Today, I was reading an article by The New York Times, “Between Sound and Silence” with the opening statement: “For a generation of people with cochlear implants, technology is transforming the experience of deafness.”

You can read the article at this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/opinion/deafness-cochlear-implants.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Transforming the experience of deafness?

From Dictionary.

Transforming: Verb. Change in the form, appearance, or character of.

Experience: Verb. Encounter or undergo.

Deafness: Adjective. Refusing to listen, heed, or be persuaded; unreasonable or unyielding.

The opening statement is red flag number one. Aggressive mode.

“The hope was the device, called a cochlear implant, might eventually enable even profoundly deaf people to understand speech and to articulate a typical human voice.”

Red flag number two. Why hope? Is it supposed to be positive? Typical human voice? That’s harsh. That’s a practice of organizing language hegemony.

“Deaf children couldn’t get a basic education. No one was complaining about the opportunity to hear better there. Whether to get a cochlear implant was, and still is, a first-world debate. ”

It is a first-world act of manipulation. I mean, after reading Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children written by Laura Mauldin. You gotta read this book.

Alexander Graham Bell Association is the reason why they’re first-world debate to practice hate against the state of being Deaf and encourage cochlear implants to gain enormous cost to putting on or assisting with some of these larger First Amendment oppression. Deaf children can get basic education through ASL without oppression.

“I wondered if introducing the ability to hear into their lives was worth the risk of losing all that. After all, all the implant does is open a new pathway to sound. What our exquisitely human brain does with it is the thing that really matters.”

Red flag number three. Strike.

For all the emotional chaos wrought by the so-called cochlear implant success stories, open-air political violence remain the quickest way for Alexander Graham Bell to patronize and recruit Deaf babies into his ideology. It was a pathway to wholesome as being healthy as Deaf, then it turned into a pathway to sound, and gain mainstream political language.

“Implant him early in life”—renowned pediatric audiologist, Dr. (Jane) Madell.

Madell has no right to make an authoritative decision what is best for Deaf babies. That is a pathway for a political polarization. At times, like Madell’s statement can reflect or even magnify that polarization in shape, form, or order. Madell also do not have the right to serve as a bridge across the cultural hegemony of our time. Madell do not have the right to bring this political spectrum to thrive cochlear implant industries—and every day, cochlear implants thrive. It is a hateful agenda.

“His grandparents are teaching him sign language, and he just learned the new sign for ‘cochlear implant’ It’s no longer the snake bite, but simply two fingers fastening to the head, like a magnet. The sign, just like deafness, has evolved.”

Just like deafness, has evolved.

Evolved? That’s dangerous framing. The term of ‘Deaf’ refuse to be quickly forgotten. In promotion of cochlear implants, evolving toward to develop a program for the eradication and oppression of the state of being Deaf, the language and culture of the Deaf by promoting more speculative communicative pursuits.

As for the author of the article, Irene Taylor Brodsky as an Academy Award-nominated, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director, she needs to learn more from cochlear implant survivors by branching their intellectual life out of oppressive hearing society. There are many meanings, perspectives and outlooks that best reflect their biological aspect as Deaf, their intellectual life, their leisure, and their form of humanity.

One thing is that Irene is not Deaf; She never experienced what it is like Deaf. She has no business to write this article. In fact, one of the things I’ve always admired most about being state of Deaf is its embrace for change. It taught me to look to the work I can do on myself—repair, maintain, build, and grow as I can better deal with change that is certain to come. I continue to grow as Deaf person.

I refuse to be a subject of snakebite where I was asked to consider getting cochlear implant during my heart attack trauma experience. Cochlear implant industries want white-privilege money.

-JT

Copyright © 2018 Jason Tozier

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