Recently my children posted a vlog in DVTV on homeschooling called "why homeschooling is fun". Several people questioned whether it was a good idea to home school deaf children. They said they understood why it might work for hearing children but questioned whether it'd work for deaf children. I was sort of expecting this kind of crap to show up in my children's vlog so I created this vlog in preparation for potential ignorance. Sure enough, the ignorance showed up. Several vloggers mocked our kids and began to question whether it was a good idea to home school deaf children... hence, I posted this vlog in response.
The headline, "I'm deafless" was created in comparison to "ageless" term. For instance, I see a 80 years old man that's very active and is into jogging, rowing and exercises. I say to myself, my gosh this guy is ageless. I see myself under the same light as in 'deafless'. The term deafless was also created with sense for humor in mockery of audism, which is also an invented term that has not been recognized by panels of scholars. I figured why not poke fun at audism while I'm at it. If you didn't have any sense of humor when you read this then I'm sorry.
The point of the video is to emphasize the fact that we're more than just deaf. We're human beings therefore why not seek equality / common grounds with the rest of the world by reclaiming ours statuses as human beings? Why degrade ourselves, voluntarily, by allowing the term 'deaf' to own us and control us the way it has been done for many years.
In the good old days when many deaf people held respective jobs across the nation they did not find the need to identify themselves as 'deaf' but today we see high unemployment in the deaf community, I suspect, largely due to how we introduce ourselves as 'deaf' and degrade ourselves voluntarily. In short, we've become slaves to this term, deaf, which is unnecessary in my view. Naturally the choice is yours but I've made my choice by introducing myself as a human being first rather than making an issue of my deafness.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not asking us to conceal, hide or be ashamed of our deafness. I've said it many times and will say it again. I'm not ashamed to be deaf but I don't see the point of being too proud of it as if we're some what less than human beings the way deafhood people does it. What they're trying to do is make us forget the fact that we're human beings first before we're anything else. They want us to forget that we have the same leverage as the hearing people. Instead they want us to be colonized and isolated in the deaf world whereas they could control us by turning us into slaves of 'deaf' terms. Well, for your information, it's not going to happen to me. Don't know about you but I say it's deafless for me. Good riddance to deafhood. Go and fish else where.
