Deaf/Hearing Relationships

Deaf/hearing relationships, romantic relationships between people with severe hearing loss and those without it, have unique problems with frustratingly obscure solutions.

Among many issues, one particular issue is that the hearie tends to fall into the role of interpreter in mixed hearing settings. For instance, if the couple meets up at a restaurant with several of the hearing person’s friends, the hearie would have to interpret the conversation for the deafie. This partner might find herself doing a lot of voice interpreting or ASL. However, since the hearing partner wants to participate in these conversations, as well as help the deaf partner participate, the hearie faces the unique challenge of simultaneously interpreting and participating in conversations. If the hearie is interpreting everything, then the hearie is so busy, maybe even stressed, that s/he doesn’t have the millisecond to contribute her own two cents to the conversation. Conversely, if the hearie doesn’t provide enough interpreting the deafie will not know what is going on in the conversation and will feel left out. The challenge for both people is to find that perfect balance where there is just enough interpreting that the deafie doesn’t feel left out, yet not so much that the hearie never gets a chance to participate in the conversation.

I’ve looked up and down searching for the perfect solution, the secret to achieving the golden balance where both partners feel happily engaged in a mixed hearing conversation. Some people argue that the hearie should teach all her friends ASL, or at least insist that they all sign up for classes. If all hearing people knew sign, then everyone would be able to sign to each other and the communication barrier would not exist. Unfortunately, many people are only half interested in ASL and concoct a million and one excuses for not finding the time to learn it. Another problem with asking that everyone learn ASL is that there would still be that time span when the various friends would be learning ASL. During that time they would be unable to have full conversations in sign since they would not know enough ASL to do so.

Another flaw with this solution is that deafblind folks would still require interpreting even if all the other friends knew ASL. Sure, the deafblind person would be able to have one-on-one conversations with all the friends instead of with just his partner. However, whenever there is a group conversation the deafblind person would only be able to participate if someone interpreted the conversation, which brings us back to our tricky problem.

Though deafblind myself, I do not consider myself an expert on deafblind issues. So much I’ve had to learn on my own simply by trial and error, research, and creativity. I know very few deafblind people, but those I have met have shared a few pointers.

There is a deafblind man I know who is married to a deaf woman. They both sign to each other, and since the man is deafblind the woman will often interpret for him. He has frankly stated, though, that he doesn’t consider his wife his interpreter. When he goes to a formal meeting he hires an interpreter, or SSP (Support Service Provider). What I wonder, then, is how he and his wife balance the issue of interpreting in informal settings? When they go to dinner with a large group of friends, does he simply have a conversation with just the person next to him throughout the entire dinner, or does someone interpret for him what the folks across the table are signing for the whole group to see?

The hard truth is that people with hearing loss are often left out of conversations. It’s a feeling one gets used to. The experience of being excluded from conversations occurs so frequently that it seems to normalize. The deafie can’t spend her whole day complaining about being left out, demanding again and again that so-and-so repeat this or that. No, it gets exhausting asking people to repeat themselves. We’ve got to pick our battles, we’ve got to pick which conversations we want to make an effort to hear, and which we’ll let slip by. The mumblings of classmates before class starts, for instance, might not be considered worth fighting about. The lecture of the professor, on the other hand, most certainly demands to be accessible. Many deaf people accept the fact that they will be excluded from conversations, to an extent. It’s a hard fact to accept, but peace of mind comes with its acceptance. Isn’t that our goal, peace of mind, happiness?

Hence, some in the deaf community argue that deafies in deaf/hearing relationships should simply and graciously accept that they will be excluded in some conversations around the hearing partner’s hearing friends and family. I know I have that secret wish that my partner could interpret everything. Sometimes I get carried away with visions of how he can open the doors to all possibilities. My God, he is amazing, but he is as human as I am. We humans have limits. If we didn’t have flaws, we’d be Gods. (Anyone for a deafblind God?) So it may be that the deafie must just accept and expect some exclusion from conversations with the hearing partner’s social groups. The experience of feeling left out from conversations is a “normal” part of being a deaf person; it is protested and minimized, of course, but there’s a limit.

