Harassment in the Deaf Community: Guidelines for Protection and Prevention
…………………………………….So, I got harassed during Homecoming 2017 Saturday afternoon. I am getting tired of this. I was trying to have good time for a change. The person who approached towards me in a threatening mode signed to me, “YOU ARE SICK! SICK! SICK! CRAZY! SICK!” in the PUBLIC EYE. That is a hate speech as well, too. You know who you are. I did not appreciate being humiliated. The public perception is that in Deaf community is getting sick of that same person who continues to cyber-stalk my own friends because we all believe in support system.
It has been like this for long time. It is now pathological. I also acknowledge that person needs help to get rid of a spiraling depression or exacerbate the behavior the person was already exhibiting.
October is National Bullying Prevention Month. The injustice of the situation is both palpable and maddening. There is a broken mental health service system and what we deal with in Deaf community is sad but not unsurprising result.
In the wake of this person’s harassment driven by hatred as well as hyper-vigilance, the detours and rumors will always chase after me. Does not matter anymore. And whether intended or not, the message sent by the person is that the value our culture places a human life depends upon community accountability as well as in Deaf community.
Can we examine this question, can this person understand the dangers of creating and maintaining an oppression environment of harassment? Can the person be expected to conduct itself in a form that accept the community accountability for causing harassment? Can this person understand the part as a community expectations not to violate someone else? Anger is not cool. The image above says it all. Anger becomes hatred. It is becoming immature. What kind of benefits would you get that out of it?
Finally, how can we foster an environment that harassment is being promoted in this society?
More to come.
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Can Deaf Returning Citizens Exist Without Deaf Community?
Can Deaf returning citizens exist without Deaf community? I do not think so. I believe that is important for information, knowledge, and communication. No one can take away the attribution of success and breach human rights. Bringing awareness about the term of “Returning Citizen” would make all difference.
No more “felons”—no more “convicts”—no more “offenders”—no more negativity. Returning citizen is a positive term. Can Deaf returning citizens deserve to be let alone to resume their life without the haters breathing down their necks? It goes way too far in the continuous punishment. As a nation, I believe that the failure of ignoring hard facts and expert opinions to be discussed in many public policy issues even in Deaf community.
When you see someone bully a Deaf returning citizen, how will you react to it? Does it make it an impressive train wreck? Makes you feel good about it?
I can bully and make Deaf returning citizens ashamed….I bring hatred to their faces…I make them cover their faces by how cyber-bullying can solve problems. I am the greatest bully, and they are inferior. I can do a good job by teaching bullies because it is awesome feeling to do this!”
Have we forgot about the importance of liberty and justice for all? Remember, the society has been trying to teach us the awareness of how to stop bullying including cyber-bullying and end the same way: suffer and humiliation. Do we really understand the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution: Cruel and Unusual Punishment? This is the real epidemic out there that needs to be addressed and examined. Break the stigma.
Please be aware about October as National Bullying Prevention Month. If you know someone who is a Deaf returning citizen who is in need for counseling for well-being, please feel free to get in touch with Deaf Counseling Center for more information.
http://www.deafcounseling.com/contact-us/
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Deaf Counseling Center Offers Free Hurricane and Fire Crisis Counseling
A very big heart of them to offer their time to do this. If you need counseling, Deaf Counseling Center can help you out with this.
http://www.deafcounseling.com/free-hurricane-fire-crisis-counseling/
http://www.deafcounseling.com/contact-us/
National Bullying Prevention Month: Deaf Returning Citizens
I would like to focus on writing about Deaf returning citizens and how to support them instead of bullying them. Deaf returning citizens recognize the society’s described behavior as a form of bullying which is and has been normalized in Deaf community, like competition over sharing. It is important to call out bullying as the social sickness it is.
That said, the Deaf community is now exposing the emotional hurt of their world and in this writing, tied it into fear of bullying drivers. As a member of Deaf community and a returning citizen who had experienced bullying and dealt with the bulk of the public accusations were kicked off in a style. October is National Bullying Prevention Month.
Since the bullying popped into my life scene and become part of my social and professional landscape. My life routinely overlaps at events and social media. I say hello friendly to each other in the way that you are friendly to someone who shares your goals and a generous portion of your friend group, but maybe not a lot of mutual respect.
