Seven years ago, I worked at a school which had been known
for many years as a school for ‘the deaf’. It was a regular school which had
made adjustments to curriculum, structure and staffing to accommodate students
with varying degrees of hearing loss.
Many families made the decision to travel both intra and interstate to allow their children to attend a school which was the
epitome of an inclusive educational facility. The school supported the needs of
these students and managed to do so without treating hearing loss as a
disability.
Over many years, the school became a central part of a
community which encouraged deaf and hard of hearing adults to be as involved
with the school as possible. Housing was made available for low income families
in which some, or all members, had a hearing loss and facilities such as the
retirement home catered to profoundly deaf elderly people, as well as those
with the type of degenerative hearing loss which can often come with age.
The school employed both deaf and hearing teachers, teacher
assistants and teachers of the deaf (TODs). The surrounding community was made
up of both deaf and hearing students, students with smaller degrees of hearing
loss and many children of deaf adults (CODAs). The school itself had both a
singing choir and a signing choir which was open to both hearing and
non-hearing students and the language other than English (LOTE) taught at the
school was Australian Sign Language (Auslan).
Over a period of ten years, the school began to change, with
the progressions of technology and medical science, and the numbers of
profoundly deaf children declined dramatically. A vast number of students were
arriving at school having had a Cochlear Implant (CI) and while these were
effective to varying degrees, most deaf students now required less support than
those who had gone through the school a few years ahead of them.
I arrived at the school on the very cusp of this change and
began training, along with five colleagues, to be a TOD. Through regular
interactions with staff and students I found myself fascinated by the
similarities, in social experience, between myself and many of the profoundly
deaf adults who worked in the school.
I had come out to family and friends gradually from the age
of 15, but was only out to a small handful of my colleagues at the school. I
was also out to a small group of students from my Year 6 class who asked me
outright if I was a lesbian and, suspecting that at least two of them were, I didn’t feel the need to cover up the facts. I felt an obligation
to them to be honest about who I was and their acceptance, despite their tender
age, gave me the courage to be completely out at work.
Through my TOD studies and interactions with deaf people, I
discovered that there was a significant difference in the way many of these deaf people
identified. Some of them were deaf,
while others were Deaf, or ‘Big D
deaf’ as my course lecturer explained.
While many of the people I met had a hearing loss, or were
born deaf, this was merely just another fact about them. It was another detail
which they would likely not list along with loving football or being a fan of a particular type
of music or TV Show. It wouldn’t be something they felt the need to list in
their ‘About Me’ section on Facebook or Tumblr.
For others, however, being deaf was a huge part of their
identity. They were Deaf, as opposed to deaf. Many of these people had married
other deaf people, which sometimes resulted in having deaf children, or
interacted almost exclusively with people from the Deaf community. Many of these
people had few hearing friends, by choice, and when asked if they would ‘cure’
their hearing loss if a breakthrough treatment were available, they said
absolutely not.
This leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, I’m ‘Big G’
gay. Despite the hardships I endured as a young person coming out, and some of
the ridiculous tosh I’ve had to listen to since, I wouldn’t change it if you
paid me. While I have many straight friends and have no desire to interact
solely with other gay people (that one factor does not a strong friendship
make), I spend most of my time consumed and inspired by issues concerning gay
people. Afterellen.com is my main source of news and entertainment, I read and
write gay fan fiction and I work hard to increase GLBTI visibility in the
schools I teach at.
As for my identity, well primarily I’m a mum, a teacher and
a writer, but I’m also more than that. I’m a gay mum, a gay teacher and a gay
writer. Gay makes me more, not less. Gay gives me a perspective, in all of
those roles, that many people just don’t have and I would like to think that a
person who is a deaf mum, a deaf teacher and a deaf writer could relate to
that.
For many people it might be just one more thing, but for me
it’s significant and for that reason I think it deserves a capital /G/.
