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From: Diane.Oliff@p0.f197.n253.z2.fidonet.org (Diane Oliff)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Decade Of The Disabled
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Date: 5 Jan 90 03:40:57 GMT
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In a message to Vixen * <12-23-89 23:20> Stephen White wrote:

SW*>proportion of jerks in the deaf community - and these jerks
SW*>are usually to be found in the extremes, like the sole deaf
SW*>child in a hearing family, or a radical family of solely
SW*>deaf.

Hey come on!

SW*>In the former case, they grow out of it - they are only
SW*>jerks because they dont know or want to accept who they
SW*>are. This could be because they think their body is 100%
SW*>them, not the lesser fraction it really is.

How else am I supposed to think? If I accept who and what I am, then I 
accept that I'm 100% ME. I ain't no lesser fraction of anything. I'm 
different from other people - so are you, so is everyone. It would be a bit 
boring if we were all exactly the same, wouldn't it?
 
So my differences are a bit different - well, I wouldn't have it any other
way, and if you think about it, who would want to wake up every day thinking 
of themselves as a partial person?

On some deaf people being jerks - well. Some blind people are real pigs - 
not because they are blind, but because they are pigs. Being different 
(blind, deaf, physially otherwise) doesn't mean you're a saint - it 
certainly doesn't mean I'm a saint, so if you met me on a bad day you could 
make a statement:

Girls of 21 with no ears are real jerks

and it would be true.

but not today, not most days, and I think a deaf kid in a hearing family is 
as much as anything esle feeling confused and excluded by so much happening 
around him or her that they get upset, and maybe a bit angry too, because 
they just don't understand what is going on.

I know I did.

Diane Oliff  
 

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