Cathy Heffernan currently has a piece in The Guardian, Being deaf has one big advantage when you're travelling abroad - it breaks down all the barriers.
In places where politically correct language and attitudes haven't arrived, people are free to describe deafness in gloriously insulting ways ....... Give me that any day over the phrases considered PC here in Britain: "hearing challenged" or "hearing impaired", to skirt around the fact that I am, at the end of the day, bloody deaf. In the supposedly "backward" cultures of the developing world, people point and gesture. "You deaf?" Then they shrug in mild interest or laugh and elbow each other in fascination. Either way, they never seem to recede in awkwardness or embarrassment; rather than stumbling around the elephant in the room, they're prodding it, feeding it ... I love every bit of it.
Go read.
Comments (3)
Excellent - good to see more and more positive stuff writen about us in the media. MORE DEAF JOURNALISM PLEASE!
Interesting to compare it to this hearing-written article - while good in general, it does get a few things wrong. Still, it's a good start. And a darn sight better than a few of the things we've seen recently!
Posted by jen | January 24, 2008 10:08 AM
Great! Thanks.
Looking forward to see more of deaf event from media :)
Posted by Deaf communnity | January 24, 2008 10:23 PM
Thanks for this link - great article!
Posted by tutleymutley | February 9, 2008 10:22 PM