Audism has two faces, folks.  There's the one the FSSA so bravely and persistently defeated, and the other, much more ugly one, that is now beginning to rear its very ugly head.

I'm speaking of the form of audism that comes FROM the deaf community, as opposed to the kind imposed on us by the gumflappers whose ears are good for  more than holding their glasses up. 

Don't get me wrong. I supported the protest and the FSSA - donated a little money here in Illinois at our Tent City,  went alone to  Ray LaHood's office here in Illinois (he's my congressthing) and told his staff, at great length,  what the FSSA was fighting for, and wrote comments in others blogs,participating in that wonderful, freewheeling discussion that was going on,  and hoped and  prayed along with everyone else.

I am a DEAFIE, folks, a Gallaudet Alumni (e-84, ASP, B nB, etc.) and proud of it. 

That being said, I'm more than a little bit disturbed at the backlash and nasty comments I'm  seeing in print against people who came to ASL late in life, people who were raised as oral, C.I.'s, Cuers, SEE, SIMCOM, etc. as a component of the recent successful upsurgence in pride at Gallaudet. 

Any deafie seen using anything except ASL is automatically branded a traitor &  tool of the oppressors. C.I. kids face intense pressure to unhook.  The thing is, the C.I. kids usually had ZERO say about whether or not to be implanted.

NONE of us had any choice about where we learned signs, or what sort educational environment we got. Take me: my dad was career military, so I ended up atytending 10 schools in 12 years all over the U.S. & Japan.  When we returned to the US in the early 70's, people who should have known better told my dad that sign language was for dummies - so I was tossed into every kind of classroom over the years: a self-contained classroom (here, I got my first exposure to sign. AZ teacher handed me the old SEE dictionary and told me to learn signs.  By myself.) 

 My father was in the Air Force for 20 years.  We moved often, following his squadron, and I ended up attending 10 schools in 12 years, often moving several times per year.  I've been in every kind of program there is (or was, back then) except for cued speech. Oral, mainstreamed but in a special deaf classroom, mainstreamed without a special classroom & no interpreter, institution (CSDB, 1974-78).

Most of the time, I was just tossed into the public school system without any support whatsoever - and, folks, while I used to be able to speak clearly, having lost my hearing @ age 8, my speech degenerates more and more each passing year.   I now have such a hard time making myself understood orally, now,  I am as as dependenton on terps as everyone else is.)  

You get the point. It took me years to get comfortable expressing myself in sign, and I didn't really become fluent until my Gallaudet years.  It was fairly rare back then, but much more common now, I believe.  

We're like Londoners that way.  We can judge a person and sense their history according to the way they communicate, what signs or mode they use, etc. 

At any rate, a distressing and  unspoken side effect to this is: anyone truly skilled and comfortable with written english is suspect.  Big vocabulary, can write like a gumflapper buts signs like a Pigeon or simcoms?   Aha! here's  spy, an interloper, Comrades! Take him outside and shoot him!

Punch up the comments on Ridor and other blogs using a keyword search "simcom."  Its' pretty representative.  

We need to throttle this particular breed of snake RIGHT NOW.  Why? 

• One,  It reminds me too much of what's happening in the African-American community, where, in poor areas, people consider academic excellence a "white" or "asian," thing to excuse their own failures. The "deaf crab barrell" ain't the only barrell of crabs out there

• Two, people reading these things might think that we "tweeners" (my word for deafies raised outside the system, cuz we tend to get stuck between two worlds.) will run into more rejection from the deaf community, on top of the rejection of the gumflapping world.  We lose a LOT of talent this way. Besides...    

• Three, this sort of Deaf-on-deaf Audism is  HOLDING US ALL BACK, BOTH AS A COMMUNITY AND AS INDIVIDUALS.  Institutional teachers at all levels K-12  believe that vicious old lie that deafness and grammar just don't mix, since they either grew up with it themselves or because this is hammered into them from above (principals & Superintendants) below (students) and from each side (staffers) and so they either stop trying, or never try at all, although they would phrase it differently.

Sigh, OK,  rant over...for now.