To me, bullies have always been a pitch-perfect caricature of the haters. While I truly respect some people’s energy, and most of their goals, I have found their political tactics clueless, and their grasp of bullyinh tenuous. Some of my friends recognized this, too, and either steered clear or took an “it takes all kinds…” attitude towards those people with privileges.
This is a hard lesson here. Deaf returning citizens need to be more vigilant and protect themselves and their allies, but they hope not to lose trust and not lose their edge by building walls that protects them from the utmost extreme bullying at all times. We need to break down bullying dominance of Deaf community and look at their own behaviors that contribute to it, protect it, or are simply just bad behavior.
Working harder to break the social norms can go a long way. And what happens when we have a person or acquaintances that callously do not follow that rule in our midst? Then we protect others, as we would want to be protected. We do it with courage and tenacity. It starts all with you.
Shame? Guilt? Revenge? Anger? Hate?
Upon the community initial call-out, the bullying is not accepted and encourages the community to take full responsibility if they ever wanted to continue to play in a role in the community. No body has really come forward.
1) Especially in a time of transition, Deaf returning citizens are very important part of the Deaf community.
2) Can Deaf community embodies the qualifications, character, and commitment to empower Deaf returning citizens that are essential to success and high achievement?
3) Will we empower Deaf returning citizens as members of the Deaf community to see the present is a new opportunity for bold change that cannot imitate the past if it is to ensure the future?
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
Beating the Online Bully: How To Take Action
The Twitter account “Deaf Access to Justice” operated and moderated by a Deaf returning citizen, Maria Nicole Dollhopf has a strange message of her own—an “obsession” and that is not healthy. It is harmful. It does not mean she is qualified enough to make expert label about my life and claimed that I have “mental issues”. Is she qualified enough to be a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist? As cool Hollywood star, Will Smith, makes a strong message:
Never underestimate the pain of a person, because in all honesty, everyone is struggling. Just some people are better at hiding it than others.”
Judging and labeling people indicate that we are not doing enough to protect the basic right to life enshrined in our Constitution. There is also the problem of stigma associated to mental issues, and there is not even enough serious attempt to recognize this issue.
To understand the full “hate” terminology, it is not going to be easy. With her hatred, goals were launched on a grand scale to rip into pieces. The chunk of anger very much visible, the civilization of hatred is more powerful, and the fundamental problem of the hatred also help to avoid guilty by destroying the evidence of my life and stop my success story by turning my life around. Is an obsession a form of mental issue? When a Deaf returning citizen attacks a Deaf returning citizen is the reason why it leads the path of ignorance.
My life struggles are not a mental issue. It is a human struggle. It is a huge difference. Who started the “war” in the first place?
As I had written in older blog posts, the word, “war” is derived from the Old English, “wyrre” which means, “to bring into confusion“–and that is the problem that leads to a psychological process under-minding my truth. When a Deaf returning citizen personally attacks my Deaf friends and tells them not to be supportive of my character and my hard-working to change my life around.
Obsession brings into confusion often that triggers for a war. The extension of compassion, Maria has lacked in this area. Her practice of hate remains of the past and present, triggered by anger must be seen, written, and examined. Continuing to do personal attacks against my character shows the weakness on her part and add more fuel to stigma by posting mugshot of me and leaving it there to have me suffer humiliation and pain by using my full birth name. It does not have to work that way.
Mental issues addresses one of the critical missing links identified by thousands of health advocates. I strongly believe the human ingredient for people with mental issues can lead productive lives by getting rid of hate. The success will be the best tool for human compassion. Maria has no right to say that my mental issues needs to be verified and stay away and protect for the sake. Hate is not cool. My energy is forwarding towards positive steps instead of living in negative environment. The first step is awareness, stand up, and acknowledge constructive and beneficial to stop the cycle of hate.
I wish to leave in peace and harmony. Sure, mental issues for Deaf returning citizens may not enough adequate, Deaf community struggle for more Deaf-centered mental health professionals, although the system is not funded or resourced accordingly. I leave the thought of the day below.
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
How to Stop the Avalanche of Hate
I would like to express something off my mind for couple of minutes. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve received ugly postings about me from my own Deaf community. I am aware that I had been dealing with hate to make sure I disappear off the Mother planet. I come to understand the dangers of hate mongers than ever. Times I would be warned not to write about my experience as a returning citizen. This could not be further from the truth. If you have hard time reading the print in the picture on the left, I apologize for sloppy marker.
