do have to make a commitment, study carefully and practice often. But I think you can learn it. And since it’s not a written language and you’ll be learning signs to express concepts, nobody can bitch about your lousy spelling!

It is just that I want to point out that some of them are enablers that does the deaf community harm. They do contribute to this when they do nothing to correct it or let deaf people correct it. It takes two to tango, so these clueless people are not entirely to blame.

I’ve always found it patronizing when interpreters are applauded while deaf people are left in the dark nor even acknowledged. Rarely do they bother taking advantage of the interpreter’s existence to get to know deaf people and unfortunately, sometimes interpreters promote that. I had to chuckle when reading you say about rolling your eyes. Who can blame you for that?

It’s not only about interpreters but also hearing teachers, staff or whoever work with deaf children and people when little or no recognizance goes to deaf teachers, staff, workers and the likes who have enormous impact. What these hearing people do the same is taking credit that’s not rightfully theirs.

Little do these people realize many of them aren’t fluent in ASL to begin with or even come close to the skills of many deaf members. So, these hearing people, who are clueless, see these hearing people who can sign as “God” who are here as our saviors. Oh please!

I have less respect for some of those hearing people, who can sign and are in the Deaf community, for enabling those clueless hearing people than the clueless hearing people themselves. These enablers are what keeps deaf people from moving forward and change society’s perceptions.

All of this leads me to wonder what Vietnam or Iraq veterans who have lost their hearing would say to these same people who repeated what they said to me to them. I mean, whats the big deal with speaking so well? A lot of hearing folks don’t realize how much work and effort we put into learning how to read lips and speak at the same time. It can be very draining on us at times.

I agree with DianRez that I would prefer sign language over trying to read lips of those that speak a foreign language. Too much confusion can result from that. I believe that if I didn’t learn ASL earlier, I would have been in deep doo-doo with foreign speakers at speaking events. I’d rather understand them through signs than trying to wing it by lip-reading them as I know I wouldn’t enjoy or appreciate their speech otherwise.