The experience of a deaf person in a relationship with a hearing person is comparable to an American married to a Russian. The two might communicate perfectly in English, but the American finds that whenever she goes to the Russian’s family gatherings she never understands what’s going on. She doesn’t speak Russian and cannot communicate with her husband’s relatives unless he translates their words into English. The husband is too busy socializing, catching up with old cousins and paying his respects to his great aunts that he cannot stand by his wife the whole time telling her every word everyone says. He would translate now and then, of course, especially when someone is trying to talk to her, but for the most part he cannot translate for her and participate in the socialization at the same time.

The American in the scenario above might choose to avoid her husband’s family gatherings since she cannot understand what all the people are saying. Indeed, some people in the deaf community argue that the partners in the deaf/hearing relationships should avoid mixed hearing social groups. If the deafie is just going to feel left out among the hearing person’s friends, then why bother to hang out with them in the first place?

A lot depends on the minority’s personality: how does the person respond to challenging situations? The American in the scenario above might find it exciting to try to converse with people who speak a different language. She might entertain herself by trying to figure out what others are saying by looking for clues and piecing it all together. Or she might feel content to eat the food, play cards with an old uncle, and just be nearby her husband as he happily socializes.

So a deaf person in a deaf/hearing relationship could try to create a balance by looking for clues in the conversation, finding alternative forms of entertainment in the area, and welcoming any time the hearie finds to interpret some things. It’s just impossible for someone to both interpret and participate in a conversation, and if the company present are primarily friends with the hearing person then it is only fair that the hearie has the right to fully participate in the conversation. The alternatives are few, and as shown above they have their respective flaws, too. The deafie and hearie really need to set aside time to talk over the issue of communicating in mixed hearing groups. Out of love and respect the hearing person must do a minimum of interpreting, but not the extent required to fully include the deaf person. Dealing with these situations is inherent to the deaf lifestyle, and over time one develops strategies for handling these situations. (Hopefully!) If the deaf person is up for the challenge, she’ll join the group knowing she’ll have to seek out alternative entertainment from time to time. But if she’s not feeling up for a challenge, then she could graciously avoid the event and the hearing partner would understand. Communication and understanding is key, and the two would most certainly need to discuss the matter. Like many things in the disability world, they will probably have to pioneer their way through the issues that occur in mixed hearing social groups.

Order of Identities

An article discussing the situational-ness and contextual-ness of identity got me thinking of how my various identities form and prevent community. I am blind, deaf, female, African. You see how I put blind first? People notice my white cane way before they notice my skin color, gender, or age; plus, they can't see deafness. I find I have a shared understanding with the blind folks that does not extend to people of all the other categories. While I feel affinity for those in the other categories, somehow our shared identity in that category never draws us together the way blindness draws me to other blind people. There are several African students on campus but only one blind student: I went out of my way to meet and befriend that one blind student. The first time an African student's presence was made known to me, I went out of my way to befriend him, too, but it resulted in nothing. I concluded that my disabilities categorized me as an "other" despite our shared heritage, our shared identity as Africans. Why? Is it that, in America, the blind and deaf are thrown in the bottom-most social wrung, far below the Africans? Why do the other African students not make efforts to befriend me, while they make efforts to befriend other Africans on campus? Some identities bring people together, some do not. Apparently, disabilities bring people together more strongly than ethnicity.

Street Encounters with Sighted Strangers

When people on the street stop me to say how impressive it is that I seldom bump into things--another way they say that is, "Your's so pretty! Do you know that?"--I almost never ever tell them that I can see a little. If I ever revealed to a person on the street that I have a little vision, all my orietnation and mobility training would instantly be disqualified. Furthermore, they would continue to hold the assumption that anyone blind, totally blind, could never walk and move smoothly. One of the main reasons I call myself blind instead of legally blind, partially blind, visually impaired, or low vision is to promote a positive message about blindness. People are convinced that blind people can't do anything, "Aha! You CAN see, you're not really blind. I knew a real blind person could never do that!" So, to promote a positive message about blindness I don't bother to tell strangers that I can in fact see a little. I use my O&M skills extensively and could never do what I do by just relying on my unreliable vision. I use my vision cautiously for a few things and probably use my O&M skills a lot more when traveling.

