What could have been a great day for deaf awareness has instead become rather… icky. World Hearing Day, founded by the World Health Organisation (WHO), aims to “raise awareness on how to prevent deafness and hearing loss and promote ear and hearing care across the world”.
Of course, people must be encouraged to protect their hearing as much as they can, but how can this be done without presenting deafness as this terrible, devastating condition (which, for many deaf people, isn’t the case at all)?
First and foremost, I should make clear that I said ‘many’ because for some, deafness can be a pretty big shock to the system, and may not be viewed with the same level of unabashed optimism I give to my own deaf identity. Hell, I was incredibly emotional when I got told I may benefit from hearing aids when I was a teenager.
Yet one can be sympathetic to this view, encourage hearing protection and champion the needs of deaf and hard of hearing people. These three things can and must co-exist, and there is a fine line across all of them.
As I write this on Tuesday, I think of a press release I was sent earlier from the RNID, who call on supporters to “help fund more research to help protect sound”. The charity had also previously co-produced guidance with the Royal College of General Practitioners, in which they borrow a phrase from the WHO and write about “disabling hearing loss”.
I wrote about this in a thread on Twitter, but I don’t see my deafness as “disabling”. I align myself with the social model of disability, meaning that it’s society’s barriers which disable me, rather than my conditions.
Labelling deafness as a “disabling hearing loss” could very well lead to some people viewing it as responsible for an inaccessible environment, when it’s actually as a result of society’s infrastructure, attitudes and behaviours.
Such a view from a deaf person could cause significant damage to a person’s confidence and independence around their deaf identity. People shouldn’t direct negativity towards themselves and their condition; they should direct it towards society’s barriers.
🧵 THREAD: I’m seeing @RNID using the phrase ‘disabling hearing loss’ a lot right now, and there’s something about it which really rubs me up the wrong way.
It’s straight out of the medical model of disability, for sure, saying the condition disables us, and not society.
— Liam O'Dell (@LiamODellUK) March 2, 2021
This is also similar to how we view hearing protection. Let us reframe the narrative to look at the specific things which can contribute to someone losing their hearing, rather than using deafness as this horrible fate which befalls anyone who doesn’t take it seriously. Focus on wearing earplugs or ear defenders at concerts and not playing music too loud, for example.
I would argue, however, that you should definitely mention tinnitus as a danger when talking about protecting your hearing. While there are so many incredible benefits that can come from being deaf (not least the beautiful language and community) there is nothing admirable about living with a permanent ringing in your ear which can rob you of a good night’s sleep. Trust me, I live with it.
Then again, with tinnitus often coming with a diagnosis of deafness too, it may well be hard to separate the two. It’s tricky to warn against developing tinnitus and just how debilitating it can be, when it regularly comes hand-in-hand with a diagnosis of deafness.
So, much like the push to change International Day of Persons with Disabilities to International Disabled Person’s Day, we may now need to push for World Hearing Day to focus solely on hearing protection, without talk of deafness.
It’ll be tricky, what with deafness being at the other end of the hearing binary, but World Hearing Day is not the right day for us to be talking about deaf awareness. We have a whole week in May for that.
Photo: Ollie Cole.
By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.
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Fred Trull
March 3, 2021
These awareness days are for the benefit of charity staff, they don’t do deaf people any good. It was something dreamed up by charities as part of their fund raising publicity program. It’s now old and tired.
Strangely enough they are promoted in the deaf community rather than the hearing. This is preaching to the converted!
It’s a week out for the charity staff. They have lots of very important meetings in very expensive premises, they travel the length and breadth of the country First Class paid for by their charity.
They stay in hotels and attend meetings and seminars where they take notes and vote for more deaf awareness after lots of earnest, serious discussions.
In between, of course it is quite a nice holiday for them and their partner. But we’re not supposed to mention that. The result? errr well nothing much happens really.
Another nice little earner for the favoured few.
Hartmut
March 7, 2021
Now a throw-in about the term to designate us:
When I was approached by someone who assumes everyone is able to hear and speaks to me, the usual response is universal: point to the ear and shake my head. Sometimes I speak “I don’t hear”, instead of “I cannot hear” to which we have been brainwashed by the audistic society. The negated modal “cannot” (and all its derivatives) implies, we ought to hear, we are beings minus hearing, we need to rehabilitate ourselves to be hearing, we have to overcome the handicap and be praised for speak and lipread exclusively.The English translation of the gesture “I don’t hear’ is accurate, while “I cannot hear” is an incorrect translation.
This is one of our contributions to the World Hearing Day.
Being deaf is also healthy! Inability to think has never been thought as a medical condition or sick. So is inability to hear. But thinking of it in this manner is a DISEASE, A SOCIAL ONE!