He Who Has Ears, Let Him Hear: Thoughts on Deaf Culture and Queer Identity. (Guest Post by Jake Wandel)
Growing up, I remember Thanksgiving as a time when my dad would expand our dining room table with the three extra leaves he built to host a party of ten. Setting this table was my job each year, and I remember enjoying every part of it knowing the people I was setting it for. Most years, especially early on, my mom’s parents, henceforth affectionately referred to as Nana and Grandpop, would come visit along with other friends and family. When we would sit down at this expertly set table with all the smells of a traditional Thanksgiving feast tantalizing our senses, it was our custom to pray before eating. My Grandpop, being the patriarch at the table, was given the ol’ Presbyterian pass-off and my mom would ask him to pray for the meal. He would always gratefully accept the invitation, and then, instead of bowing our heads and folding our hands, the eyes of everyone at the table would remain absolutely fixed on him. You see, my Grandpop built his career teaching deaf students, and when he prayed, he signed.
I tell this story to provide context to my connection with deaf culture. I am a hearing person and the son of hearing parents. I didn’t grow up exposed to deafness, and to be honest, with the exception of those few Thanksgiving meals, I had absolutely no interaction with sign language or a deaf person in my childhood. My Grandpop wasn’t even deaf himself, although he and my Nana are both considered CODAs (Children of Deaf Adults) and therefore ranked within deaf culture at least to some degree. It’s only within the last two years that I have even engaged with deaf culture in any significant way. So, by no means am I the expert, nor do I think you should take my word for anything I say regarding deaf culture. I simply mean to use my own limited experience with deaf people and their culture to highlight similarities with my experience as a queer man and lessons I’ve learned from my deaf brothers and sisters in how they form identity, find community, and create meaning through their minority experience.
To be deaf in a hearing world is hard. I’d encourage any and all readers to watch the documentary Sound and Fury, which explores the dissonance between deaf culture and hearing culture particularly surrounding the use of cochlear implants. The film captures the nuances of identity politics and begs the viewer to wrestle with the question, “Is deafness a disability that should be cured if given the opportunity?” I realize to most hearing people that question has an obvious answer, but as you watch the film you’ll see a completely different perspective emerge amongst those who are actually deaf themselves. To a culturally deaf person, their deafness is not a disability, it is membership into a world profoundly shaped by every human sense besides the ability to hear. Their struggles come with the inability to interact with the hearing world, not with the inability to hear music or the rain as it hits the ground.
I can’t help but empathize with that struggle. To be gay in a straight world has its unique challenges too. Heteronormativity can be dismissed by the majority as a victim’s cry posturing for pity or grasping for power. But to the queer person, they’re living in someone else’s world. Their experiences drive them to find others like them, to form culture, and to live in a society that fits their humanity and perspective on life. To most queer people, their gayness is not a defect, but rather a membership into a world profoundly shaped by the inherent contrast of their inner and outer selves with the world around them. These differences lend heart to strength, compassion to judgment, and color to the black and white. Our struggles come with the fear and tension that flows from a lack of understanding, not with the inability to perform femininity, masculinity, or gender norms as they’re prescribed.
Another lesson I’ve gleaned from deaf culture is the sincerity of their identity formation as it pertains to their deafness. I once had a discussion with my friend, the mother of a little boy who is culturally deaf. We sat in the car debating whether her son would be deaf in the new heavens and new earth. What an interesting topic, right? It’s not an easy yes or no. To her, especially as she embraces the fullness of her son’s experience as a deaf person, she was reluctant to think that he would just be made to hear into eternity. Being deaf is as much a part of his identity as is the color of his skin or his personality. Surely some redeemable essence of his deafness would be preserved into eternity!
The same, I reason, goes for those of us who are gay. Surely we won’t all be straightened out after we die. What a loss that would be! The essence of our lives, if we are to welcome being queer as a self-conception, isn’t lost after we accept Jesus’ death, resurrection, return, and the promise of new life. That is off-putting in much the same way that many deaf people might feel troubled when hearing people assume speech is better than sign language. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. The problem occurs because we lack the ability to understand each other. One of the greatest transformations of the new earth will be our ability to understand and interact with others fully without barriers of language or ignorance. Every tear shed because of these misunderstandings will one day be wiped away for good. And in the presence of God we’ll all be made one while continuing to represent the unique qualities that make us different.
Deaf culture has a lot to teach the hearing world. But ultimately, it typifies the minority experience so well, especially as it relates to the pressure from the outside world to change or somehow experience life differently in order to find meaning and happiness. I’ve grown to view my identity, community, and meaning as a celibate gay Christian as one that resembles a deaf person in a hearing world. I’m normal, I have as much capacity to love and be loved as my straight neighbor, and the struggles I encounter have less to do with my differences and everything to do with our mutual inability as humans to fully embrace and live through those differences together this side of the new heavens and new earth. I look forward to living on the other side, but for now I embrace the tension and strive to build those connections where I can.
Jake Wandel.
Photo Courtesy of Gregg Webb
Jake is a celibate gay Christian and a father of two boys. For more on his life and other musings, you can find him on twitter @jake_wandel.