Have you ever had that experience of people on the street telling you how beautiful or pretty you are? It's bizarre. I always respond with a "thank you" and kind smile, but ever-present in my mind is the fact that a sighted person would never have this experience (except children). I really think the people who do this are simply trying to express their amazement that a blind person can move smoothly through space without crashing. The sight of a blind person moving gracefully through space produces an overwhelming "wow!" that in the English language translates into the words pretty and beautiful. I wonder what the experience of blind men is in regard to this issue. I must say that I am attracted to confident, graceful, and successful blind men. One of the guys I dated was one of these. To me, their assuredness in movement, confidence in gestures, and strength in voice all translate into handsome. But I would never walk up to such a blind man and say, "You're so handsome." Well, maybe if I were using a sexy tone... The point is, it's socially inappropriate for a strange person on the street to walk up to another strange person to say that person is beautiful without seeking romance. I can't remember a man on the street telling me I'm pretty/beautiful, I only remember many different women doing this.

I remember one instance where my boyfriend and I were exploring the Acropolis in Athens. As I walked with my left hand holding his and my right hand working my cane, a woman walking towards us stopped and said to me, "You're really pretty, I just wanted to tell you that." She had a Southern American voice and seemed to be in her late twenties. It'd been a while since I'd had such an experience, and as I said an amused "thank you" I wondered if this strange commentary was a distinctly American trait. I am pretty, in my opinion, but I highly doubt she approached me for that sole reason. I think she was impressed to see a blind person traveling, a blind person far away from home...she probably heard me talking in American English to my boyfriend, and despite his presence somehow still found the mirage of a blind American in Greece to be almost unbelievable, or even pretty.

I would enjoy one day doing a cross-cultural study of sighted attitudes towards the blind. Do strangers tell blind men that they are handsome? Do sighted non-Americans tell blind people that they are beautiful/handsome?

Biking Blind

For many years I would ride my bike on the sidewalks and streets of my neighborhood. Sometimes I would ride with my father or sister, but often neither of them were available and I was forced to either not ride at all or ride alone. I usually chose to ride alone, gliding along at a moderate pace. Occasionally there would be a close call that would scare me for a few minutes, but nothing dreadful ever happened. One day in high school I mentioned to my orientation and mobility instructor that I enjoyed riding my bike alone around my neighborhood. To my surprise, he told me that I was unfairly putting pedestrians and other people in my community in danger. I knew that I was putting myself at risk, knowing the dangers of trusting my limited vision, but I had never even considered the fact that I was putting other people at risk. I was stunned by my thoughtlessness. I have pretty much stopped riding bicycles without a sighted friend.

The NFB and the Deafblind

We must be very careful in choosing our self-sacrifices. In many places around the world, a blind person might choose to just stay at home because he knows that if he stepped outside on his own he would cause his family and neighbors much stress. The man would do it for the greater good, for the majority sighted people around him. I happen to be reading about Japanese culture at the moment and they are very big on self sacrifice. I find that if I were to refrain from requesting all the things I would need to be successful in life, such as FM Systems, braille books, etc, it would not be a positive image for the NFB, I would simply become another un-productive statistic. I've also heard of deafblind folks holding up cards to request passerby help them cross streets. Since I absolutely cannot hear traffic patterns reliably, then I suppose I could have chosen to hold up signs instead of asking for a chirping signal. For me, the greater freedom offered by a chirping signal was preferable. I really appreciate that you've revealed to me that chirping signals might actually make crossing streets harder for some deafblind people; that's a factor I was totally unaware of. As far as images go, I certainly did point out to the city technician that my hearing loss prevented me from listening to traffic patterns, as a solely blind person might.

A girl made a youtube video criticizing the NFB. Many of her claims were untrue and uninformed. I suspect, though, that some of her frustrations might stem from the common knowledge of the NFB, and that knowledge seems to have a strong tendency to cast the blind person as belonging to a homogeneous population. There are subdivisions like the deafblind Division, but that is not the voice most people hear from the NFB. To be honest, I don't know about the activities of the deafblind division, I don't know of any to speak of. A year or so ago I read in the news of the NFB's protest against making currency with tactile identifications. One of the NFB's arguments was that there exist machines that "speak" the denomination of a bill. If the deafblind division ever mentioned that the deafblind cannot use such a machine, their voices were not in the articles I read about the issue. By bringing this up I only mean to provide an example of how the NFB might not even represent its deafblind division, or the other deafblind organizations; I do just fine with folding bills, by the way, and have successfully been employed doing tasks involving money and cash registers.

