Why be surprised? The fact that deafread.com is almost exclusively Amercian does put off the rest of the world. In its early day I did email asking them to include more international content. Not much have been done about this realistically, and so it end up being deafread.com as “that USA site” – which I do think is a pity.

Deafread.com have much potential, and already is great for USA itself (although I do think many bloggers on it need to learn how to blog – ie blog for the blog itself and not to try and get into deafread.com only – your blog is viewable by the world, don’t just aim for deafread.com – make use of trackbacks, pingbacks, links etc (ie one could insert a trackback to this blog – where it’ll post as a comment, but is a link to their blog with their view etc – linking blogs, making networks) Sadly…many bloggers in deafread.com often blog in the sense of “let’s make a post and see if I get into deafread.com – ie many topics are “ASL Response to Carl” – with no links…

For an outsider it make no sense whatsoever unless you’re an avid follower of deafread.com which I am not. I am interested in great blogs yes that’s true and that’s how deafread.com could work…but…it’s managing to change blogging into a mishmash of a mailing list/forum style – I don’t think that was the intention but that’s how I view it now.

I’ve found that there are no “true” facts. I am actually hoping for a more universal audience of deaf people and let people realize that we will always have to get political wherever we live. *WARNING: Metaphysical time* The facts of “politics” is different from USA, Canada and Mexico, yet we’re all connected together. Europe is no different. Just because a country has “democratic” in their name doesn’t mean it is democratic, so facts are funny like that. A scientist would say that things fall at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared, and I would say that can be wrong, then the scientist would say oh ok, only if air resistance is neglected. I would then say, that can still be wrong, we are only talking about earth and not on other planets or even in empty space. So these facts that scientist give out only give a narrow view.

Statistics is worse too. Suppose there were 10 families in one town, all families either have 1 kid or 10 kid, why would we say that the average family in that town has 5.5 kids? (5 families with 10 kids, and 5 families with 1 kid) How do we get .5 children anyways?

Anyways, I’m unlike most americans, I am more interested in the views and lives of non-americans. Canada does not interest me at all, although they have legitimate deaf issues, but so does every country in the world. I can imagine how people in different countries feel when all of our blogs are about captioning on tv or at the movies, when those other countries haven’t gotten to that point yet, much less get a videophone or high speed internet access needed to view the VLOGS. There is a disparity of the rich and poor among the Deafs all over the world in the sense that a person who pays about 40-50 bucks a month can afford to look at VLOGs at 8 via cable access, while the economically disadvantaged may not be able to afford a computer or afford internet cafe access.

It’s probably safe to say that the Americans/Canadians you see through deafread.com are on the high end of the economic status, thus making us all completely out of touch with the rest of the Deaf world, so that itself is ironic for us. I know many people who do not have a pager or internet access, so I often wonder just how many years behind they will be in “Deaf technology.”

As for the political climate, I would love to read about any country. I think it was switzerland that passed a law that parents of deaf children must learn sign language, otherwise it would be considered neglience or child abuse. This kind of legal education would help all Deaf people greatly.

Lastly, why should Deaf people all over the world have to read about American culture only? I’ve not been overseas yet but I often wonder if I would come off as a bold, brash and arrogant American who is deaf in the eyes of all other deaf people within that country. This is a problem for Americans in general anyways, not just Deaf people, but I’d like to see that Deaf people all over the world can set up organizations all over, create an international organization if things are truly oppressive in that country etc.

I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen many major international players on Deafread.com, but that is being addressed apparently with Deafread international…but this division is still troubling, why have the division of “deafread america” and deafread international?? I still wouldn’t want to see posts approved by Deafread.com that attacks Deaf people, regardless of how the culture and political background is in that country. I don’t think Deafread.com should approve posts by a Deaf Taliban completely putting down women or deafs.

I’m an optimist but I believe there can be a global organization of Deaf people and yes, I want to go to the WFD in spain this summer, but I’m unable to go. I’ll have my chance in the future.

Are we trying to educate the hearing world who come across our blogs through Deafread, or are we trying to educate each other, us deafs?

BEG, Deafread is in the power to educate people to let the author know that they have audist or racist views in the sense against Deaf people. It is possible nothing is learned BUT a message is sent by Deafread that such thoughts are not tolerated and will serve an utilitarian purpose for other people to learn…which is..don’t do that or you’re off deafread.com.

