A Response to Deborah Gideon

Here is my response to Deborah Gideon of Pepper Pike, Ohio who wrote this to People magazine, dated May 23, 2005:

Hear Say

Has activist Marvin Miller lost more than just his hearing in "Building a Town for the Deaf"? Through the miracle of the cochlear implant, my deaf child lives in the world of hearing. Deafness is not a culture but a disability. Miller gives new meaning to the expression "deaf and dumb".

Spoken like a true retard, is she?

Deborah, this world is not hearing. It is not deaf's, either. It is the world for everyone else. It belonged to each of us. Obviously, you did not research or listen to understand something -- Marvin Mille is not attempting to set a town for Deaf people, he is attempting to establish a town for SIGNERS. People who uses sign language.

After all, this is the United States of America -- the land of opportunity -- we do not have to conform to your absurd ideals of normalcy, Deborah. Your vision of normalcy is barbaric, demeaning and unnatural for us who uses the sign language on a daily basis.

Your beliefs that cochlear implants is a miracle is misplaced at its best. It indicated that you will do anything to "hearize" your child in order to make it "un"Deaf -- honey, it won't work. Even you already identified your child as Deaf before anything else -- he'll be always Deaf first. You may attempt to "hearize" your child, but your child eventually will abandon you for our world where s/he can be appreciated by people who knew hir frustrations and struggles. It has been like that for hundreds of years. The cochlear implants will *not* make a dent in the Deaf Community, it will terrorize and dissipate -- like oralism, hearing aids and all that shit.

According to the dictionary.com, culture is:

The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.

We have a language, our sets of customs, arts, beliefs, institutions et al and your point is irrelevant. Deaf culture is a culture as much as it is tied with disability, like it or not.

But you're just retard, bigot and ignorant who wanted to normalize something that is not even there in the first place, Deborah.

Do I expect you to reason? Of course not, because you are typical hearie to start with.

R-