Audism - What?

We've heard of:
racism
sexism
deism
and so on.......

This site lists all the "-ism"s and their description. Fascinating. http://phrontistery.info/isms.html

Leaves this....what is AUDISM? A belief that is practiced by either hearing or deaf people that "the ability to hear is important, than the ability to obtain information by visual and manual means". In other words, anyone who has a hearing loss of more than 50% is deemed unworthy as human beings.

Check out this website, where it shows a movie called "AUDISM". I am not sure if it has voice or not. www.audism.tv/pages/videos. It has a powerful statement. I certainly can understand the guy who asks "Can you read my lips?", most of us have been in that position before, where we say "I can't hear" or point to our ears and shake our heads to only get people who open their mouths wide enough and say "CAN YOU READ LIPS?"

How insulting can one get? I can't hear, and you're asking me if I read lips, why else am I trained to speak and read lips in speech classes? Never mind that the choice of speaking and lipreading was mine in the first place.

The attitude of audism is "you can't hear, you're not worth much to the human race." That attitude provides the person with a sense of "power" to make decisions over a person with a hearing loss. "You can't get a good education because you can't hear." "Music! You like music? Yeah right, you can't hear." "My child will not learn if he/she uses sign language, he/she must learn how to talk."

Talk - what is talk? Are talk and speak the same thing? Let me consider the meaning and give you a layman's term. Nope. Talk conveys conversation that happens between persons. Speak means the ability to talk with voice. However, audism implies that if a person cannot speak - he/she is not human. Are we talking about a person who is mute, cannot speak - is he/she non-human? Deaf people are not by nature mute. Even the most profound deaf persons out there can speak fluently that people who hear, take them for hearing people! Confusing, isn't it?

Take Helen Keller - a child who had language before her illness, rendered deaf and blind. She did not only have intelligence - she had a surplus of it; however, her frustrations were far from calm. Oh! The first language she learned - Sign Language! She learned in increased capcaity in exponents after W-A-T-E-R. When she grew up, she wanted to learn how to speak, but how!? She can't hear or see? Never underestimate someone who wants to learn. She did speak, very well from what books tell me.

An audist would see Helen Keller and say she can't do nothing. This is because she would be "less than human" due to her dual sensory loss. At first yes, but when reached through language and communication - she became more than human, she transcended it.

So Mr. or Miss Audist - ask yourselves this: Are you human or an animal? Well basically a human is an animal, we are mammals in the Animalia Kingdom. Oh well, there's no such thing as perfection. I hope you will take in consideration of what it truly means to be human. I

t was once told that apes, monkeys and chimpanzees didn't have langauge....does that mean they shouldn't be in the same classification of the Animalia Kingdom? Oh, other than aural and vocal linguistics - they've mastered sign language.

Maybe I'll add more .....