Within the field of cultural anthropology, Edward B. Tylor (1958) breaks ground in his defining of culture as the “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (p. 1). As a linguistic-cultural minority, the American Deaf community has fostered a rich and complex culture sharing not only hearing status, but also language, characteristics, values, customs, and norms. Despite the history of oppression as perpetuated through mainstream hearing culture, self-identifying Deaf and hard-of-hearing people have acquired a legitimate culture in accordance with Tylor’s definition. Similarly, American Queer Culture has blossomed through a history of oppression and marginalization. Within the plethora of ways American Queer Culture has exemplified the complexities required to meet Tylor’s definition of culture, this paper explores Queer Culture: Through expressions of performance art; as a shared experience of oppression, discrimination, and existing as “other,”; as sharing valued history of anger, protest, pain, and victory; and through the growing media portrayal both in fashions of accuracy and defamation. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, pansexual, Two-Spirit, asexual, and other self-identifying individuals (collectively referred to as Queer or LGBTQ+), bask in the rich marginalized counter-culture of American Queer Culture. This paper will explore, examine, and compare the fundamental aspects of American Deaf Culture and American Queer Culture.
As expressed by Mindess (2006), American Sign Language (ASL) has remained the foundation of the tight-knit bond present within the collectivist American Deaf culture. Through the founding of the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in 1817, founders Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Laurent Clerc, and Mason Cosgwell forged the foundations of the incipient Deaf culture (Van Cleve, 2007).
As the inspiration of many American Deaf spaces, the American School for the Deaf gathered individuals with hearing loss into one arena where ASL began to take its originating form. However, language was not the only result of the founding of the American School for the Deaf. From that point forward, the budding Deaf culture laid its roots and allowed for what was once only a physical condition of deafness to become something much more.
In a very similar fashion, the American Queer community began to take its form through the innovation of queer spaces. Though some point to the Stonewall Inn Riots of 1968 as the event which provided the inertia to formalize a unified LGBTQ+ community, Alsenas (2008) points to the historical implications of the concluding World War II (1940s-1950s) as this catalyst for the Queer community. This is specifically the implications of Truman's National Security Loyalty Program where the State Department fired federal employees (most especially military personnel) who were suspected to be homosexual. Thousands of LGBTQ+ men and women were witch-hunted and discharged from the military and other federal agencies and left to locate in the nearest urban areas (as these were the areas commonly near federal offices and military bases and ports) such as San Francisco, CA., Boston, MA., and New York City, NY, (Alsenas, 2008). With this, Queer historians point out that LGBTQ+ men and women were outed to their families and dishonorably discharged from the military and left with no military benefits. Many of these queer individuals sought refuge in the nearest urban areas, increasing the population of openly LGBTQ+ Americans in urban areas and bring forth a prominence of Queer Communities in American cities (Ward, 2008). In many ways, these historical circumstances served as guiding hand of an incipient American Queer Culture.
Though Queer and Deaf culture share some cultural components, they are a plethora of traits that separate these cultures respectively. For example, the issue of language acquisition is found exclusively in American Deaf Culture. Rather than allowing deaf students to learn ASL and discover the cultural nuances found with the Deaf community, a growing population of deaf children were forced to utilize lip reading and speech (Van Cleve, 2007). As Alexander Graham Bell lobbied for oralist deaf education throughout the 20th century, language deprivation grew rampant for deaf children (Padden & Humphries, 2009). This is a continuing issue, as over ninety percent of deaf children are born into hearing families (National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders, 2017). Forcing deaf children to assimilate to mainstream hearing culture continues to be an issue for the Deaf community. This assimilation of culture is not a circumstance specific to Deaf Culture, as LGBTQ+ individuals are left in very similar shoes when navigating heteronormative society. In the ways that Deaf people are oppressed in mainstream hearing culture, Queer people are oppressed in mainstream heterosexual/gender-conforming culture. This is especially true for the Deaf community through the development of technology such as cochlear implants (Padden & Humphries, 2009). In face of the adversities inflicted by the medicalization of deafness, the Deaf community continued in its perseverance as a linguistic and cultural minority. Per the medical perspective, Deaf people are categorized by hearing society as handicapped and needing of remedy. This pathological perspective of Deafness is comparable to the perspective once used in the American Medical community in the early 20th century that labeled homosexuality as a psychological disorder (Ward, 2008). This ideology of queerness as pathological is no longer a norm in the medical community, while Deafness is seen in various perspectives by medical professions (Alsenas, 2008; Padden & Humphries, 2009).
