Stages of Deafhood identity development?
Transcript:
You know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross — she’s famous for her study of how people grieve — when someone dies, how the grieving process goes. She identified 5 stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I won’t elaborate any further on these — you can do a Google search and find a wealth of information on this.
Her theory can be taken and modified a bit to explain how our Deaf identity, or our Deafhood, develops. I’ve taken elements from Kubler-Ross, Neil Glickman (who also discussed Deaf identity development), and Genie Gertz, who also has a discussion of how Deafhood identity develops. I’ve taken bits from each of them and modified it here.
My conception is — and this is just preliminary here — it’s not fully worked out yet, and I’d appreciate your feedback and ideas on how to improve on this idea — the first step or stage of Deaf identity is Denial. We say “I’m not Deaf. I’m Hard of Hearing” or “I’m Hearing — my family is Hearing, I’m Hearing like them, it’s just that I don’t hear exactly as well as they do” or “I’m not Deaf! Deaf people are inferior. It’s better for me to fit in with Hearing people, after all, it’s a Hearing world”.
The next stage is Anger. After we realize our frustrations and struggles in trying to conform to Hearing identity and values, we totally reject the Hearing world and its values, we take off our hearing aids, we stop using our voice, become overly “militant” and “rebellious”. But it is important to understand that this comes from anger, that our feelings and actions come from anger at this stage. Also important to know is that many Deaf are “stuck” in this stage, for example, those people who label everything as “HEARING-MINDED” or blindly reject a person for using SEE. Their arguments and discussion don’t come from a reasoned analysis of why or how that situation has arised or exists, but just an anger against those persons or ideas that don’t fit what their conception of what the “perfect Deaf person should be”.
But later, we realize that Hearing people are all around us. We can’t live separately from them. So we start to think on how we can live with them, but still maintain our Deaf pride and identity? We start to “bargain” on what’s OK about Hearing people, and what’s not OK. We think about ourselves — what are our preferences — “I’m Deaf, but I like music, is that a Hearing thing?”. So we negotiate or bargain — not with them, but with ourselves — to find our personal system that works for us in our identity.
I think many of us then go through a “withdrawal” stage where we start exploring ourselves and “cool off” from that anger stage to where we can modify our thinking — I’m not sure what the best word for this stage is, but “withdrawal” seems to fit. So we start to integrate our thinking at this point.
Finally, acceptance. “I’m Deaf, I’m proud to be Deaf, and that’s who I am. There are some things about the Hearing world that I cannot accept, and I won’t accept those things. Other things, I like, I accept them. If I want hearing aids, that’s my decision, and I accept that for myself. If others don’t want them, that’s their decision. Speech — if you want to speak or not speak, that’s my personal decision. As long as you understand that this cannot be forced on me.” Or Audism, that I will reject in order to assert my Deaf pride, but this is not coming from anger and my rejection is not to lash out at those who express audism. We come from a firm, loving perspective, but still wish to maintain our pride.
This is something along the lines of what I’m thinking.
Again, this is just a rough, preliminary thought process here. Your feedback on this is welcome.
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