kajarainbow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kajarainbow) wrote2004-09-22 04:56 pm
kajarainbow) wrote2004-09-22 04:56 pm
Entry tags:
On Excessive Attachment to Culture
Recently, I learned about two deaf women that intentionally conceived a deaf baby by using artificial insemination. This really is a symptom of the thing that troubles me the most about deaf culture: its exclusivity and self-protectiveness. Its monoculture tendencies.
Now, some might call me a self-hating deaf person, like a self-hating Jew, and they would actually be partially right. I made a conscious decision to discard 'deaf culture' and I'm just now suspecting I might have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Deaf culture can help empower, it can offer ready access to resources and knowledge I really could use. But it also has its own issues.
Many 'self-hating Jews', I imagine, are that way not because of antisemitism but because of the problems with their culture, problems deaf culture also has. Both cultures seem to have a fear of losing themselves, of being vanished, and of being diluted. So, they seek to instill resistances in their members to inclusion of 'outsiders'. Many Jews don't want to marry non-Jews, and there seems to be a similar feeling in deaf culture that one cannot truly appreciate it unless one is oneself deaf.
Both cultures want more of their own to carry on the values. But the cultural indoctrination the Jews, indeed, all cultures, perform is less questioned than the desire to have deaf children. And yet the desire to have deaf children is just a slightly more extreme variation of the desire to have Jew children.
And yet we need indoctrination. Without it, we cannot instill values into children to help them learn to cooperate, to consider others. But does one really have to attempt to force ones own culture upon the child? Even discourage them from marrying outside the culture? Disconsider outsiders from having their own contributions?
It's worth noting that both Jews and deaf people are peoples that have been persecuted quite recently. Indeed, deaf people still are heavily misunderstood. Their capacities are routinely underestimated, legislators actually attempt to pass the occasional law, judges the occasional ruling, that restricts them because of mistaken conceptions about what their disabilities actually prevents them from achieving well. I actually know of attempted legislations regarding driving rights and jury duties within my own state in the past few years, and I'm pretty out of the loop on deafness news.
It is easy, in such circumstances, to develop defensiveness. Even to develop a negative slang for 'hearies'. Underdog cultures seem to do this routinely, I don't know of any culture/subculture that don't have some kind of stigma for those outside themselves, even if that stigma isn't shared by everyone within them, even if not everyone uses their own slangs for the 'mundanes' or 'hearies' or 'crackers' or 'gringos' or 'niggers' whatever.
And, yet, when people don't learn to develop some small degree of relaxation about this, to not be so attached to their cultures as to perceive threat in every foray outside, we see parents restricting their children to a narrow spectrum of possibilities. The deaf parents desiring to conceive deaf children is just a symptom of a malady afflicting all cultures, an aggravation and excess of defensive mechanisms adopted to aid those cultures' survival. The degree of this problem varies from culture to culture and subculture to subculture, some seem innately more 'open'.
Cultures have their own interests in mind, not necessarily your own interests. Alarming as the example of intentionally inflicting disabilities upon children might seem, it's just an exaggeration of the isolationism in many cultures. Be consciously selective about what you take from your cultures.
But that's not the complete story.
Now, some might call me a self-hating deaf person, like a self-hating Jew, and they would actually be partially right. I made a conscious decision to discard 'deaf culture' and I'm just now suspecting I might have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Deaf culture can help empower, it can offer ready access to resources and knowledge I really could use. But it also has its own issues.
Many 'self-hating Jews', I imagine, are that way not because of antisemitism but because of the problems with their culture, problems deaf culture also has. Both cultures seem to have a fear of losing themselves, of being vanished, and of being diluted. So, they seek to instill resistances in their members to inclusion of 'outsiders'. Many Jews don't want to marry non-Jews, and there seems to be a similar feeling in deaf culture that one cannot truly appreciate it unless one is oneself deaf.
Both cultures want more of their own to carry on the values. But the cultural indoctrination the Jews, indeed, all cultures, perform is less questioned than the desire to have deaf children. And yet the desire to have deaf children is just a slightly more extreme variation of the desire to have Jew children.
And yet we need indoctrination. Without it, we cannot instill values into children to help them learn to cooperate, to consider others. But does one really have to attempt to force ones own culture upon the child? Even discourage them from marrying outside the culture? Disconsider outsiders from having their own contributions?
It's worth noting that both Jews and deaf people are peoples that have been persecuted quite recently. Indeed, deaf people still are heavily misunderstood. Their capacities are routinely underestimated, legislators actually attempt to pass the occasional law, judges the occasional ruling, that restricts them because of mistaken conceptions about what their disabilities actually prevents them from achieving well. I actually know of attempted legislations regarding driving rights and jury duties within my own state in the past few years, and I'm pretty out of the loop on deafness news.
It is easy, in such circumstances, to develop defensiveness. Even to develop a negative slang for 'hearies'. Underdog cultures seem to do this routinely, I don't know of any culture/subculture that don't have some kind of stigma for those outside themselves, even if that stigma isn't shared by everyone within them, even if not everyone uses their own slangs for the 'mundanes' or 'hearies' or 'crackers' or 'gringos' or 'niggers' whatever.
And, yet, when people don't learn to develop some small degree of relaxation about this, to not be so attached to their cultures as to perceive threat in every foray outside, we see parents restricting their children to a narrow spectrum of possibilities. The deaf parents desiring to conceive deaf children is just a symptom of a malady afflicting all cultures, an aggravation and excess of defensive mechanisms adopted to aid those cultures' survival. The degree of this problem varies from culture to culture and subculture to subculture, some seem innately more 'open'.
Cultures have their own interests in mind, not necessarily your own interests. Alarming as the example of intentionally inflicting disabilities upon children might seem, it's just an exaggeration of the isolationism in many cultures. Be consciously selective about what you take from your cultures.
But that's not the complete story.
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And yet I can understand the instinct.
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