In realizing this one of the most fundamental traits of Deaf culture are found. Rather than forfeiting power to their hearing counterparts, the Deaf community roots itself in the belief of deafness as an identity (and for some even a gift) rather than a disability (Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2018; Padden & Humphries, 2009; Mindess, 2006). Marlee Maitlin (2013), Academy-award winning Deaf actress, brings this ideal to life in her role as Melody, a counselor at a Deaf school, in the TV show Switched at Birth. When lecturing a group of Deaf students, her character exclaims “Not hearing loss, only deaf gain.” With a deeper look, scholars have noted these traits to be those closely associated in collectivist cultures. With this, similarities may be found within Queer Culture as media portrayal has brought explicit implications to both cultures respectively. Through my own personal experiences of oppression, landmarks of LGBTQ+ history provide a perspective that privileges from the victors of the past, such as the marchers at the Stonewall Inn or those marching for ACTUP during the AIDS epidemic, have been gifted to the generation of now self-identifying LGBTQ+ or queer people (Ward, 2008). These efforts of social activism tether both communities respectively through these social conflicts. Defined in Reading Between the Signs, collectivist cultures are those that expect members to “devote time and energy to promoting the welfare of the group,” (Holcomb et al., 2006, 43). American Queer culture is a collectivist culture exemplified. In efforts to educate the emerging generation of queer-identifying people, and encourage a recognition of these inherent privileges resulting from the fighting, marches, protesting, blood, sweat, tears, and for some, lives of historical queer people, various forms of historical narratives have amassed American media. Films such as Milk, RENT, The Normal Heart, and others, depict struggles that are at the heart of LGBTQ+ social movements, while unifying a community of people in celebration of queer expression, (Hilton-Morrow & Battles, 2015). In a parallel fashion, strides are being made in the Deaf community for media portrayal to bring forth education for mainstream society as well as solidified the collectivist American Deaf Culture (Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2018). This can be seen through the boom of recent portrayals of sign language, deafness, and Deaf culture in mainstream media film and television such as Switched at Birth, Baby Driver, A Quiet Place and The Shape of Water.
In noting the historic depictions of Deaf culture and Queer culture in the media, a vital representation of Deaf culture and Queer culture may be illuminated. Both the Deaf community and the LGBTQ+ community share a history of social activism. In 1968, during a routine bar raid in the Stonewall Inn located in Greenwich Village, New York City, riots of LGBTQ+ people erupted against the police force (Alsenas, 2008). The incipient victory for the queer individuals that rebelled brought forth a response and presence for mainstream media unlike ever before. 20 years later in 1988 at Gallaudet University, the premier university for the Deaf, a revolution within the American Deaf Culture formulated. As documented on Gallaudet University’s official website, herds of Deaf people protesting in the streets of Washington, D.C. flooded the news. These protests, a part of the overarching “Deaf President Now” or DPN movement, brought mainstream media attention and a consequent landmark victory for the Deaf community. For the first time, a Deaf president, I. King Jordan, was appointed as the President of Gallaudet University (Gallaudet University, n.d.). This brings fruition to the phrase blasted by individuals from the Deaf community, Queer Communities and marginalized communities alike: “Nothing about us without us!”
In a manner specific to Deaf Culture, the deaf community as ASL users shares in traits regarding proxemics and kinesics due to the visual nature of sign language. For example, Deaf people are more cognizant of their use of space and face expressions than hearing individuals, as eye contact, visibility, and proper lighting are vital for ASL discourses (Mindess, 2006). Additionally, while hearing people may nonchalantly scroll through their social media feeds while conversing, this is not the case in Deaf culture. Maintaining full attention while signing, regardless of the conversation, remains a cultural norm within the Deaf community (Mindess, 2006). As a unique tradition, self-identifying Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals often plan, execute and participate in social programs and events centered on their shared language, ASL (Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2018). This focus of social gathering is also shared in queer communities from the Stonewall Marches that soon became an annual PRIDE festivals in most major cities around the world as a unique cultural ritual (Alsenas, 2008). Specifically for Deaf cutlure gatherings allow for Deaf spaces to go further than just residential schools, allowing for Deaf, hard-of-hearing and even hearing (CODAs, interpreters, ASL students, etc.) individuals access to acquisition of American Sign Language and Deaf culture.
It must also be noted that through the medical perspective on deafness, hearing society perpetrates discrimination and prejudice against Deaf people. First coined in 1975 by Tom L. Humphries, professor at the University of California San Diego, audism is defined as “the notion that one is superior based one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears.” As dominant hearing majority cultures have remained in positions of power throughout history, the term audism erects as concept which intermingles and combines the singular, repetitive, conscious, and unconscious acts of discrimination against the Deaf community (Ballenger, 2013; Bauman, 2004). The grip of audism extends across the spheres of the diverse Deaf community. Ballenger (2013) identifies one of the largest issues regarding audism as “the oppositional inclination of some hearing individuals determining speaking and listening as the only acceptable method of communication, creating a controversy between proponents of auditory or oral systems and manual communication systems,” (p. 122). With this, you may note the plethora of issues for the Deaf community, including high levels of unemployment, lack of access of sign language interpreters, and an overarching lack of social currency (Leigh, Andrews, & Harris, 2018). While the institution of legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 has brought some progress to the issue of accessibility, there is still a long way to go to fully dismantle societal audism. For Queer individuals, queer culture is central on the hope that the LGBTQ+ community may sustain itself in advocacy to continue this centuries-long fight to full and complete global equality by staying educated, aware, empathetic, and involved, (Ward 2008). Through recognizing the cultural, historical, and political existence of Queer Americans as well as Deaf American we are one step closer to closing the widening gaps of privilege in our diverse societies.
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