Thoughts on what we call “disabilities”

I’m at a loss how to communicate what this hearing aid means to me–how profoundly it has effected…changed, my life. It’s not the inability to hear–but the effect of losing a capacity one has come to depend on, and lacks the resources to replace. Hard of hearing is not a less severe form of deafness–it is different, as any truly deaf person would almost certainly agree.

I belong to the hearing world. At my age, I will never belong to the deaf world–which is a culture onto itself, for which, “Hearing” is not something that’s been lost, not a deficiency… it is simply, Other. If I were to learn ASL (something I would very much like to do–though learning a new language at my age is probably more of a challenge than I’m able to take on) –and even become proficient in it–I would still be a visitor in the culture. I would still belong to the Hearing world, the hearing culture.

When I say, I’m at a loss to communicate what this means to me–it’s in part, because of how profoundly this has impressed on me the degree to which our various capacities, define us–and what this means. How all of these, are less about our physical differences, or neurodiversity, than the social conditions imposed on us.

I do not have a ‘disability’ because I do not hear well, but because I do not hear well– I am, to the degree of that loss, excluded from full participation in the hearing world to which I belong–in ways more profound than I would have imagined… and more profoundly than I can adequately express.  Let me state this in different words: my disability does not consist of a hearing loss, but in how it excludes me from the social culture to which I belong–and there lies the more important meaning–for in different ways, this can be said of all the various ways humans diverge from the norm, from the privileged, power enforced mythologies of the Normal.

And in this, I can be thankful for this loss, in that it has given me insight into a range of human diversity, and the cruel tyranny of the Normal over all of us.. without which, I would not have understood with such clarity.

The neo-Nazi, eugenicists, who have risen to power–with representatives in the White House–are our ultimate enemies. Enemies of all of us. All of us. Because there is no such thing, as “Normal”… and there is no way to be rid of us… but extermination of the entire human species. Which is clearly, their unconscious goal.