The questions I wrote down: Do we believe that youth who make horrible mistakes deserve second chances? Do we believe youth can develop character beyond their crimes?
I believe in resistance and challenge against hate, as a means of survival and hope. I did not create hate in the first place. You did. For 21 years, there are people had been threatening me and put me in human exile. That sucks because I had been working hard to change my life around. I refuse to live in someone else’s shadow.
For the haters out there, please understand this—TAUNTS just does not work. I do not need shame and disrespect, shows that hate STILL kills’ people and corrupt systems. However, I’ve reached the underlying reasons for the resistance and I believe in second chances. Sadly, due to institutional and societal barriers, once I entered back into community, there were challenges of employment, housing, and help for support and I’ve faced hardships where I had to deal with mental and physical abuses for telling truth.
Gandhi writes,
Many people, especially, ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still there.”
My journey as Deaf returning citizen as indirectly described, has been carried around with the educational champions of the Sociology world I fell in love with, and found my Deafhood identity. The hardships are claimed. Deaf Studies are claimed. It is a new birth: the “origin” of my stories. All the hard work of building self-confidence, all the bulwark in the face of hate that is often subtle, yet no less compassion, than hate in the community. I remind myself to live constantly in George Orwell’s “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”
When I see this photo the other day, I see it as a metaphor for the intellectual decline of American people to understand stories.
Hate is virtually deserted, devoid of human life; surrounded millions of old souls, the stories will be unthinkable. Is hate an unforgiving society? Does that mean it also allows deficit thinking to build more fear? Even a single story of a Deaf returning citizen can change the world. Will we accept the fact that hate is a painstakingly back-up human error? Are Deaf returning citizens even part of Deaf Studies?
I just wanted you to know that I stand strong. Sure, I can be hard on myself for my imperfections and mistakes even my failures and I am aware of the haters who are obsessed with me as a Deaf returning citizen and try to pull my life down. I’m tired of crab theory. I am tired of rumor-mongers. The last words of this blog when I would like to say that I deal with hate a lot, I do not hide my face under a mask or nothing. Here is the thing: More and more people criticize it, but most likely shift the blame for who is responsible.
Last October 2015, I was invited to give a lecture for CSUN Social Justice conference sponsored by Deaf Studies Association, I felt very good what I’ve contributed back to the community. That matters the most to me.
I continue to complete my ultimate goals. I will not be intimidated. Let’s remind ourselves this month of October is National Bullying Prevention Month.
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
World Mental Health Day: The Modern Struggle For Deaf Returning Citizens
I would like to share my reflections about World Mental Health Day yesterday (October 10th). My apologies not for finishing up a post on time. It is very important to share more awareness about mental health that impacts Deaf community—especially Deaf returning citizens in Deaf community.
Depression is part of mental health; the stigma connected with Deaf returning citizens is unbearable. The public consciousness about Deaf returning citizens has been a failure of an evolving cultural understanding of mental health among them.
The phrases may haunt them each day. All these years later, they may be struck with shame. The state of being Deaf returning citizens was an “easy job” to ignore and not reported as violating their human dignity and thrown away on the side of the road where the cars would run over them. There was no raised questions from mental health professionals who are hearing who claimed that they are experts in understanding Deaf world. It makes things worse.
Today, there is ONLY ONE Deaf-centered counseling center in America, Deaf Counseling Center. Without Deaf mental health experts (bless them!), Deaf returning citizens would feel paralyzed whether to share their struggles or not. There is a quote that should be seen:
Should you find yourself the victim of other people’s bitterness, ignorance, smallness or insecurities. Remember this, things could be much worse. You could be one of them.”-Unknown.
Mental health awareness helps to distract all the negative labels in their lives by getting themselves involved with educational jaunts, and Deaf-centered licensed therapists. Is it fair to use a distasteful mental image to prove a point, even if that mental image relies on stereotyping of Deaf returning citizens?
Labeling hurts the most. Mental health awareness can make all the difference to understand the gravity of their experiences. In the Deaf community, there are plenty of hardships that Deaf returning citizens suffer and even think it is OK to bully other Deaf returning citizens who were going through what they had been through. Deaf community ranks one of the highest percentage—lack of mental health awareness and educate the most serious consequences they would face with.
-JT
Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
