I don’t know what I want to say in this post, all I know that I wanted to spit poison and kill, but a walk in the woods today, put paid to that notion. Quite frankly, I don’t even know why I am writing this post, if not to spit poison and kill, then what? I’m really struggling here people, I really am.
Inspite of my best intentions, I am going to be even handed here. But all this attitude and talk of putting on ones ears, is giving me nightmares of size queens and strap-ons. The images parading through my mind are rather perverse, and I would dearly love to share my perversity with you, and together we could we could wallow in it. But it would do untold damage to my new image as a spiritually aware and loving human being, and we wouldn’t want that would we?
SO, I’m not going to share my perversity with you.
Enough of those whimpers and groans, I am trying to change people. I am trying to shed some light and love into this God forsaken world of ours. I want implantees everywhere to feel that I understand their trials and tribulations. I want them to know that I understand that upon acquiring an implant, their tribulations become jubilations, and that we can all unit together and sign, whoops I meant, SING “Hallelujah!”
“Damn! Fuck! What is the matter with me?”
My friend Alison brought the blog post To Be, Or Not To Be, and today [16th July 2010] on Facebook I discovered the following “Oh For Fuck’s Sake” video Cochlear – Hear now. And Always. There’s plenty more that I have seen on the web, but have not bothered to follow, because they say nothing new, and merely repeat the same rhetoric that has pervaded deafness discourse for the last seven thousand gazillion, billion years. Instead of a multitude of blogs, why not have one simple FAQ site that answers all your questions about assistive hearing technology?
Still, it never fails to astound, or amuse me, 30 years later, the religiosity of people’s perceptions of acquiring the ability to hear via some technology such as the cochlear implant. My own perceptions are quite vulgar by comparison, hence the title of this piece: “Cochlear Implants, Music, Size Queens & Strap-Ons”
I am thinking, it’s near on 30 years since I first came out as a Deaf person, or Deafie in Deaf parlance. I took my cues from the Gay and the Women’s Liberation movement back in the 1970’s. I’ve tried to internalise the very valuable lessons they taught about human beings, their values and the ability to make choices; about being human. I’ve strived to become an emancipated human being: Good as I am, As Is, Is As, and equal to, not lesser than anyone else. Yet the prevailing forces both social and economical, are working to deny me that. If not deny, then belittle.
If it’s adherents were to be believed, the implant is this miraculous technology that makes the deaf to hear [gratuitous pun intended], the blind to see, the lame to walk, and raise the dead. Not only that, its followers tend to fall about in apoplectic seizures, frothing at the mouth while waiting for Moses to descent from the mountain with the stone tablets proscribing the Ten Commandments of Hearing.
I’ll be your dream
I’ll be your wish
I’ll be your fantasy
I’ll be your hope
I’ll be your love
Be everything that you need.
I’ll love you more with every breath
Truly, madly, deeply do
I will be strong I will be faithful
’cause I’m counting on
A new beginning
A reason for living
A deeper meaning, yeah [Truly, Madly, Deeply]
Sure I am talking in gross generalisations, but then so do many of the convertees and the hearing world. Besides, I am taking poetic license, what is their excuse?
Now let me state, EMPHATICALLY, I GET IT! I do understand why people make the choices they do, and I don’t have any truck with that. I don’t have any truck with the marketing bullshit used to promote the implant. What I have a truck with, is the negative portrayal of deafness that frames it as a curse, a malady, a tribulation, a perception that ensnares all Deaf people, and imprisons them within a prejudice not of their own making.
What I have a truck with, is this very same bullshit is used to prop up the fragile self esteem of many deaf people. Let’s face it, the implant is a piece of technology that serves a useful purpose. There is nothing miraculous about it that warrants turning it into a religion. It doesn’t magically change a person into a better person or make them more knowledgeable.
If you are going to cast a negative aspersion upon Deaf people, as a way to justify your decision to have an implant, then you shouldn’t be surprised if there is a reaction you don’t like. What Deaf people are actually reacting to, even if it’s not articulated very well, is not the precious implant, but the negative connotations attached to it. What is forgotten, willfully, conveniently or merely dismissed as of no consequence, is the history of oppression that Deaf people have suffered. The Deaf viewpoint is not TRULY APPRECIATED, and deafies and the hearing whinge Deaf people don’t appreciate their viewpoint.
Deaf culture is not an IT! Deaf Culture is not a ghetto. Deaf culture is not Hearing culture’s poor cousin. Deaf people do have language that is on par with the Hearing world. Deaf people are not responsible for the negative perceptions of deafness and being Deaf. What people forget is that context is everything, so can we please get with the program?
There are many questions that need to be asked, but are never asked, and so I will ask them here. Is their self esteem that fragile, that they need to put down deafness in order to feel good? Do they have any sense of self over and beyond identifying with the hearing world? If they cannot deal with being deaf, then how can they truly deal with being different?
I know the issues. I have grown up with them. I have explored them. I have wrestled with them. I have worked, still am, with them. I have to come like me as I am. That doesn’t deny the fact that I am not human or that I do not entertain notions of having all of my hearing. I am and I do. But I am not going to look down on, or pity Deaf people, just because I can hear music or that I can speak. Big fucking deal I say.
These things are relative. Their value is what we, as human beings attach to them. Nothing more, nothing less. That is not to say, I am not aware of how easier life is because I can speak and that I have useful hearing. That is a hearing issue, not deafness issue!
Really, implantees need to get over themselves when other people do not choose to have an implant. For whatever reason. It is patronising to assume that someone is missing out because they do not speak, or they do not listen to music or they do not……whatever. As for the oft comment, that a deaf child [person] has the right to hear, or comments “like not allowing a deaf child to hear is akin to not allowing him to be taught to read,” reveal an arrogance about our place in the world.
I used to sign
I used to gesticulate
I used to sign, gesticulate, and live in the Deaf ghetto too
You know I’m saved (saved)
I’m saved (saved)
I can preach cos I’m not, deaf and dumb
I’m in that soul-savin’ army
Wearing a cock-leer implant
Whoa yeah [Based on the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller song, SAVED]
To tie in hearing with life. To associate being able to hear as being able to connect with mother earth, are patronising attitudes. They are projections of one persons view of life, cast as absolutes, by which others are judged and valued. It is projecting onto others what you think they ought to be and do. And that smacks of arrogance.
Last but not least, music. If there is one desire I have, it would be to fuck with music playing in the background, without worrying about implants or hearing aids. But that’s not gonna happen in my life time, and if it does, I will be too old to care, and my dick would have fallen off, for it to be of any use. But there’s hearing aids, implants, and viagra. Who knows, maybe through their experiments in creating hair cells to restore hearing, they will have invented away to grow your dick back? A size of your choosing 
What’s the point of this piece? Fucked if I know, but it was good to vent!
