{"id":54410,"date":"2013-03-25T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54410"},"modified":"2017-09-17T08:40:24","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T13:40:24","slug":"comic-relief-and-treatment-of-deaf-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/25\/comic-relief-and-treatment-of-deaf-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Relief and Treatment of Deaf People"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I had a fever and sore throat that left me with laryngitis. \u00a0I lost my voice completely for two days and spent three additional days making no sounds at all in order to get it back. \u00a0In the meantime, I learned just a tiny bit about how people respond to the deaf.<\/p>\n<p>Disclaimer: I&#8217;m sure that deaf people handle these situations with much more grace than I. \u00a0And I&#8217;m not claiming in the slightest that I know what it&#8217;s like to be deaf. \u00a0But<em> other people thought I was deaf<\/em>, and that&#8217;s where things got interesting. \u00a0(If I make any insensitive steps, please let me know.)<\/p>\n<p>When I would approach someone and either hand them a note or point to my throat and shake my head, I would get a range of responses.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, humorously, many people would go correspondingly mute. \u00a0I would write a note and their lips would squeeze tightly together, almost like they were trying to forcibly hold back sound. \u00a0They would assume that I couldn&#8217;t hear and I guess it didn&#8217;t occur to them that I could read lips. So I would write &#8220;Giant diet coke, please&#8221; and they would clam up and get me the soda, but then they wouldn&#8217;t say &#8220;Here you go&#8221; or &#8220;Have a nice day&#8221; or any of the other niceties that pepper daily life.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Second,\u00a0I was shocked to discover that people would, in no uncertain terms, express pity. \u00a0They would say &#8220;Oh I&#8217;m so sorry for you!&#8221; or &#8220;That&#8217;s so sad!&#8221; \u00a0Deaf people are not necessarily sad about not being able to hear and many are deeply <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Deaf_culture\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">proud of their unique culture<\/a>. \u00a0But many hearing people pity the deaf and apparently they are not afraid to say so to your face!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, I encountered the classic reaction where people would just say what they wanted to say to me, but louder and with extra enunciation. \u00a0As if that would work if I were deaf! \u00a0I think, too, that in some of these cases they assumed I was mentally challenged.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In all, I was surprised to discover just how uncomfortable people were with the supposedly deaf me. \u00a0They were truly unprepared for interacting with a person who they thought couldn&#8217;t hear. \u00a0In their lack of preparedness and experience, they made all kinds of mis-steps.<\/p>\n<p>These experiences inspired me to look up some humor and I found a comic called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thatdeafguy.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">That Deaf Guy<\/a>, written by Matt and Kay Daigle. \u00a0Matt is deaf and Kay is a sign language interpreter who can hear. \u00a0They have a little boy.\u00a0Matt and Kay&#8217;s comic is a nice window onto life as\/with a deaf person and it was interesting for me to get a peek into what some deaf people might experience sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>Hat tip to my friend Robb, whose therapeutic silence and similar observations preceded mine.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weeks ago I had a fever and sore throat that left me with laryngitis. \u00a0I lost my voice completely for two days and spent three additional days making no sounds at all in order to get it back. \u00a0In the meantime, I learned just a tiny bit about how people respond to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[345,283],"class_list":["post-54410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disability","tag-prejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54410"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71359,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54410\/revisions\/71359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}