I like the NFB, it's a fantastic and incredibly supportive organization. All I mean to convey is that I realize the NFB cannot always represent me because its intent is to represent the majority of blind people. I totally understand this, though the process of understanding and realizing this has been a little unsettling.

The NFB Standard Do Not Apply to Every Blind Person

A few months back I called the city's Transportation Department requesting that they place chirping signals at a particularly difficult intersection near my house. Today, finally, the city sent someone who actually did just that! I was amazed at how quickly the man was able to set up the chirping signals, and how little work it required. Reflecting on the whole situation, I wondered if maybe I could start a volunteer group to set up chirping signals at the intersections around the city. Then my boyfriend said, "You know what the NFB [National Federation of the Blind] would say?"

"Oh shit," I was suddenly hot and took off my hat. I felt momentarily stressed, ashamed, panicked. I knew exactly what the NFB would say. The NFB would say chirping signals are not necessary, a properly trained blind person can safely cross the intersections by listening to traffic patterns. Suddenly my plan seemed stupid, and I felt guilty for asking the city to set up a chirping signal at the intersection near my home.

After some thought, after talking it out with my boyfriend, I realized that the blind population is too diverse for the NFB to dish out standards for every single one of those blind people. I attended the Louisiana Center for the Blind and in some ways my confidence in crossing streets shrunk from that experience. I am blind, but I'm hard of hearing, too, and hence I cannot trust my ears to help me get across streets. I use a combination of vision and hearing to cross most streets, but some streets I simply do not feel safe crossing. The intersections that cannot be tamed by my vision and hearing are those for which I want the city to install chirping signals.

My point is that the NFB should not be treated as law by all blind people. I've had to pick and choose which standards of the NFB to adopt, and which I should discard because I am hard-of-hearing. There are other blind people with multiple disabilities that probably experience similar frustrations with the NFB. I noticed that the girl in the youtube video who rants against the NFB has a partial facial paralysis. I strongly feel that the NFB should more vocally acknowledge the non-homogeneity of the blind population.

A state of becoming

I feel so alone sometimes because I don't have people I can point to and say, "If she can do that, so can I." The deafblind are such a small population scattered across the world, and all of them have varying levels of deafblindness. How can I find someone with my exact hearing loss and blindness so that we can finally write down in stone what we can and cannot do?

My potentials, my abilities, are like the Americas three years after Columbus discovered them. Known but unknown. My potentials are known and unknown, in a constant state of becoming, in a constant state of discovery. I strongly believe that at age seventy, if I ever reach such a wise age, I would still live in this same state of becoming.

No one with my exact abilities to be my role model, no way to fairly compare myself with the abilities of those around me, those who are ablebodied and disabled...It's a never-ending frustration and a never-ending adventure. I wouldn't mind if it felt like an adventure all the time, a fun exciting adventure.

In one contest for the blind, one of the considerations of this contest is a blind traveler's independence from sighted assistance. The Helen Keller National Center teaches the deafblind how to travel, but the methods of travel and the abilities of the traveler vary depending on the amount of vision and hearing of each individual. So, the travel skills of one deafblind person are difficult to compare with another's, unless they both have the same exact amount of vision and hearing. The National Federation of the Blind's (NFB) training centers, on the other hand, teach that most blind people can cross the most complex intersections completely independent of sighted assistance. For those with hearing loss, the NFB's expectations cannot apply to them. Thus, the "idnependence from sighted assistance" of the deafblind cannot fairly be compared to that of blind people without hearing loss. Lacking a community to compare my travel skills with, it is difficult to determine the extent of my travel abilities. Perhaps there is more in the world that I can do, perhaps there is a way for me to cross a tricky intersection in town. I cannot be sure since there are few people with my exact abilities from whom I could learn new techniques. So without a definitive model to follow, my abilities and potentials are in a state of "becoming." I'm continually discovering and learning the boundaries of what exactly I can and cannot do.

So, in that contest for blind travelers, I wonder how the committee would judge the travel skills of deafblind travelers in comparison to blind people without hearing loss.