If Deafread started to accept all the anti-deaf and audist websites on their blogrolls, what would that say about us, that we are a remarkable race for endorsing complete freedom of speech when we had the power to educate and even censure them. We’re not the government so we are not taking anyone’s right to free speech, but as an organization, Deafread ultimately bears more responsibility to promote pro-Deaf ideas and let authors know they are on notice to be banned from deafread.com. If authors do not want to comply and be ostracized, then that is fine. I do not want my time wasted on reading/watching stereotypes of deaf people through Deafread.com.

If someone makes a personal attack on someone else, I will delete it. If they want to attack me, I might approve it, if it’s not of a personal nature and only related to the post/idea. Most authors do not take responsibility so Deafread.com has the power to ensure authors watch what is posted. Now don’t get me wrong, if blogger is independent in every sense, they can do whatever they want, post racist, sexist, audist views, there’s not much we can do about it other than ignore it completely.

Dennis, if people call you an oppresser or an audist bigot, wouldn’t you want someone formal to explain to you why you are, if you, in fact, are one? I grew up in a small town, my high school teachers and townfolks would actually use the n-word and f-word casually without any malice behind it. I hated the n-word because I had many black friends and they would call me one too because I could dunk being only 5′11 and white. Now, gay people, that was a completely different thing for me. At RIT, I would casually use the f-word and my RA caught me and asked me what I said. I repeated it, not feeling any shame or embarrassment. My RA explained to me that the f-word was similar to the n-word and that is when I realized the power of language. I was glad he educated me and he did not jump down my throat and call me a homophobe or whatever. I’m also glad he did not ignore me and just let me go on with my ways.

I see way too many Deaf people that express anti-deaf views starting with the “too ASL” deafs, the deaf power folks, the ones who love to whine and argue, and all those other stereotypes. The more educated deafs will actually joke and make fun of all the “deaf power” people, but in my opinion, I have never met anyone who blatantly says “deaf power.” People who make fun of “Deaf power” are just perpetuating stereotypes of nonexistent deaf people. Now, the worse thing is, it is the educated deaf or HoH people who does the most of these kind of joking and looking down on deaf people.

I hear so many “oh my god, deaf people tend to do this or that” from Deaf professionals who work with deaf people all the time. What does that say about most of us? Who knows if many interpreters do this, and I know they do. I get comments all the time such as “wow, you are so smart.” That’s a red flag for me, indicating that this interpreter already has a bias of Deaf people and I’m not going to let them affect other deaf people. Now, back to Deaf professionals…how many do you know that are seemingly against deaf people in general? I can understand if they are annoyed by many individuals. I am annoyed by many people, but would never say “deaf people” in general and I know for every deaf person that does so and so, there are 100 more hearing people doing the same thing too. Everyone talks about Deaf people and their english skills, but I can easily find 1,000 hearing people with worse skills or education.

This get worse when you have USA editors dicating what people read about UK Deaf politics for example – ie they approve a blog of someone who is posting a lot of incorrect facts and no references whatsoever but does not approve another blog which does post the correct facts and provide links to references to back it up.

Deafread have the power to control what you think of the Deaf politics in the world and that is the wrong thing to do. It should never control output, but instead encourage you to read more, not control.

I don’t see how it would be remotely realistic for the deafread editors to monitor all posts they approve and rescind them if an inappropriate *comment* is made. How do you even propose that be done? Completely impractical.

Your better bet might be to simply discuss specific comments or posts you have issues with and why. People will come over, read, think, and it will percolate.

If you just somehow magically shut down anything “unacceptable” I don’t see where anything is learned.

I have been told several times that my failure to understand all things Deaf makes me an oppressor (did I spell that correctly?) and an audist bigot. I don’t agree with those comments, but they give me all the more reason to prove those who made them wrong.

Maybe the ‘down talk’ should just be tempered by common sense. I mean your last question sounds like you are equating deaf insults with African Americans using the ‘N-word’ amongst themselves. And I’m sorry, but I think they degrade themselves by doing that.

Dennis

An extreme is suggesting harm such as one blogger’s idea of another falling on his child. Or another using scatological words about a person (and I don’t mean simply using an expletive.) Paternalism aside, deleting those is being responsible for our public image.

If a critical blog brings something good, fine. If not, trust the blog respondents to call the writer on it. We have a pretty good system of moderating each other.