So, here is first Deaf person to win America’s Next Top Model Cycle 22 and Dancing With The Stars Season 22 and set up his YouTube channel, Nyle DiMarco and let people ask him random questions on February 15, 2017, “Were You Bullied For Being Deaf?”
With due all respect for Nyle, that is where the buck has to stop there. Paddy Ladd, the author of Understanding Deaf Culture: In the Search of Deafhood,
Utilising their contacts in the scientific establishment and the media, a public climate has been manufactured which once again again proclaims the advent of the ‘miracle cure’ and suggests once more that ‘deafness is abolished’.” (page 159) and “In the case of cochlear implants, for example, one would expect the trumpeting of such a ‘cure’ to represent a contradiction to our absorbed miracle of the Little Magic Box. ‘If the box works so well, we might ask, ‘then why is such brutally invasive surgery deemed necessary?'” (page 173)
It is exactly a good example of media manipulation when someone asked Nyle a question, “what’s your opinion on cochlear implants in relation to (the lack of) sign language acquisition?” That was un-American question.
I was surprised what his response was. First of all, please remember that I am not against people who are cochlear implant users, but I am against cochlear implants itself. Please remember that.
Nyle signed in 2:10 video, “Well, I have nothing against cochlear implants. I would support whatever a child wants to do whether their parents want to get a cochlear implant. Fine with that I have no say in that matter.”
Do you really believe that a child would say, “I want a cochlear implant” just like that? Remember, in 1989, 12 Deaf children died from cochlear implant surgeries—so do you think a child would say, “I want a cochlear implant and I want to die, too?” Please be realistic! It is the oppressive society (doctors, audiologists, stockholders, politics, corporate dirt bags) that manipulates parents to get their children cochlear implants. Is that not a bullying?
Did Nyle ever read a book called Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children by Laura Mauldin yet? I do not think so because if he read the book then he would not say, “I would support whatever a child wants to do.” I am telling you that the book would blow your mind away.
Again, the book is very important for everyone to read and understand the truth. Beware; there are a lot of manipulations by people who are actually against ASL and even the state of being Deaf, too. That is a form of hate.
For example, Alexander Graham Bell Association for Deaf and Hard of Hearing has done very good public relations by manipulating parents into getting cochlear implants.
I am certainly disappointed that people who look up to Nyle as a “celebrity” who gives a wrong impression about it. He was supposed to set a better example and stop lies how special cochlear implant industries are. I mean, he said that he is an activist even he said that he is passionate about language and literacy. Well, did he know that cochlear implants makes it worse and become the subject of language deprivation? Even language delay, too. Cochlear implants does not make better literacy.
It is all about cultural oppression. It is also about the organizing principle of power wherein culture can be studied through technologies of power (cochlear implant industries) and money.
Why not Nyle stand up and challenge cochlear implant industries and make progress, education, conflict, struggle and resistance? For American Sign Language [ASL], it is the truth that attributes to functions, neither economy nor power. ASL creates truth, and this truth produces a function of power.
Cochlear implants has been ongoing ill-advised and misleading term for years and years. No human being can restore anyone’s hearing; Cochlear implants depends a lot on battery economics is a BIG business, yet, it does not restore anyone’s hearing at all. That is reality. It is all about money.
Remember, cochlear implants “profits” over people…is that even an American way of life?
-JT
Copyright @ 2017 Jason Tozier
This text may be freely copied in its entirely only, including this copyright message.
References:
Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. 2003.
...And the Truth Shall Set You Free. 
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