Big /G/ Gay

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/.