{"id":5658,"date":"2022-07-28T08:50:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T11:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.handtalk.me\/en\/?p=5658"},"modified":"2023-04-18T10:08:34","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T13:08:34","slug":"audism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.handtalk.me\/en\/blog\/audism\/","title":{"rendered":"Audism and the discrimination against deaf people"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unfortunately, discrimination is still a concept very present in our daily lives. It exists in many ways, oppressing and offending different groups, such as women, black people, members of the LGBTQIAPN+ community, people with disabilities and so on. Today, we will explain to you a bit more about the discrimination against deaf people, also known as audism.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we move forward, if you want to learn more about the deaf community<\/a>, we brought you 3 things deaf people want you to know<\/a>, to start rethinking some prejudices you might not even know you had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, what is audism?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To understand the notion of audism, we need to assume that the world was built by and for hearing people. <\/strong>In this scenario, it\u2019s like deaf people and those with hearing disabilities aren\u2019t considered on their identities, how they see themselves inside the community, but perceived as \u201cnon-hearing\u201d<\/strong>. It\u2019s as if they were wrong or inferior for not hearing. Audism understands the world from the perspective of a hearing person, and how they face the situations and environments around them. According to this logic, the deaf person is the element that\u2019s out of place, outside the socially accepted norm. This way, they need to have potential hearing at all costs, going through the process of oralization<\/strong>, learning how to lip read and adjusting to oral communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a hearing person became a synonym of being normal. <\/strong>This pattern we have in society today, results in many people with hearing disabilities being denied of perceiving and affirming themselves as part of the deaf community. This sociocultural construct creates a very hard environment of exclusion, rejection and invisibility for deaf people. On top of it, audism deprives them of their language<\/strong>, which is a huge part of their identity<\/a> and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understanding the hearing privilege<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Did you know that Sign Languages, mostly used by the deaf community to communicate, were forbidden in 1880? This is just an example of the many linguistic deprivations <\/strong>that deaf people suffer daily. When you think about it, it\u2019s clear that hearing people will enjoy more privileges<\/strong>, since they don\u2019t have so many barriers<\/a> to face all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good example for you to understand how these privileges actually work, is cripface. <\/strong>This term originated in the United States, joining the words crippled<\/strong> and face<\/strong>. It\u2019s very present in the audiovisual and entertainment industry, when non-disabled people interpret characters with disabilities. This is a big problem, because it ends up portraying people from this community in an offensive and ableist manner. <\/strong>Besides, not hiring actors with disabilities for these productions is an ableist act in itself, because it\u2019s based on the idea that they aren\u2019t capable of handling this kind of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are countless times when hearing people wrongly occupy deaf people\u2019s spaces, mainly in the workplace. In places in which job offers already aren\u2019t frequent, they are still harmed in favor of the hearing privilege. <\/strong>One of the most common cases happens with job opportunities for interpreters and ASL (American Sign Language) teachers. Organizations prefer to hire hearing people, because they believe they will be able to communicate better with the rest of the audience, also hearing. They do that instead of choosing deaf people, who many times have their culture and identity based on ASL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, the expression deaf money<\/strong> came to light, but what does it mean? Just like it happens with so many other groups, companies take advantage of deaf people to profit from them, <\/strong>without truly worrying about the causes this community defends. It\u2019s very common, for example, for us to find ASL courses offered by hearing people, with the promise of fluency in the language in record time, and still charging abusive prices. The people behind this type of actions just use deaf people as a strategy to gain money and fame, without being involved with the community, or even supporting it. Because of all of this, the motto \u201cNothing about us, without us\u201d<\/strong> was created, advocating for the presence of deaf people and those with other disabilities in the spaces that belong to them. If we\u2019re dealing with something about them, why exclude them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The situations in which we can observe the hearing privilege are very often. Also, the communication difficulties for deaf people become practically inevitable in a world that only accepts being a hearing person. <\/strong>It happens when a deaf person, who communicates mainly in ASL, needs to go to the hospital, the police station, to a store, to school, or even bus stations and airports, where usually there are only sound announcements. Do you realize how the hearing privilege can take away the freedom and autonomy <\/strong>of those that are part of the deaf community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The linguistic discrimination suffered by deaf people<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Well, the idea of discrimination you already know, but can you tell what linguistic discrimination<\/strong> consists of? Basically, it\u2019s a way of social dicrimination based on judging people on the way they communicate.<\/strong> This can happen when the other person uses terms you think are wrong or improper, when they don\u2019t have mastered the language they\u2019re speaking, or simply when they communicate in a different language than yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a phenomenon that happens a lot with signed deaf people, who in the United States, speak mostly ASL. Since they don\u2019t dominate the English language, they\u2019re seen as inferior, incomplete, incompetent, stupid, and so many other negative notions that are born with this prejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, deaf people, and people with other disabilities, suffer from linguistic ableism<\/a>. <\/strong>This happens when people use ableist sayings and terms that work almost as slang. These expressions gain popularity within society, even if sometimes people don\u2019t understand well the meaning behind those words, and use them without much awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Am I being ableist when I talk?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This type of ableist language encourages an exclusion cultura that only grows stronger. Once again, we can notice the reflections of the audism culture<\/strong> in which we live, inferiorizing deaf people. To ensure we don\u2019t keep repeating these prejudiced terms, we brought you some ableist expressions that you shouldn\u2019t use ever again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n