Bored I’m not, I take considerable interest in deaf issues, but I approach them on a bona-fide basis, I don’t blindly accept everything I read or am told. The disagreement with deafhood was based on Ladd’s refusal to allow profound (d)eaf people to contribute to the deaf history or be part of his ‘deafhood’ by refusing to a include them, and then attaching a label of medical to them, by what right ? He is a divisionist who believes if you do not sign you are not deaf or anything else, yet history shows the (d)eaf sector are the pimary movers, because their outlook is OUTWARD, not (D)eaf INWARD. (d)eaf people RUN many BSL groups here ! Ruth Myers runs 4 of them. Basically deaf groups of all kinds are dead in the water and unrepresentative anyway, .2% members is nowhere. It’s the old versus the new basically, young deaf want more, are entitled to more, the last thing they need is a raft of terms and rules from people like Ladd and the D, d stuff it’s prehistoric, indeed they IGNORE it. I am not deaf because I have no culture or something ? ridiculous, and of course very divisive as it divides support options for EVERYONE. I can live very well without a deaf culture, not without communication I need. Everything affects everything else, the (D)eaf think it only affects THEM. Your ‘Information’ I challenge as valid, and informed you our educational establishments have rejected it, sorry if you find that boring, it’s fact, everything you quote is in Wikipedia. We may never agree, but if we don’t discuss, then we work against each other. This may suit some perverse deaf activist who thinks us against them can do nothing but good for the cause, but it’s just anti-deaf in nature,and unproductive to us all, it’s susicide for the deaf community too. You’ll kill it with apathy, I’m bored with the cultural ‘message’ not with improving our lot. I are as deaf as you are, the arguments don’t ring true to me, since not once has the (d)eaf sector got a mention, we know why, you fear what we can say as deaf people too ! It’s one thing to go at a hearing system, another to attack other deaf people.

MM

Back in 1992, Gallaudet University tried ot have a cochlear implant conference. But protests were held against having a conference and the conference was quickly cancelled.

Debates were often done via Listserv or VAX early in the 1990s while later in the 1990s more deaf forums were springing up.

Mercy Coogan, Director of Public Relations at Gallaudet in 1998 said this:

“We try to be a forum where people can look at it objectively. A university is where you debate issues, then make judgments based on that debate.”

One note: The interpreters were awful and twisted a lot of what was being said so for anyone who depended on hearing or on reading got a bunch of misinformation.

I was not surprised about Dr. John Christian giving the workshops on CIs as part of his sociological studies. I knew how his mind works and why he done workshops. I could read his mind

Dr. Christian of Gallaudet University’s Sociology Department and I informally disagreed on the issue of “ASL Now” movement at Gally last ten years ago. He dismissed the “ASL Now” movement as the dead end of social and political movement for my sociological survey and paper. Dr. Christian was totally wrong about the longing of the “ASL Now” movement. I chose not to turn in the paper because I was feared about the possibility of university adminstration (IKJ) and other anti-culturally deaf proponents use my paper as a weapon against the future culturally deaf students or the demands for the formal recognization of ASL as the primary language of the deaf.

All the undergraduate papers are automatically the property of Gallaudet University according to the student guideline and handbook.

I done many controvestial deaf issues from deaf militancy to deaf elitism to the “ASL Now” movement.

Gallaudet University is still one of the few higher educational institution for not recognizing ASL as the language of the deaf in formal sense. Why not??

Robert L. Mason (RLM)

MM

1.) Interesting thread….thanks for your comments, Noelle. I especially liked this part:

Noelle: “I’m angry that inflight movies aren’t captioned, that video Ipods don’t have captioning, that movies on the internet don’t have captioning, and so on….that accessibility is important. Why aren’t we uniting together to fight for this? We should be focusing on this instead of what makes one “deaf.” ”

Yup, you are DEAF!

2.) I have personally seen so many mixed results with oralism, ASL, and even cued speech….

I do agree with Noelle that parental influence plays a PIVOTAL role in it all. Case in example, my wife and I. My wife grew up going to CID in St. Louis…she learned sign language at 19 years old. Me…I grew up with sign language…PSE mostly as I was primarly taught by hearing teachers who signed PSE/SEE and picked up ASL from my deaf friends. However, I bounced from deaf schools and mainstreamed programs….so it was a little of everything for me. Today me and my wife both have secure employment and are doing well. One common factor we had in our upbringing was our parents who made sure we were learning on the same level as other hearing kids our age.

3.)Noelle, you can plug your I-pod and laptop into your CI? Wow…that’s cool…. I have considered CI’s..but I am 32 years old and threw away my hearing aids at age 8…stopped speech classes at age 9 or so because the therapist just wanted to put on rubber gloves and put her fingers in my mouth to position my tongue…something in my heart said, “This ain’t right”…although someday I may consider a CI…just for sound effects in movies at the very least….