I’m not deaf enough.
I’m not hearing enough.
I’m not white enough.
I’m not straight enough.
I’m not woman enough.
I’m not American enough.
I’m not religious enough.
I’m not smart enough.
I’m not skinny enough.
Am I, at least, human enough?
I’ve been in one of these categories more than enough times, as has the rest of the world. I’m never going to be deaf enough (so, sue me if I don’t embrace my deafness as much as I should). I’m never going to be one of those women. I’m never going to be one to have complete faith in something that I can’t see. I’m never going to be a size double zero. But I’d just like to be human enough.
If we were all the same, life would be pretty darn boring, wouldn’t you say?
I heard this line by Sidney Poitier, “…you think of yourself as a colored man, I think of myself as a man.” I’ve never heard this line before, but once I heard it. It stuck to me like glue, and it’s going to stay with me until the day I die. I think this line says so much, simply because why can’t we just see ourselves as human beings? But we can’t, because emotions…life gets in the way of us being human beings.
We see far beyond the fact that we’re just man or woman, or even child. We see you for what you believe in. We see you for what size you are. We see you for what color your skin is. We see you for who you associate yourself with. We see you for how much education you have. We see you for whatever disability you might have. That’s what gets in the way of us simply treating each other fair and square.
It’s not an easy thing, to push aside what you think of someone and just see them as another being. Just like you. But we all need to do it sometimes.
I’ll be the first to admit that I question what people are or what they do. How does that person ever let themselves get like that? Or how do you put that much faith into something that you can’t see or have no solid proof of? But the one thing I do try to do is look past that and appreciate them for what they are.
Sometimes people have a strong belief of trying to better their own lives, whether or not someone agrees with them. Some people think they’re better off being exactly who they are and leaving it at that. It’s strange because I’d like to think the people that I’m friends with are the ones that make me a better person. However, they don’t try to change what I believe in or who I am, but they educate me and make me want to be a better person.
I had a conversation with my good friend/roommate the other day. She was surprised, but not so surprised because I said I don’t necessarily believe in the term “god,” though I might believe in the idea of there being a “higher power.” She said, so you’re not an atheist. I said I’ve never claimed I was an atheist. I just find it hard to believe in something that there’s no concrete proof as to whether god exists or not. She asked whether or not I need some thing “big” to happen to make me believe in something like that.
I told her, not really. I’ve chosen to believe in the fact that there could be a higher power, but I’ve also chosen to leave it at that. Then I explained to her that it’s more of, I think I was meant to meet her, I think I was meant to meet certain people that I have come across in my life. But I don’t think it was god that had anything to do with it. I mean absolutely no disrespect, it’s just not something I find easy to put my faith into something that’s not solid, not concrete. What can i say? I’m a logical person, I need the cold, hard facts.
Yet she still accepts me as one of her closest friends. Never once has she tried to say, well maybe you need to change your way of thinking. Maybe you should go do this or that. She accepts me for who I am, and what I might or might not believe in. I respect her, I’m envious of her, I wish I could be a little more like her. I respect her as a human being, regardless of anything else.
I’ve had friends who tried to change who I am. And it made me feel like, “You know what, you’re not my mom! (or dad).” I’d much rather have friend expose me to what they know, what they are, what they believe in instead of forcing something on me. Sometimes I’ll change my way of thinking, sometimes I won’t. It is one of those “you live, You learn” kind of mistakes.
I am who I am. But as I get older. I get a little bit wiser. I have become more accepting of what the world’s like. I try to see beyond what there is, and understand why things are the way they are. But most of all, I try to see people more as human beings for everything they are. And, I’m going to try to see myself as a woman, first and foremost above any other trait I might have. It’s not easy to do any of those things, but it’s the least I can do.
*I just wanted to note, this was one of the harder blogs I’ve written simply because I had a lot of trouble getting all my thoughts in line, but I do hope, however, that you’re able to make some sense of what I’ve written.*
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In other words, people are never satisfied. As along as we love ourselves, I think we are safe.
Your “difficult” blog was well written and you obviously put a great deal of thought into it.
Thankyou!
You said that this was one of the harder blogs you wrote. I can relate with you because we are are in the middle of the human process itself. It is a complicated time for our Deaf community while we are still having the “dialogue” about Deafhood. There is no clear cut answer. Identity is not one size for all. You humanly said it all with the “human enough” quote.
This reminds me of a conversation with a long-time hearing friend of mine. A long time ago, he told me that he sincerely believes that I will go to hell when the Armageddon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon) takes place because I am Jewish. We are still friends to this day, despite his beliefs.
Enough is enough surely :)
Eight is Enough
You’re not woman enough?
Please explain
LOLO , adam rich says eight is enough . i watched “eight is enogh” on the tv long time a go
Sounds to me you’re an agnostic. An agnostic is a person who feels that there is not enough proof either way to commmit to one position or another. Check out the wiki link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic
I’m just saying. I’ve been there - had a hard time reconciling my spiritual beliefs with my skepticism that there is a God, as defined by the Torah and the Old/New Testaments.
“We see far beyond the fact that we’re just man or woman, or even child. We see you for what you believe in. We see you for what size you are. We see you for what color your skin is. We see you for who you associate yourself with. We see you for how much education you have. We see you for whatever disability you might have. That’s what gets in the way of us simply treating each other fair and square.”
Yep. That’s how we’re wired. It’s a very human thing to need to be able to label and categorize things. That is how our brains are organized, after all, on schemas that give us a model to work from. It’s not that we have say, a picture of every sheep in our head. We just have a picture of what sheep generally look like, and we work from there. It takes some thinking and self reflection to add complexity to that schema and adjust our parameters.
