A Canadian on Politics

thesedeafeyes:

thelegalizeddeafies:

thatdeafdude:

teaandtheatre:

arfism:

Some of you may have heard of Dirty Signs with Kristin. A youtube channel where a hearing person (who seems to have never studied ASL) is showing how to sign dirty phrases in ASL. However, it’s not even grammatically correct, some of the vocabulary is wrong, and some of the phrases are completely sexist & racist. She just announced that she has gotten signed to publish a book. This is where we need to come in and tell her this is NOT okay. Please click through the link to read more about this and read some of the fantastic comments being left about this. Take the time to email the publisher about this. Share this on tumblr & facebook. Tweet about it (even Marlee Matlin did!).

In addition, I have tried to communicate with Kristin via her Dirty Signs with Kristin facebook page and instead she has blocked me and has been consistently deleting any critical comments being left on her wall. Not cool Kristin. Not cool.

Doesn’t she have a segment on Tosh.0 too?

Yup! She does. AND this is also where we come in to stop her.

And sign the petition! (http://goo.gl/VylVJ) 

^^^^Petition signal boosting!!

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION!!!

(Source: zoeenuage, via stfufauxminists)

shortformblog:

Great piece by The Washington Post on Gallaudet University’s evolving culture, which includes students who didn’t grow up in schools for the deaf (but instead, public schools) as well as hearing students being taught instruction in sign language. This is a big evolution for the school, which as recently as five years ago heavily protested the appointment of a school president who (while deaf) did not grow up learning American Sign Language. That proposed president, Jane Fernandes, eventually had to give up the opportunity, and considers herself a victim of an ongoing war within deaf culture. “There remains entrenched at Gallaudet a strong deaf culture that perpetuates a very narrow way to live as a deaf person,” she claims. Fascinating story about a small, insular subsection of the world.

Really great article - speaking as someone who is hard of hearing* and familiar with Deaf culture (though I am definitely more on the hearing side, I am relatively fluent in ASL due to some fascinating opportunities I had as a teenager), I think they did a good job at providing details without portraying it from an intensely hearing perspective.

To be honest, though, reading that the former potential president of Gallaudet feels that ”[t]here remains entrenched at Gallaudet a strong deaf culture that perpetuates a very narrow way to live as a deaf person,” is likely a sign she would not have been a good fit at a very strong Deaf culture school.  Most Deaf would never feel that their lives are narrow, and frankly, there are no Deaf people I have met (though a few “hearing impaired”) who lived narrow lives, whether they could speak or not, whether they existed entirely in ASL or not.  Nor would I, as someone who first walked into a deaf centre as a volunteer only able to sign basic words and finger spell, really call the culture insular, though I can absolutely see from a non-ASL perspective how it would seem so.

* for full disclosure, my hearing aids, due to the joys of technology, now bring me up to what I think is near normal hearing.  

(via shortformblog)