*I know that non-signing, DeafBlind, and non-USian deaf people also exist. Those ideas are for the advanced level, though. Baby steps, here.
1. Deaf people exist. I mean, I know you sort of knew that, but you probably did not really think about it as far as, like, their actual existence in the world. But here we are, existing away! This means that, over the years, we have developed a number of ways of coping with the hearing world and with hearing people. Those ways almost never involve relying on a hearing person to "help". I know YOU use your sense of hearing to help you accomplish all sorts of things, but that does not mean that using hearing is 100% always required. Also, the fact that you are not aware of some accommodation does not mean it does not exist. Here's a list of things that all the deaf people know about, but that consistently amaze and astonish hearing people:
- video relay
- bedshakers
- hearing dogs
- sound sensors
- visual (light-based) notification systems
- bluetooth hearing aids/CIs
- etiquette/social norms rooted in the assumption that people can't hear
- interpreters
- live captioning
The moral of #1 is that you should not assume things will be accessible and you should also not assume that there isn't a solution and you should assume that your deaf friend has spent way, way more time thinking about accessibility than you have.
2. Relatedly to THAT, many deaf people spend their free time socializing with other deaf people. For some reason hearing people are always especially surprised by this. Like, they imagine (to the extent that they think about it) that each deaf person just wanders around, lost and alone in a hearing world, hoping for help and patience and attention from some kind hearing people and being grateful for whatever little snippets of communication and information come their way. That sounds crappy; why would we do that? It is way easier and more fun to hang out with other people who know your language and have already internalized norms around accessibility, respect, etc. and already know all of the information in this blog post.
I have lots of opinions about the whole "Deaf Culture" thing, as well as the capitalization of Deaf, but those are beyond the scope of this blog post so you can just google them later. It is definitely true, though, that there are a whole host of minor etiquette things that are just slightly different from hearing norms, and also that it is harder than you think to unlearn your norms (or learn a new set, whatever) around things like getting people's attention and how much touching is okay and if it's more rude to ask for repetition or to pretend to have understood something you didn't. And, like, how to position yourself when sitting in a group (so that you aren't blocking anyone's view of anyone else) and whether or not you are backlit (don't be) and if you should put a bunch of stuff on the table that will impede sightlines or not (you shouldn't, and you should remove them immediately if I ask you to). When I'm in hearing spaces I constantly have to either put up with stuff that's hindering me or remind people to do things differently. In deaf spaces it's already set up the right way and people are already doing things accessibly. Of COURSE deaf people choose to hang out with other deaf people, you weirdos.
The moral of #2 is that if you would also like to hang out with deaf people, you should pay attention to the fact that some norms are different and be sensitive to behaviors that you might need to change.
3. There are lots of sign languages/ASL is not related to English. I am so bored of this conversation and it happens with so many otherwise well-informed people. By far the most common response to the first part is "That's inconvenient. Why don't they all use the same language? That would be much better!" My general answer is "why don't hearing people all use the same language" and then that usually gets us to the underlying assumption(s) that somebody, relatively recently, sat down and invented Sign Language and/or that ASL is based on or otherwise related to English in some intrinsic way- in either case, not being an actual language of its own. (People often seem to believe both of these things: they think that "sign language" refers to an invented manual code for English. In which case it is very confusing that they would also think that all the deaf people all over the world should use it. Hearing people are so silly.) (Also those manual codes do exist and have their own substantial place in the whole culture-language-history thing (see below) but that's categorically different than ASL or LSQ or DGM or whatever particular sign language a deaf community uses.)
Anyway: each sign language is a distinct language. None of them are linguistically related to whatever spoken language(s) might be used in the same geographic area. Being distinct languages, sign languages also have distinct (1) lexical items (2) grammatical structures (3) tendencies and constraints (etc.) whatever else you think of when you think about languages being different from each other. Speaking of which, yes, there are dialectal differences, yes, you do have a hearing accent if you recently started signing, no, it is not easier to learn than another spoken language, no, you will not be fluent after taking one class.
Start with some first principles and think things through, huh?
(I realize that this one is probably somewhat/very tied to hearing USians specifically having strange and bad ideas about language and the ability to use more than one. All y'all have an extremely warped sense of normal, globally speaking. Most people encounter people using other languages on a regular basis. Most people know more than just one way to communicate. Most people do not think that the world revolves around them and their bizarre emotional attachment to English First and English Only. It is way weirder to imagine that all deaf people all over the world somehow communicate in the same way than it is to imagine that there are lots of different sign languages and most of them are mutually incomprehensible.)
The moral of #3 is that ASL is a language and if you want to learn it you will have to dedicate a large amount of time and energy to the project, and it will take years. Just like if you decided to learn some other spoken language.
4. There's a ton of history that you don't know about. Obviously individual knowlege of and interest in history varies as widely among the deaf as it does among the hearing, but there's a big chunk of deaf-specific history that is common knowlege in the deaf world and that hearing people have never encountered. In the US, that history centers around deaf education, and it includes a lot of trauma, and it is not resolved trauma. Education and communication and access to information are all issues that are far more important to deaf people than to hearing people. We can't take any of those things for granted. We have been excluded and sometimes ostracized by hearing people, who blithely sail along expecting deaf children to learn to read and write in a language they can't hear, and deaf people generally to both do all the work of lipreading/speaking and also take all the condescension and pity for not doing them the way hearing people do (and all the blame when miscommunications occur). These are emotionally charged, culturally significant topics. You are going to put all your feet in your mouth, all the time, if you don't acquire a basic understanding of this stuff, stat.
I am not sure what the moral of #4 is. Know what you don't know, I guess. Maybe "acknowlege this gap in your understanding of the world, and be careful around it."
In conclusion: Everything on this list is basically looking at the same knot of language and lack of access from different angles- if deaf people had always been fully included and society had always been fully accessible, deaf (also other disabled) people would not seek each other out to create their own little friendly accessible pockets in the world. If you're a US American and you've never met a deaf person before, you have probably never encountered a language barrier. (Or if you did, it probably made you irrationally angry such that you called the cops because somebody was speaking Spanish near you. Hashtag AbledsAreWeird.) I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are an otherwise woke human being with a decent amount of awareness re: racism and civil rights and other ongoing struggles against the patriarchy- feminism and LGBTQ+ rights and classism and whatnot. It has probably not crossed your mind, up until now, that deaf people (and disabled people generally) are also an oppressed minority group who have their own specific cultural and historic and linguistic norms and expectations and trigger points. And that's mostly not your fault. The patriarchy is ableist and audist as fuck. But, now you know, and, as with the other -isms and anti-patriarchal struggles, you should not rely on your deaf friend to teach you all about this interesting new set of ideas. Even if your deaf friend is patient enough to socialize with hearing people in general, she might be very tired of having the same Intro-to-Deafness conversation, over and over, with every clueless hearing person in her life (hint: I am very tired of this.) So read up on that shit.
(confidential to my special man friend: hey, baby, the general surliness of my tone here is not directed at you. It is primarily for comedic effect. However, do read up on that shit.)