(Yup, my BA in Psych is useful for something after all).
Not enough for everything? Human? Who accept Deaf, deaf, hard of hearing, late deafened, SHH, CI, Oral, CUE, children, young, old, and more as one Deaf community? Deaf against deaf. Deaf against oral, Deaf against CI, Aren’t they enough? Deaf Human Community?
This was a very poignant article, Erin. It made me think of one comment you wrote somewhere on this site saying you knew you’re very different from many of us, and how some of us react to you and to some of your entries hurts. But you keep on blogging because you know people like you need their “voices” inx the mix. That got me RIGHTHERE (thumping the center of my chest).
You are so right. I may disagree with your perspective about being deaf many times, but I need to hear this perspective. Thank you for giving me the oportunity. What I like about your entries is how respectful they are. I loved this entry because it drives home the point that we are all part of this larger community and we need to stop using labels to divide us up.
Thank you, Erin.
Good blog, Erin. You’ve written something that I can very much relate to, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. :)
We all need labels to understand the world, but we shouldn’t let them limit us. That’s the paradox, isn’t it? :P
For some comedy relief:
http://video.google.com/google.....8460124375
*laughs* that was a trip… also was interesting to see a lot of familiar faces in the video.
That was a funny one.
What I found to be interesting is the obsession on “not *insert* enough” since Jane K. Fernandes’ “Not Deaf Enough,” which has absolutely nothing to do with the initiation of the protest.
Instead of focusing on what we’re not *insert* here enough, we ought to focus on what we deem to be enough for ourselves that’s from within us.
After what almost all vlogs and blogs showed me during the protest, I have seen plenty of complaints that Jane Fernandes is Not Deaf Enough by saying that she can’t sign ASL well, and she is too much of an oralist. I still do not understand why protesters continue denying this main reason for the protest.
By the way, Erin, your post is great and I enjoyed reading it very much.
Check the link I posted in response to Jeff S.
Ohhh I cracked up and almost fell of my chair!!!! This is just great! Especially at the end! Love it!
I think it is one of the great tragedies that deafness has been strongly linked with identity politics. This is a misfortune for many other minority groups as well.
It must be a great relief to be a hearing white heterosexual male, who would not have to come to terms with endless navel-gazing about what it means to be a hearing white heterosexual male.
When have you ever heard a white guy immerse himself in an angst-ridden discussion with other white guys about what it means to be white? When do white guys cut each other down about being white enough? They don’t.
It would be liberating if deaf people could extricate themselves from meeting the definition of being deaf enough. It would be even better if we didn’t even have so many discussions about defining deaf identity, deafhood, etc.
Oops, I just participated in such a discussion.
Not *insert something* enough can be attributed to years of oppression at the hand of the majority. I couldn’t agree more with the saying of “History repeats itself.” The majority haven’t learned anything when committing oppression from one minority to another. When one minority group stands up and says enough, the majority moves on to the next minority group as the previous minority tries to make sense of everything and the cycle never ends.
What minority groups have in common is that they were once or are controlled by the majority. By the time they try to claim what is rightfully theirs, some members within the minority are brainwashed and influenced by the majority’s mentality, thus the infighting we see between people within the same minority. It is a deep-rooted oppression.
When a minority group wouldn’t give up and want to take control of their community that the majority decides to back out, a lot of real issues are lost on the minority group. I think it is why there has been identity politics going on in different minority groups and it’s healthy for them to have this discussion to better understand the issues that affect them.
I agree that years of oppression are behind many manifestations of identity politics. But I’m not certain that the strife among different subsets of minority groups is necessarily between those whose have supposedly freed themselves from majority values and those who haven’t.
I think it’s possible for there to be more than one way to free oneself from majority oppression.
In a sense, however, it seems to be awfully convenient for the majority to see the minorities mired in discussion about deafness, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Such protracted discussion makes the minorities fixate on their status as minorities.
I do think there has been some beautiful writing and vlogging about, for example, notions of deafhood, but I also feel like this discourse simply reinforces the separation imposed on us by a hearing society.
And I also think that if a hearing person shouldn’t have to expend so much mental effort on being hearing, a deaf person shouldn’t have to compose identity narratives about being deaf.
As you said, it may be “easier said than done”. But I remain skeptical that all this thinking about deafness is beneficial, when hearing people don’t even think twice about hearing.
Thought you’d find this to be interesting as I stumbled across to the letters to the editor in response to Larry Davis’ “Deafness and the Riddle of Identity.” Here is the link:
http://chronicle.com/temp/emai.....psDGzNH68x
I do appreciate what Dr. Thoryk and Dr. Krentz have to offer.
Omit the “to” between “across” and “the” in the sentence!
Katherine, thanks for the link. Those interesting letters also provided further links to additional Chronicle items, all of which were good to see.
My qualms about the fixation on identity do not extend to political or social activism. It is necessary to offer one another moral support or criticize discriminatory practices. All the same, I think it would be worthwhile to explore a post-identity agenda. In a way, one might speak of post-Deafhood in matters of identity.
Discussion of religion, my belief in God is like what Empedocles wrote, “God is a circle whose center is everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.”
I hear (or rather see you). Especially liked what Sidney Poitier said.
So, being one is enough. Being who one is is enough. Living the life the way one strive to live is enough. Believing in how one see is enough. So..when will it ever be enough for everyone at the same time? It’s like asking, when will one have enough of being arrogant, racist, sexist, oppressor, or whatever?? When will it be enough for the ones who are victims of those experience?
Got it. I guess….